Destiny

I stopped this morning at a telecommunications store, looking for a local SIM card to use with my phone from "back home". I am not at home, you see. Despite being unemployed, rather deep in a confidence crisis, and crippled with indecision, I managed to pull the trigger on what is perhaps a long-overdue getaway. Unfortunately, I am alone, almost painfully so at times. But I was lonely at home as well. And, this being a pattern I recognise, I am getting better at dealing with it. But I have a long way to go.

The woman at the store told me that she did not sell SIM cards, and instructed me to go to the main office of the actual telecom company in town. I had to buy something else so I was lingering for a bit and then I overheard another woman who was in the store mention that she was "going there". She said it more to the first woman than to me, as if she was not quite so bold as to ask me directly, but wanted the woman with whom I had already spoken to ask me the favour. Fortunately for her, and for me, I was listening, and I turned around on my way out the door and directly offered her a ride.

Her name was Destiny. She was friendly and from a (not-so) neighbouring island and mentioned that she had plans to emigrate to my country someday. She rather proudly assured me that she was "a security officer", presumably as I should therefore have nothing to worry about admitting a stranger to my car. In fact she not only directed me to a place I would probably otherwise have had trouble finding, but she used her connections to wrangle me a prime and gratis parking spot behind a closed gate at a bank in the centre of town. Following that, she escorted me to the door of the telecom office and bid me enter with a smile. There we traded thank yous, and argued briefly over whose greater pleasure it was to have met the other. It does not get any better than that folks. That is the zenith.