Up Too Late: An Endless Search for Mr.Right & Other Important Things in Life

It was 5:25 pm tonight when I received a call from a local police officer asking if I would be interested in translating for a woman who had been charged with uttering threats after a problem last night at the Waterford Hospital.

This sounded familiar, so I said I could certainly help with this.

Half an hour later, a new-style, Police PT Cruiser was parked in front of my house. This neighbourhood rarely gets police visits, so I could see the neighbours' drapes and curtains shaking as a rather attractive, built-up officer came toward me to get the idea of what had happened the night before, during my interpreting trip...

We headed towards the charged woman's house in the new PT Cruiser [wow, I was in a police car!]

As we approached the woman's house, the officer said that he had been told that the woman's husband is driving around town with no insurance on his car, which I found funny. He said he wouldn't go into that tonight, as that would lenghten the whole night, so he preferred to keep it to last night's incident.

We went to the woman's house and had a nice chat, her asking every five minutes if she was
going to prison. I told he what the charge was. She said it was all a misunderstanding and that she had in fact said "You are killing me by bringing my daughter to the hospital. I will have a heart attack by tomorrow if you don't help me get my daughter out tonight" to the translator.

This was quite a different version of what had been alleged she had said. The officer bought it and so did I. I think it was all a misunderstanding/something said in the heat of the moment. The charges were dropped.

I had a rather interesting chat with the policeman, as I got dropped off at my house, again, in a police car. It was impressive to see someone who was really sensitive to the differences between the two cultures [Albanian and Romani], as, sadly, with reason, I have grown to develop a very stereotypical and prejudicial view of the police force. He had a sociology and history degree and three years of police studies. Though his wife is a police officer, he doesn't "love" his job, saying it's not challenging enough and how local fraudsters and thieves are too easy to get. He is considering going back to school and studying law because he wants to defend people...

We called it a night and he promised he wouldn't charge me if he stopped me on the highway for driving too fast. Well, that's the least he can do. Otherwise, I'll just challenge him...in court. ;)

Labels: funny, law, newcomer, police, St.John's

Monday afternoon would have been a regular 9 to 5 day, except that it had to end at 5:30 pm, since I had to be in a webconference for three hours with a volunteer who is participating in a project I am supervising.

He brought timbits and I brought cake, so while we listened to lame "warm-up" jokes, we had something to "snack" on. We kept rolling our eyes while the presenters discovered the Powerpoint hi-liter. They presented materials on the web using Dialogue Conferencing, so the discovery of the hi-liter and the Post it! arrows was a big hit...while we snacked on our chocolate mocha cake and drank mango juice.

At 5:31 pm, I found myself answering the phone at the office, curious why anyone would call so late. It was a call from the director of the organization, asking that I go to the local mental hospital and translate for someone who tried to commit suicide.

I was at the hospital five minutes later, happy that finally, something more exciting than sitting in front of a computer screen and watching oddly matched Powerpoint backgrounds and fonts had happened.

The clients, a Romani family from Kosovo, were a young girl in her late teens and her parents. Next to them was a family friend, a hijab-wearing woman in her thirties.

Seemingly upset, the three jumped on me, happy that someone had finally come to help them. The matter had started much earlier in the day, when the daughter had called the local settlement agency and told them she was depressed because two of her uncles had died in the last month, due to health reasons. She told the interpreter [from Albania] that if she couldn't bring her uncle to Canada, she would kill herself. She added that she had problems with her family.

The interpreter, obviously shaken by what was said, immediately called the social worker and told her what was just said. The social worker decided that they would go to the girl's house and get her, take her to the local mental hospital, to protect her from harming herself.

This they did, except that they didn't have in mind the events that would follow their decision.

The girl's parents showed up at the hospital and, following the traditional Romani passion they are known for, splurted their anger at the interpreter, threatening that they would kill her the next day she would come to work. They accused her of trying to get their daughter declared crazy. The poor woman called for someone else to come translate while the doctor interviews the young girl.

This is where I got in. The girl begged me to do whatever I could to not leave her in the hospital. The parents kept talking at me at the same time, saying how wrong the interpreter was, how in fact, their daughter had no suicide plans and how she had said that she had problems bringing her uncle to Canada and not problems with her family IN Canada.

The doctor came. He decided nothing was wrong, that it was all a matter of misunderstanding due to the differing dialects of Albanian in Kosova and Albania. I mentioned to the mother that she should not put herself in trouble by threatening others. She said she would continue doing it because if she didn't, this same thing would repeat itself.

The family friend who now decided to get involved, asked the father and mother to be more understanding of their daughter. The mother said, "I gave birth to 11 children. I know better than you how to raise children". The poor single woman didn't have anything to add to that, so she turned to the father, who said, as he laughed: "My daughter's twenty already! she's too old to stay home! In our Romani tradition, I will find her a husband and get money for her wedding from her husband's family!" The woman, suddenly realizing how little she knows about the family, looked around to see if she could find the daughter.

The daughter was outside, speaking with one of the patients of the hospital. The woman she spoke with had had a child with a Bulgarian man. This brought the two together. The pseudo-suicidal girl insisted that the woman's son, who, by the way, was four, had been in the same refugee camp in Bosnia as the girl's family. The mother of the child looked at her and said "Well, you know, I AM crazy, but I do know where my son lived in the last four years...Where's Bosnia?"

Labels: Canada, funny, newcomer, St.John's