Trying to make this a weekly thing, it’s not always easy. Going with the theory that everyone has a story is a great idea, and is full of truth, but when you’ve given 10,000 total rides (actually gave #10,000 Wednesday evening), a lot of stories begin to sound the same. And that’s not to knock anyone or to diminish any rider and their story, but I’ve heard and seen a lot. A lot of times your basic and general stories have really all morphed into the same story.
But digging back into some of my archives, some of my favorite riders in that first 18 months were the international students attending either Tulsa University Oral Roberts University. They came from a lot of different countries, but there were some consistencies. It was in those consistencies where I had some of the better conversations and met some of the friendliest kids.
For a couple of semesters, I met several young men who were born in Nigeria, but schooled somewhere in England and were attending ORU. Their educational endeavors were varied, but all definitely centered on their faith and mission work of some sort, which is really the cornerstone of Oral Roberts University. Some of them came from obvious family wealth. With two different gentleman, I had met their mothers and family members who would come to town and stay for weeks at a time to visit. A common ingredient with all of these gentlemen were above and beyond manners and a prolific mastering of the English language. They would admit that it came from their secondary education in England, but they all spoke with specific high-level grammar and sentence structure. As a former English teacher, it was refreshing to hear somebody use little-to-no slang and to form textbook type sentences. Don’t get me wrong, I swear and I use slang and often don’t speak in complete sentences when having conversations, but it is depressing at times to see our society just trash the English language and any formal syntax that it was based upon.
International students from TU tend to come from the Middle East or Asia. The majority of them are here for some engineering degree, mostly Petroleum or Electrical. Interestingly, a lot of them are sponsored by employers back in their home country, meaning that those companies have guaranteed them jobs when they finish their degree and are paying for their education. Attending Tulsa University is not cheap for people who live in Tulsa for it is a private school, so for folks from other countries halfway around the world, the expenses are even greater. Especially because when summer break and fall break and winter break and spring break all occur, rarely do these students go home or anywhere. It costs so much to go home and visit family they end up staying on campus. That’s where I see a lot of them, making trips to the mall to kill time or to the grocery stores to stock up on food until the school meal plans kick back in.
It’s interesting too because I find men from the Middle East very talkative and friendly and they’ll talk music and sports and some of them are even inquisitive about my opinion on the political landscape. The women sometimes are chatty but they usually travel in pairs or trios and often talk amongst themselves in their native tongue. It’s actually entertaining because they speak so quickly and so fluently in a language I cannot understand, until they’re discussing something regarding today’s pop culture when all of a sudden I will hear the name of a singer or a group or a movie title spring up amongst their foreign words.
These are riders I actually enjoy giving rides to because I’m always curious to get their story. What brought them here? How are they enjoying the United States and the Tulsa experience? Are they going home or are they staying here after graduation for employment? Regardless of the answers, I always find these conversations enjoyable, since I consider myself to be exceptional at the art of connecting with people.
International riders are not only limited to the students of the Tulsa area. While Tulsa may not be considered a large metropolitan area and a huge business center, it is one of the top three hubs when it comes to the oil and gas industry. And that brings people from multiple parts of the country but a lot of different areas of the world. Surprisingly, people from all over also come to Tulsa for personal reasons. I have met people from a lot of different countries. Again as I mentioned previously, I wish I had started keeping track and marking off both the states as well as individual countries as I met people. It’s easy for me to name off the top of my head that I’ve met people from England and Ireland, Scotland, Germany, Italy, Nigeria, Canada, Australia, Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Bahamas, as well as Switzerland, Sweden, Russia and Romania. That doesn’t even take into account the Middle East or Asia which would include Laos, Vietnam, China, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia and then there is Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Oman, Egypt and Pakistan. I’m certain that I’m missing several others.
Which brings me to the gentleman I gave a ride to last night. Funny that I should meet him last night, because I began this blog on Wednesday and was thinking I haven’t really met any exceptional stories of late. Most have just been run of the mill, yet very nice people. This gentleman’s name was Oleg. He’s been in the United States for 10 years. He came over here to go to school and promised his mother he’d be back in nine months. But he got a job working for casinos in Las Vegas. He worked in restaurants for several of them for over 6 years, but then wanted to move on and do something different. He is now a truck driver and just criss crosses the country and is really enjoying it. I’ve met many truckers over the last couple years and most of them were a little disgruntled with the industry, mainly disappointed that the promise of pay hasn’t come to fruition for them. When I asked Oleg, he had no complaints at all. That’s when he explained how life is back in his home country. He is from Moldova. For those of you that aren’t familiar with the geography over there, it is a small country that sits directly between Romania and Ukraine. He said if he was over there he would be lucky to make $100 a month. He feels like he’s an entrepreneur or someone who wants to make his own money, and the odds of successfully doing that in Moldova are almost nill. He said there is so much corruption and such a heavy Mafia presence over there, if you open your own business there are so many people you have to pay off to stay in business. And while he misses his mother and she misses him, he said she continually tells him to stay over here and enjoy life and make his own money. Sad to know that’s the situation over there, but here is a guy that is living what is defined in his mind as the American Dream.
Uber & Lyft: Everyone Has A Story 