The world in my hood

Russian or Afro-Caribbean today?

I can’t get over how multicultural my new neighborhood is. It may be the most diverse place I’ve ever lived. And I have lived a lot of places, including big cosmopolitan cities like London and New York City.

In the month that I’ve been here, I have met people from so many different countries and backgrounds that I can’t even remember them all. It almost seems the exception to meet a “basic” Québécois or Canadian person who is simply “from here” and doesn’t have a story or connection to some other place.

Here is a sampling of the nationalities I have met…

I called an Uber and the driver was from Uganda.

I went to the school district headquarters to enroll my daughter in public school and the intake counselor was from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The concierge in our apartment building is from Bulgaria.

Our neighbors are from China and India.  

Senegalese cutting meat upstairs, Arabs cutting hair downstairs.

I went to the metro station to buy a transit card and the agent who helped me from was from Haiti.

I rented a car through a car share service and the owner was from Brazil.

My daughter made a friend at camp and her parents are from Azores (those islands in the middle of the Atlantic that are part of Portugal).

I got help from a cleaner to deep clean my apartment before I moved in and she was from Russia.

A friend of a friend gave me some mattresses, and we needed to move them to my apartment – we hired a man with a van and he was from Libya.

I spent countless hours assembling IKEA furniture, but a friend arranged help through Task Rabbit – the tasker was from Iran.

My daughter’s French tutor is Québécoise-Bermudian.

I got my haircut and the hairdressers were from Peru and Mexico.

I found someone on Facebook to braid my daughter’s hair – she is French.

I went to a festival with a friend and we ate food prepared by vendors from Congo and Morocco. I bought a basket from a Senegalese vendor.

So far I haven’t met any Americans.