Amazing people in ordinary places.

One of the amazing things about travel to Africa is the number of amazing people I meet on the way.  I arrived at O'Hare airport's International terminal, and immediately began meeting amazing people.

I approached the nearly empty ticket counter for KLM.  A smartly uniformed young woman motioned for me to come over to the ticketing kiosk by which she stood. "I will help you, sir...may I see your passport?"  Within minutes of that welcome offer to provide assistance, I had, without any request on my part, been re-assigned to an exit aisle seat. "You are amazing!" I told her as I walked away.  This was starting out to be a great trip.


Once through security (where I promptly lost the pudding cups I had forgot about in my carry on bag... "they could be candles," said the TSA scanner operator, but I knew they weren't!), I began the process of finding out just how much a one-day pass to the KLM lounge would cost.  I was planning ahead for the return trip, when I will have a 7 hour layover in Amsterdam.

Airline "lounges" are always subtly marked -- they don't really want the run-of-the-mill passengers to come in the door and hassle them about "what is this place? can I come in?"  So, I walked the entire length of the terminal looking for the KLM lounge.  I even asked for directions -- three times!  The third time, I met an amazing person.  Identified by her maintenance-worker name tag as Rosa, she not only told me where it was, but walked with me most of the way there.  Amazing!

Later in the gate area, preparing to board, I met a man with an interesting look.  His rugged face was outlined by equally rugged hair -- once-sandy-now-gray-and-brown, close cropped thick hair. (Detect the jealousy?)  He had an interesting backpack, laden with a video camera and a tripod.  His equally rugged leather valise (I love that word!) had the image of one of those long-horned deer-like creatures whose name I forget -- oh wait.. Ibex...yes, a logo of an Ibex.

We commented to each other on crowd behavior as the passengers lined up out of their numerical order. "Where are you headed?" I asked.  "I am going to climb Kilimanjaro."  What followed was part one of a two-part conversation (part two took place on the plane as I did my stair-climber exercises on the stairway leading up to elite-land on the two-tier 747.)  After just a few years of climbing experience, mostly near his second home in Mesa, AZ, this 54 year old is spending 9 days climbing one of the coolest places on earth.

What makes all these people amazing? In my mind, it is simply that they are willing to go beyond the ordinary, beyond the required, beyond the expected boundaries of their roles, their jobs, or their age.  That's amazing in this society, in this age, in this economy.

As I got myself settled in my exit aisle seat (which turned out to be not-so-great due to the fact that my feet were wedged between my seat and that big bulky bulge in the 747 exit door) I thought about the other amazing people I'm going to meet: Sudanese men and women who, in spite of their circumstances, in spite of the echo of war in their land, in spite of their lack of resources -- are about to step beyond what is expected of them, and start the journey to self sufficiency by starting micro businesses and become entrepreneurs, business women, community builders, change agents. Amazing, indeed.