© Lisa McKay 2008 - All rights reserved

It had finally stopped raining, although the pavements were still wet and the streets steaming in protest against the November chill. I was in my own little world, juggling my laptop and bag, when I stepped up onto the curb near my hotel and he spoke to me.

“Did you get your coffee?” he asked. “Oy yay, you look tired.”

“I am tired,” I said, recognizing the smiling, bowler-hatted, limousine driver who had introduced himself as Gideon and pointed out Starbucks to me that morning. “I’ve been thinking for five hours. My brain hurts.”

“It’s cold, ey?” he said. “Where I’m from in Africa it isn’t this cold.”

“No,” I agreed, remembering the heat that had chased me onto the plane in Accra four days earlier. “I know, I was in Africa last week.”

“Where?”

“Kenya and Ghana.”

“Oh,” he said, disappointed. “Not Nigeria? You should go to Nigeria. It is the best place. Why have you not married an African man?”

I did a double take. Nope, we were definitely standing on a street corner in Baltimore. And, yes, I was discussing this topic with a total stranger for the second time in two weeks.

Tuesday two weeks ago I was in a taxi in Nairobi. It was a Jatco taxi, which is one of the handful of taxi companies in Nairobi where you can be reasonably sure you won’t be robbed mid journey - not by the taxi driver, anyway. This safe-service grantee apparently doesn’t, however, extend to protection from being propositioned.

Completely exhausted after a long day of facilitating I was staring out the window when the taxi driver, blessed with the unlikely name of Bunny, spoke into the silence.

“Are you married?”     

I sighed. I knew we still had about 40 minutes of traffic on Muta Gisau Way to contend with. It was going to be a long trip back to the hotel.

“No.”

“Ah, I think you must marry an African man,” Bunny said.

“Why?”

"Ahhhh. African man is very good. Very hard working. But I think maybe you best should pick an African man with no money. That is very good."

At this I was curious beyond all restraint.

"Why?"

"When man have no money, and woman have little money, then they come together, “Bunny brings both hands together to illustrate this important point, thereby taking them off the wheel and almost running us into the back of a matatu, “then they work together to make lots of money. Plus,” he added as the coup de grace. “Man with no money will be more faithful than man with lots of money.”

"Huh."

"How old are you?" Bunny asked.

"31."

Bunny clearly knows something about western women. Usually when I give this answer I get a look that hovers between shock and concern, and sometimes an outright query as to how and why I have managed to reach this age unwed. Is my father negligent? How high, exactly, is my bride price?

But Bunny shoots me a winsome smile. "Ahhh! You are very young. You are too young! Do you like African men?"

"I like Africa. I like coming to Kenya."

"That is good. I myself am in the marriage process. Yes."

Temporarily relieved, thinking there’s a girlfriend on the scene, I venture actively into the conversation.

“Oh, are you engaged?”

“Not yet. But soon.”

"Oh, do you have a girlfriend?”

"Oh, no. Not yet. But soon. I am liking the white woman."

By this stage I figured that all hope of a graceful and reserved exit from this taxi had completely disappeared, and I might as well ask this question.

“What is so good about white women?”

"Ahhh... They are very good at the love."

This was more of an answer than I had bargained for. Thankfully I stayed quiet long enough for Bunny to speak again. "They are very good at the relationship. They have lots of understanding."

"Understanding of what?” I asked, genuinely confused. “Politics?”

Bunny laughed at me. "They are very social."

It was a long, although rather entertaining, trip back to the Fairview. By the end of it Bunny had figured out that I probably wasn’t keen on marrying him. That didn’t stop him handing me his phone number and email address as I got out.

“Do you think it’s possible,” he asked, “that we could meet?”

At least, I think he said he “meet”. It might have been “mate” – the way his accent with it beautiful round cadence smoothed out the words made it hard for me to tell, but I chose to give him the benefit of the doubt. The answer was the same in any case.

“I don’t think it is possible,” I said gently.

At this Bunny gave me one last grin. “Ahhh, but with God all things are possible.”

Bunny definitely had the last word in that conversation. I had to agree that, yes, with God all things are possible, but that I still wasn’t going to meet, or mate.

But between Bunny in Kenya and Gideon in Baltimore I’m beginning to wonder if I just might be missing something. After all, I’ve made several of my major life decisions on the basis of reasoning that more than one small nudge in the direction of an open door is irrefutable proof, and quite possibly divine guidance, that I should walk through said door. I moved to Croatia, went to Notre Dame, and took my current job in LA using that logic. All of those decisions worked out all right… 

Gideon held my hand a shade longer than necessary as we shook farewell today.

“If you have spent time in Africa then you know me, here,” he said, placing his hand over his heart. “And since I have lived here for almost ten years now, there is not so much I don’t know about you, I think. That makes love not so hard, I think.”

I smiled, thinking that I seem to learn more about love every time I talk to taxi drivers these days.

“Give me a call, at your convenience,” Gideon said. “I’ll take you to Nigeria.”