Global Citizen

Customs officer: So you were born in Nigeria?
Me: Yeah.
Customs officer: How did that happen?

A lot of smart-ass answers could be given at this point. I could've gone with my grandfather's line: "Because I wanted to be close to my mom when I was born" all the way to the birds and the bees response: "When a man and a woman love each other...."

I didn't go with either of these, of course; I just said "uh....my parents lived there at the time."

This was a conversation I had a few months ago, upon returning to the US from England.

I'm a global citizen, more so that most people. I live in a country I was not born in, was born in a country neither of my parents were born, and will be moving to a country where I have no family.

Even though people talk about the world being smaller, there are still many people who don't go very far from their roots.

When I lived in Michigan, almost everyone I knew was from the state and planned to stay in the state after college - I was neither from there nor wanted to stay there after college. At the time, I thought it was odd for people to not want to move away from the place they'd always been, but I've come to realize that I may be the odd one.

Many of the Californian students I taught at De Anza didn't seem to have any desire to leave, even the Bay Area, much less the state. Mind you, living in the Bay Area is probably considered a nicer place to stay than Michigan by most people, but still....

We went to Ratingen, a suburb of Düsseldorf, to visit some distant relatives of Lauren, a few weeks ago. I was surprised to see how close all the members of the family lived to each other. Cousins would hang out on weekends on a regular basis, because they lived in the same town. Grandparents could drop by anytime to see their grandchildren. I've only lived in the same town as any of my cousins for the last three years I lived in Nigeria; I've never lived closer than 600 miles to any of my grandparents.

I guess it might be me though; my sister lives only a few miles from my dad, who can see his granddaughter pretty much any time he wants.

Why do I bring all this up? Lauren was offered a job in Edinburgh, and it looks like we're going to be living there for the next several years. Who knows, maybe one day, we'll have a child who has a similar conversation with a customs officer, as they travel the world.

Lauren and I, in Edinburgh