Last Week in Chicago

Last week I was in Chicago to train a client. It was COLD. I wrote some things down in my journal to Blog about - I am just now getting around to it.

I got there Monday night and battled with the incompetent man in the "business center" over printing issues - it's too long of a story to go into, but needless to say I was really frustrated.

Tuesday morning I caught a cab from my hotel to the client site. Chicago is a BIG place. I was staying on Michigan Avenue where all of the shops are - "magnificent mile". My cab driver was Nigerian - in fact, all of the cabs I took in Chicago had Nigerian drivers. This particular one was my favorite though. I told him it was my first time in Chicago and he asked where I was from. When he heard I was from Seattle he said that he didn't like Seattle because it was, "full of liberals and way too close to Canada." He went on to tell me that the last time he came home from Lagos he had to sit next to a person who was French-Canadian, "Can you ever imagine a worse combination?", he said, "French AND Canadian!" He shook his head and laughed as if this were the most obnoxious and silly thing a person could ever be.

He then went on to tell me more about liberal Seattle. "Oh - Seattle - they voted for Kerry in the election, but it was very close in the state because of the Eastern contingency that is right-minded!" Yes, the pun was intended. It turns out that my Nigerian cab driver was a conservative Christian from Lagos who was obsessed with American politics. He proceeded to tell me about the voting record in the the last Presidential election for any state I named. I admit - I was impressed.

Mr. Cab Driver was, in his own words, "one of the big reasons why Bush won Ohio." Apparently he took his cab to Ohio and volunteered for the Republican campaign as a driver to the polls and as a leaflet distributor. What was the most important thing he learned while doing this? "Fear is the way to get people to vote. Fear is what makes people go and get involved, not anything else." Hmmmm...something he learned from Mr. Bush himself perhaps. What in the world did they use to make the voters fearful? Saddam? Iran? North Korea? Social Security? Nope - Mr. Cab Driver said he and others put out flyers in Ohio about how the Democrats planned to legalize gay marriage and end marriage as we know it. Some of the flyers suggested that, "soon you will only be able to marry someone of the same sex and all traditional marriages will be banned." He also said they used many biblical quotations to enforce the idea that the Democratic party was not on the RIGHT path.

I had been watching the local news the night before and seen many commercials and an expose about the election they were having - yes it was actually election day in Chicago. I asked Mr. Cab Driver how he had decided who to vote for. I figured I shouldn't really ask someone I didn't know WHO they would vote for, it might be considered rude. He replied that he couldn't vote for the conservative guy because he is, "just not a person you can trust." He also said of the conservative candidate that he,"just runs for everything." Therefore, my politically obsessed, conservative right-wing Christian, Nigerian cab driver was NOT going to vote. This stunned me. If ever there was a person who would vote - it would be him - right? I told him of my surprise and he said, "Well, sometimes it is just best to go home, eat popcorn, and watch TV if there is no one worth voting for."