Dear President-Elect Trump:
I love visiting with taxi drivers. Some of the world’s most interesting people are taxi drivers. A year or so ago, I was in Ann Arbor, Michigan for a college football game with some friends and two of my children. We parked a ways from the stadium and got a cab to get us the rest of the way to the stadium.
I was in the front seat next to the driver. His accent let me know immediately that he was not originally from the United States.“Where are you from?” I asked.
“Somalia.”
“Somalia! How long have you been here?”
“Ten years.”
“Wow, that’s great. Are you a citizen?”
“Yes.”
“How do you like the United States?”
I did not anticipate his answer. It caught me completely off guard and made quite an impression.
“I like it a lot more than you like it,” was his reply.
“What makes you think you like it more than I do?”
“Because you’ve never lived in a Mogadishu, Somalia. You are accustomed to living in the United States. It is what you know and expect. I am from Mogadishu. Clean streets, safe cities, good schools, civil liberties—If you’re from Mogadishu, you don’t expect any of those there. There’s no question in my mind that I like The United States better than you do.”
I could not argue with him.
We have significant problems in America, to be sure. But, they’re first world problems. I’ll take a first world problem over a third world problem, every day of the week.
Yours truly,
David O. Leavitt
