Kayode

Oops, I forgot to mention that as it was, my limo driver back into Athens the other day was Nigerian. (!!!) I got in the car and asked him where he was from. He said Nigeria. I asked if he was Igbo or Yoruba. He said Yoruba. Then I did something stupid. I said, "Ose gidi gan!" I thought he'd be all impressed. Here he was in GA and some white girl was saying "thank you very much" in his native language. C'mon. That's cool. You know it is.
Well, he didn't understand. I repeated it and finally translated FOR him.
"Ohhh," he said with a smile, and said something in Yoruba that only remotely sounded like what I'd said. I'd gotten the words right, but as he said, my "accent was bad." Ugh. Well, la di da Mr. Yoruba!
Then I asked him if he was Christian. If he was Yoruba, there was a 50-50 chance he was. Christian or Muslim. He was Christian, sorta. At the moment he was dabbling in mentalism. I love Nigerians. You can just walk right up to one and start talking religion and he doesn't think you a zealot. Course had he been a Hausa (Muslim), there might have been a problem. In the 60s, the Hausa committed genocide on the Catholic Igbos, so they don't really "hang together much" you could say. Had he been Hausa, I might have let our happy religion conversation ebb away a bit quicker.
His name was Kayode and was actually very informative and cool. He seemed a little impressed that my boyfriend was Nigerian and I had this odd hope my cell would ring with FC on the other line so I could somehow prove it. I thought it'd be rather trippy to be sitting in a limo in GA hearing FC and Kayode chat away in Yoruba for a bit. I'm weird like that. I have crazy hopes. Of course, it was like 9am GA time which meant FC was gently snoozing several thousand miles away. Ah well.
It seems like I'm always running into Nigerians. Really I am. It's like they can sense me coming. Either that or I sense them. Either way, we're meant to be together. :)
I also was happy to see that despite my stupid "accent" I was quite in tune with Nigerian politics and culture, so we talked about the government corruption and fraud for a while and he gave me some pointers on how to get around Nigeria. I'll probably never need to know it, but hey, knowledge is always good, right?
I knew I was "in" when I asked him his name and he said, "Well, I say Kay because you know, dees people, dey can't pronounce it. It's Kayode, an' dey're always okay wit' Kay but for some reason dey can't get ode right. You take dem apart, dey can do it. But together, Kayode, dey think it's coyote or somet'ing like dat. I don't understand dees people." Yay, I wasn't one of "dees people"! :-D
I asked him what it meant. Kayode=brings joy. Awww.