Canadian, Ghanian-Canadian and South African

We were walking down the street one day and there in front of me was this big black African entering a shop. Suddenly it felt like I was back in Africa. For a couple of seconds I felt a bit confused. I felt the same way a Chinese person must feel seeing a white person on the street. It is as if this person does not belong there. Then again, who said I belong here? Well, I feel like a local now. It turned out that Jess and Joel knew him, and it was only me that haven’t met him yet. He went out shopping for shoes assisted by a very short Chinese girl. I think compared to him anything in China looks short. Jess is around 1,90m and Chris (the black man) is even taller than him. You can imagine the people staring at him on the street. I think you can understand the difficulty finding shoes that will fit him in China. You are more likely to be eating dog in a shop than find a number 13 shoe!! Well, he found his shoes… pretty scary judging from the analogy!!

Chris claims that he is from Canada. I am sure he has a Canadian passport, but he has the accent of a Ghanian. He must have moved to Canada later in his life as his accent labels him as a Ghanian. Chris is also an English teacher in China. He has been in China for about 14 months and he can speak more Chinese than all us whities together. Yes, his Chinese is very good and it is quite an adventure to walk around with him and hear him speak this language, you find Chinese people at a loss for words. Imagine a 2meter tall Chinese man… this is more or less how strange I find this black man speaking Chinese. Chris is a great guy and very kind and I think he is probably in his early 30's. He has some strong African mannerisms and this is why I also think he might have lived in Ghana till his childhood. I could also be very wrong assuming this. But I want you to get a picture of what Chris looks like.

So, i got a picture. Canadian Chris from Ghana.

A Couple of days later Chris invited us to join him and some of his friends for a meal. He is the only foreign teacher at his school, so his school was happy to pay for our meals as well, just for some different company for him i suppose. I think he might get very lonely sometime being the only foreigner. This explains the reason for his good Chinese… there is no other option for him.

After going for a meal at “Big Pizza”, one of our locals that serve western style buffet, Chris asked if we would like to join him to his school where the classes do some end of year performances. We gladly joined him to see some of these performances. Joel was not feeling well this day so it was only me and Jess attending these festivities. Got to the school, we realized things weren’t as they seemed. Let me put it like this. We weren’t going to see performances, we were the performances!!! Yip. Ok here we were, one black African Canadian, a Canadian and a South African. Jess 1,90m, Chris even taller and me in-between them. I am like 1,8m. I have never seen three young men that could dance and pull the moves we did that night!! I think we surprised ourselves!! We did feel the strain on our bodies the next day though. I also have new respect for the 27year old Jess and his singing abilities and knowledge of music!! He managed to know all the words of some Avril Lavigne and Spice Girls songs! He is such a nerd, but the coolest nerd that i know!!

Little did we know that his singing abilities will lead us all the way to a karaoke club for New Years festivals!!

(Linfen, Shanxi Province, China)