10:35 p.m. - 2003-11-05
Conversations with my community
My supervisor at the data management firm and I finally managed to connect mid-afternoon today. He said there was an assignment that would be just a few weeks in length. It would require me to be on my feet a lot just doing basic tasks - would I mind taking on something like that? Of course it's fine. If it's legal and ethical, and has a pay cheque attached, I'm happy with whatever comes along. Being on my feet means I'll also get some extra exercise. Bonus. It isn't something I would commit to long term, because I tend to get bored, and when I'm bored well... you know. I don't get bad - just creative, which tends to drive everyone else crazy. He said he'd confirm with me when he had discussed it with the liaison to the company. I hope everything works out, as it sounds as if there might be other work for the company if I please them with this task. Never know.
I popped into the post office earlier in the day and watched an interesting exchange. A grandfather from one of the new Canadian communities was sending a parcel. The young woman waiting on him was from the same background. She would not use the language she shared in common with him - she forced him to use English. Now this is a culture where the aged are held in great respect and it is a very patriarchal society. It was unusual for a female to take the approach she did - firm but very respectful. I think though, that she was trying to help him function better in the broader community. In our square mile or so there is almost always someone who could translate for him, but outside of here he would have to cope without that support. The young woman obviously felt she would be handicapping him, if she let him off the hook and babied him along. There was a man in his early thirties present who was also from their culture. He didn't intervene directly, but did make certain that the older gentleman was prompted, in their mutual language, to ask the young woman all thee necessary questions to complete his business. Just really interesting.
I was walking from the post office toward the grocery store, when I came across another new Canadian female. She was standing outside an office that had a sign in the window saying that the service had moved a couple of blocks away. She had a child of about four with her, but it was apparent that he wasn't able to read yet. Quite often with new Canadians, even if they can speak conversational English they can't read it. I watched for a couple of minutes as she tried to work it out herself and realized she was having trouble. I explained how to drive to the new location by car and hoped that it would be good enough to get her where she needed to be. The problem was, I knew she understood what I told her about the location being moved, but I'm not certain if she understood the directions for the new place. Often one of the biggest challenges for new Canadian parents is that they rely on their young children to read and translate for them. That compromises the parent-child roles, in that the child gains quite a bit of "power" in the relationship, because of the parent's dependence on their accuracy in conveying critical information. That works well when a child is small and the reward of their parent's approval and praise is enough. But often by the time the child is - oh say eight - they realize that the parent will accept just about anything they tell them. Think of report cards/parent teacher interviews now. Uh huh.
Even Canadian parents can have problems when it comes to children bringing information home from school. Our parent council ran a program called "Phone In for Safety". We set it up after one of our teacher's daughter and her mother were stabbed to death by an intruder,just after she left for work. We had the impression that the child might have lived if someone had found her earlier, rather than when the mom arrived home after a full day of teaching. We decided we wouldn't risk another tragedy like that, even though such things are not common here. We thought instead of a child falling and being unconscious or of similar instances where the service might be useful. We had a slate of volunteer parents agree that they would come in, in shifts, in the morning and afternoon to call all the families where children did not arrive at school without an explanation from their parents. Sometimes it meant we caught some of the children out, misrepresenting what was really going on at school. One of the most humourous that I witnessed involved three children who were being cared for by their grandparents - born and raised in Canada, but not in this province - while the parents were out of the country. The three children, the oldest being 8, connived to convince the grandparents that the school was closed for the week because of Spring/Easter break. Because they didn't know the practices in the province and because the young ones were so convincing and consistent with the telling of their tale, the grandparents were completely taken in - apparently the five year old should have been up for an Oscar. At least until we called them the first morning of the "break". We all got a chuckle out of it (privately of course), but if born and raised English speaking caregivers can be so easily led by a determined miscreant, think of the vulnerablility of a parent who knows neither our systems nor our language. It's a good thing their children are brought up so well that they don't take advantage more often. All in all, it was a thought provoking trip and I think I gained a surprising amount of insight into issues I'll have to deal with shortly during the election. Forwarned is forearmed, - right?
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