Living in San Francisco’s Richmond District has given me the opportunity to meet people from all over the world, as we live in a multicultural city. I have quite a few friends from different countries, and have known and worked with many of them for a long time. However, I never knew how they happened to come to the United States. I decided to find out.

My Friend Chris from Canada
I first met Chris 12 years ago. We both served on the Board of Directors of our local ski club. He is a retired scientist. I wondered how he happened to come to the Bay Area.

Chris told me he was born in Edinburgh, Scotland to a Scottish father and British mother. They moved to Toronto, Canada when he was five and a half years old. In Toronto he attended the local elementary and high school and then went on to York University. After graduation, he moved to Ottawa, the capital of Canada, to attend the University there and obtained a master’s degree. He became a scientist specializing in batteries. For many years, he worked for the Rayovac Battery Company.
In 1991 – at the age of 41 – he was offered a job as a scientist in Wisconsin. As there was no language barrier, he found the adjustment to the United States easy. The midwestern hospitality was very warm and welcoming, and the price of living was reasonable. Chris told me Canadians also are very friendly and easy to know.

In 1995 at the age of 44, Chris was offered a good job in the San Francisco Bay Area, actually in Silicon Valley. Again he said he found the people welcoming and the weather lovely. No more snow. In California there was a large focus on outdoor activities like hiking, biking and skiing, of which he took part. Chris has been here ever since, but the cost of living is much higher than Canada.

My Friend Josephine from Ireland
I met Josephine at a coffee social at my local church. We started chatting, and she told me she was from Ireland. We have become friends over the past year, sometimes having lunch together or going to church.

She told me she is the youngest of eight children and grew up on a farm in Northern Ireland, although part of the Republic. They had lots of sheep and horses on the farm. She attended the local elementary and high school, and then took her Registered Nursing and Midwife Degree at the Convent of Mercy School of Nursing. When she completed her program, she launched her career as an RN in Belfast, Ireland. She told me she did not encounter any problem with the “troubles” with antagonism between the Catholics and the Protestants.

When she was 20, she and another nurse decided to seek adventure by taking jobs as Registered Nurses in Ontario, Canada. getting visas or jobs, as nurses were in demand. After a few years, she returned to Ireland for a while, but not too long before coming to Boston. She also worked in Chicago as Josephine said she found Americans to be friendly and hospitable both socially and at work. On one of her trips back to Ireland to visit her family, she went to a dance where she met an American man visiting his cousin in Ireland while on vacation. They started dancing and then started dating while he was in Ireland. The man was a native San Franciscan. After a year of writing and visiting each other, they married in a lovely ceremony in Ireland. He brought her back to his hometown of San Francisco to live.

She said she assimilated very well meeting people at church and her husband’s friends. She told me that she liked San Francisco right away. They went on to have three daughters. Once the kids were all in school, she resumed her career as a registered nurse at one of the local medical centers. She has lived happily ever after. She is a resident of the Outer Richmond District of San Francisco.

My Friend Igor from Russia

I met Igor about 20 years ago. He was in my local ski club. I knew he was Russian and was fluent in the language, but didn’t know how or why he came to San Francisco. He told me that after the Russian Revolution his parents fled to Shanghai, China where he was born.

In 1948 his family had to move again when the Communists came to power in China. This time, they moved to Brazil where displaced people were able to gain entry. He went to school and learned to speak Portuguese. So he was bilingual in Portuguese and Russian.

When he was 12 years old the family relocated to San Francisco, as they had some distant relatives here. He entered junior high. It was not smooth sailing, as Igor could not speak a word of English. He said the other kids made fun of his pronunciation of English and his Russian name. One of his friends decided to help, and told the other kids his name was Igor O’Toole. It stuck. He often still uses this name.

His teacher came to his rescue and told him, “Igor, you have to listen. Listen to other people, television and records. Don’t be so concerned with the ‘rules’ of the language.” Soon he was able to speak English quite well.

He then went on to Lowell High School and UC Berkeley, and ultimately graduated with a degree in Engineering from Heald School of Engineering. He worked as an engineer for 10 years. He also spent a year as a Russian translator at the U.S. Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center in Monterey, Calif.

After years of work as an engineer, he took a sabbatical for a year to travel around the world. When he returned to San Francisco, he was offered a position on the Ski Patrol at Alpine Meadows, Lake Tahoe. He was involved in rescue efforts when on March 31, 1982 there was a terrible avalanche at Alpine – the “Wall of White.” He was featured in a movie that was made about it called “Buried.”

Ultimately, Igor was offered a job as a professional ski instructor and worked at many ski resorts on the North Shore of Lake Tahoe. He is retired now, but told me he is proud to be a Russian American. The United States adopted him, and he adopted the U.S. Igor is a resident of the Inner Richmond District.

My Friend Florence from Kenya
Last May, I fell. I was rushed to the emergency room and was diagnosed with a broken hip. The surgeon did a partial hip replacement that night.

When I woke up the next morning in the hospital, I was attended to by a team of wonderful and caring nurses. One of them was especially helpful to me. Her name is Florence.

I learned that she is from Kenya about 30 miles outside of Nairobi, the capital. She told me she grew up on a small coffee farm run by her family outside of Nairobi, a city with a population of eight million people. She helped out on the farm growing up and then started a career in banking after completing school.

About four years ago she decided to come to San Francisco with her 18 year old son. She studied nursing, and was able to obtain a job at a local medical center. She said she has found the nurses, doctors and other employees at the hospital very welcoming and easy to work with. Her job requires good people skills – which I think she has – to work with the patients.
However, she told me navigating business outside the hospital was more of a challenge. Language has not been a barrier, as Kenya is an English- speaking country. It is more the nuance of things rather then the exact words that have to be overcome.

She said that her 18 year old son had a much easier time acclimating to the United States, and was accepted right away by his high school friends. I was interested to learn about the wild animals that are in Kenya. She told me there are the big five: elephants, buffalos, leopards, lions, and rhinoceroses. They have plenty of zebras and giraffes as well. Near the farm were many beautiful wild antelopes. She told me there are many zoos in Nairobi and Kenya as a whole, as well as safari drives where you can see animals.

Florence thinks the prices in the San Francisco Bay Area are very expensive compared to Nairobi, Kenya. Overall, she said she happy here. She is the proud mom of her 22-year-old son who recently graduated from San Francisco State University with a degree in Data Analysis and Statistics.

My Friend Susan from Egypt

I met Susan through the San Francisco Symphony League where we were both volunteers. She is originally from Alexandria, Egypt, a primary seaport on the Mediterranean coast.

She met her husband when he came to Alexandria to study dentistry. They married there, and she accompanied her husband to the United States where he received a scholarship to study dentistry at Northwestern University. She has two children.
After her husband’s retirement, they came to San Francisco. Their son was living here and Susan was hired by the University of California Medical Center as a Medical Technologist. She and her husband both learned English in school in Egypt, but when they came to the U.S. they couldn’t quite get used to the American accent and figures of speech. They were used to the
British accent and the British way of expressing themselves.

She said she found the people in the United States very friendly, welcoming and helpful. Although all the people they were associated with were in academia. She said she found that in the United States everyone uses credit cards and goes to the bank for loans frequently. However, when she was living in Egypt this was not the case. In Egypt they went strictly by a cash basis.Susan said she is very happy living in San Francisco and is a resident of the Marina District.

Catherine Otto is a 38 year resident of the Lake Street/Outer Richmond District of San Francisco.