The Neighbour Next Door

By now, I'm fully convinced that I'm the only one in my family who finds it extremely difficult to comfortably talk to someone new for the first time. It's a process for me, and unless that process takes its course, I will always struggle to say a word other than the usual good morning greetings.

About two years ago, I traveled home to go spend a little time with my family, who had just recently moved from our previous home to a new one. When I got there, it took me about three days to see my new neighbors for the first time. That was the first time in a long time that I was finding myself in that position where I wasn't familiar with the person living next door.

_{photo by Gleren Meneghin}

I stayed there for about two weeks before returning to school, and during my time there, I never said a word to them, and although I like to think that it's because I like to mind my business, the truth is that that is only half of it. I like to mind my business, yes, but I also haven't exactly lived long in a place where we had next-door neighbors in the same compound because after we left the trenches, I didn't spend much time with my family before moving away for school.

But talking about school, unlike back home, I'm very friendly with my neighbors, and this is probably because we live in a building where we almost have each door facing each other, so you just can't escape bumping into one another now and then.

Personally, I know every one of my neighbors here, and I'm almost friendly with every one of them (I said almost because there are some people I like to keep my distance from for personal reasons)—so friendly that when it gets to morning and you're not outside, and no one saw you leave earlier, you will have people jokingly banging on your door, asking if you're still alive.

Also, some of us do this thing where we hand over our spare keys to one another in case of emergency and we need them to help us access our rooms. There was a time I had the keys to three different rooms that belonged to three different people at the hostel; that is how close we are.

When it comes to emergencies, we've had a couple of those where some of us have to rush someone to the hospital for medical assistance. Luckily for us, we have all sorts of people with all sorts of jobs at our hostel, and some of those jobs include a commercial bus driver who has his vehicle parked right in front of the hostel.

So depending on the emergency, he could always drive us to wherever we need to be, no matter the time; it all just depends on how serious the situation is.

So yeah, I guess you can see why I like it a lot better here than back home.

Lol.