This week I’m chatting with my friend Bamba.  He moved his family to the U.S. from Senegal about 11 years ago and now lives in the northeast with his wife and three kids.

It is a great story and I wanted to know all of the details, starting with growing up and living in Senegal and what the Senegalese people are like.  It might be my favorite part of our conversation; it just sounds so warm and accepting and inviting.  And Bamba is like that also, the culture really comes through in him and it was wonderful to learn more about it.

I also wanted to hear more about their decision to move here and how they did it both logistically and psychologically.  I’ve never lived anywhere else, I’ve never stayed outside of the US for more than  a couple of weeks.  I’ve never immersed myself in another culture…or even gained working knowledge of another language.  Jason and I thought about moving to another country  early in our marriage and we researched it fairly extensively, but it seemed incredibly daunting. So, making that leap as a family was something I was curious about.

And I wanted to know if, in the end, it was worth it, if they would make the same choice again.  Before this conversation, I wouldn’t have thought the US would be an easy place for someone to move to, but Bamba had a lot to say that really surprised me.

Listen to the end when Bamba expresses surprise that anyone would be interested in him or his experience.  This is a guy who knows several languages and moved his entire family overseas – away from everything they knew and set up a new life in a new culture…yeah, that is a story I want to know.  It really illustrates how everyone underestimates their own story because they are in the middle of it, doing it, the day to day version of it.  Trust me when I tell you — Everyone has a story.  Do not discount your own.

Enjoy the episode.