I don’t usually talk to taxi drivers. The man whose taxi I got in this morning surprised me with a conversation I would never forget. It’s not a superiority thing or anything of that nature, but growing up in an immigrant family in the US, if you couldn’t do something that you could’ve done on your own–walking instead of catching a taxi or ordering out instead of cooking at home– then you had just wasted everyone’s time. Who’s everyone? I used to ask my single mother. She’d say hers and the hard-earned money that I’d just wasted catching an Uber because I was late for my train. She’d say the time I could’ve had to study for exams instead of working an extra shift trying to make up for that dip in my checking account. And she’d say, since this was the last person whose time I would eventually waste, the taxi driver who could’ve gotten a better customer instead of the $13 I gave him trying to get to my station. My mother never regretted giving me money. ‘If I have it, I’ll give it.’ That was her mantra. It still makes me uncomfortable. I’ve always wanted to believe she would never lie about not having enough. I remember telling her this one day, and she replied, ‘You think of me like this because you are my daughter. It means you haven’t been here too long.’ Her statement struck me as odd. I brushed it off as another comment condemning Americans the way most immigrant parents usually do. Tomorrow would mark my sophomore year at Yale University. The night before, she reminded me to ‘Do everything on time. Don’t waste your time here.’ As much as I understood the love she meant underneath that statement, it left me with a sense of dread. What would wasting my time look like? Who else’s time would I be wasting as well?
I didn’t get his name. He asked, ‘Are you Kadiatou?’ He said it perfectly. I answered yes. ‘You’re African too right? Where are your parents from?’ His nosiness was familiar. I told him my mother was from Guinea and my father from Mali. The questions came swiftly one after another. ‘Where are you headed? School? What year are you?’ I told him I was going to University. I was on my way for my second year. The man whose name I missed lit up upon hearing my words. ‘God Bless you; your parents must be very proud. Their hard work paid off. That’s all we hope for when we come to this country’.
He said he was Igbo from Nigeria. He told me that he drove this taxi for 30 years before begrudgingly joining Uber recently. His wife was from Trinidad, and they dated for 13 years before he ‘knocked her up.’ High school sweethearts. He told me how he married her immediately when they were young because he didn’t like that her father said that he would leave her like all those other ‘niggers.’ Today marked their 29th wedding anniversary. He told me proudly that he had sent both his kids to college and was thinking of retiring. I asked him if he missed his home country. He told me he left for a reason, but he missed the culture. ‘Here in this country everyone eats standing up, back home we have lots of time.’ I was reminded of what my mother said about being here too long. She often told me that when I found a good paying job, I should send her back home. These words were the reason I worked so hard to get into a good University. ‘Here if you waste time you are dead’ The driver said. He ended our 15-minute ride on that note. Those were the words I started my second year of school with. Again, on the train to New Haven I asked myself: Whose time would I be wasting?
Kadiatou Keita ’22
