Grande Prairie: International Crossroads

Sunday, July 20, 2008 at 5:17pm
Still up here in the land of the Midnight Sun, or on the edge of it anyway. And the labor crisis affecting the West is in full swing here.

The restaurant company that I work for has resorted to sponsoring workers from foreign countries in order to staff their kitchens. At least half of the kitchen staff at this job are Moroccan immigrants.

My boss was telling me what great workers they are, and I told him about a guy from somewhere in Africa that I had worked with when I was 16. It was a pizza delivery place, and this African man spoke very little English and was hard to understand, much like the Moroccans I'm working with now. People didn't treat this guy with very much respect, and in talking to him one day, I discovered that he spoke several languages, and was a Medical Doctor by trade, getting the necessary loose ends tied up to practice in Canada. In the meantime he was supporting his family off of the minimum wage pizza job.

My boss was smiling the whole time I was telling him this, and then he told me that Mohammed, one of the guys I'd worked with all day was a mathematician.
In talking with Mohammed later I discovered that this was only part of it. He holds numerous degrees, in mathematics and in theoretical physics. But he'd studied them in French. Throughout the day Mohammed was doing translating for some of the other staff, from English to Arabic, and from Arabic to French.

I told Mohammed about the opencourseware offered online by MIT, and that he could find all of their full curriculum for free, including their complete nuclear physics program and math courses. He was ecstatic.

Later in the day Mohammed introduced me to Amin. I'd already worked with Amin a little, and because I had assumed a language barrier we hadn't spoken much.
"This is my best friend Amin" Mohammed smiled, "he has a degree in law, but it is from a French University also."
I discovered that Amin speaks fluent English, as well as French and Arabic. We spoke about Camus, Malraux and Sartre.

I also met Hassan. Hassan's English is the worst of the bunch. Unlike his friends, Hassan doesn't have any high academics to boast of. He asked a bit about me and where I was from, and I told him, originally I'm from Scotland, but I grew up here.

His face lit up. "Scotland?! So you like Celtics?" and of course I was born into liking the Glasgow Celtics and I said 'yeah' and he jumped up and gave me a high 5. He went on to tell me about the Moroccans playing for Celtics, and the Moroccans that played for Scotland in the 98 World Cup. He currently has some broken ribs from playing soccer here, and he asked if I play. I told him no, not at a European level anyway and he grilled me on sports I do like and I told him that really I just like to run and bike and go to the gym. I told him that at one point I'd run a half marathon.
"I run 2 marathons." he told me.
I asked him what his time was and I thought he said 2 hours 14 minutes but because of the accent it could have been 2 hours 40 minutes. Either way it's amazing. 2 hours and 14 minutes is damn close to the world record of 2 hours and 5 minutes.

He went on to tell me that the current world record holder in the marathon is a Moroccan born American. He also told me that his brother was once the world champion in the 10k. Throughout the day Hassan kept referring back to the same point, that success in anything doesn't depend on strength or speed or skill, it's all in the mind.

And all day long, most of the cooks and waitresses walk on by, smile politely and do their best not to engage in conversation with these guys because these guys don't understand anything