Ailyn’s Boyfriend And Other Tales Of The Island

"Sen, remember when I went up to the boy and said Kalispera (good afternoon/evening in Greek) and he gave back my sand toys?!" Ailyn bragged of her success at intercultural relations.

Increasingly the kids have been connecting with other children we encounter – some English speaking, others not. They have little by little begun reaching out to local kids. There's one little boy the same age as Ailyn whose parents own a gyro and grill restaurant in the town square where we sometimes get gyros. The boy rides his bike around the tables and the square. Whenever he passes us, he and Ailyn make funny faces at each other. 

"Oh, look it's my boyfriend!" Ailyn said as we passed through the square the other day. Despite having said never exchanged a word – she has developed a Greek summer fling! We're going to be in a lot of trouble when she gets older. When I mentioned to the kids that Ailyn doesn't speak any English, Sennen corrected me.

"He said to me, 'What is your name? What is your name? What is your name? What is your name? What is your name? What is your name?' over and over!"

Clearly, the boy pulled out all the stops and used his best English to impress his girlfriend's brother.

Saturday night after getting gyros, Ailyn followed her boyfriend, his seven-year-old sister and their friends around the corner to play in another part of the square. Emily of course followed because we're not used to letting the kids out of our sight. Eventually, Sennen was curious enough to want to go too and we followed. Emily and I were the only parents there. The children of Patmos by-and-large run free – especially in the town square area where most of their parents have shops and restaurants. Kids of the town seem to roam freely from the playground at the back end of town to the square at the front, riding bikes, chasing one another,  stopping on stoops areas off to the side to play games. 

The group of girls and the boyfriend allowed Ailyn into their group and formed a circle in front of the barber shop (an ironic place since Kris the barber does not have kids and doesn't seem to particularly care for them). The handshake moment was when on the older girls – perhaps 8 or 9 years-old asked Ailyn in English, "Do you know Cinderella?" When Ailyn answered affirmatively, she was "in". When Sennen came to see what was going on, Ailyn helped her brother join the group. He was did not fit into the circle of five or six girls so well, and ended up interacting more with Ailyn's boyfriend who was happy to growl and be dinosaurs or monsters with him.

The older girls seemed to know some English and made efforts to explain their games to Ailyn and include her. It was the kids' – and mostly Ailyn's – first success at bridging the gap with the local children.

That doesn't change the fact that they still prefer to find an English speaking child as they have today at Kampos Beach. But they are bridging gaps and learning that language is not the only way people can relate.

Emily and I have had some of our own experiences navigating the local dynamic. Most significantly, we have come to realize that in a place like Patmos, who you know can make all the difference. For example, Emily desperately needed a restroom the other day when we were at the public playground with the kids. But where to go? We have a friendly relationship with the Italian Gelateria man whose shop is right near there. He was absolutely fine with Emily using his restroom despite not patronizing his establishment at that time. We see him everyday, converse, learned his story and he ours – and we sometimes buy his gelato. It's about relationships, not transactions.

This morning, we had a confusing task in front of us. We realized that there is no documentation that shows Matheus has our permission to care for our children. What if someone stopped him or was concerned? What if God forbid, there was emergency either with the kids or something happened to Emily and me and Matheus needed to take action? We felt he should be armed with something conferring some legitimacy. So I wrote up a letter and thought we should have it notarized.

Problem one – we have no printer. We thought of a list of people we could comfortably ask to print from theirs if the notary was unwilling. But we went to an office with a Notary sign toward the back of town. We can't tell you exactly what that office actually does because the woman at the front desk spoke Greek and Italian well and only a little English. I THINK it was a law office. With the help of a translation app, we explained our goal and she kindly explained that they don't do the kind of notarization we need (I didn't know there was another kind). She managed to direct us to another notary office at the front of town, near the police station and post office. 

We couldn't find the office, but we ran into Yiannis, Nichola's older son who has a shop around the corner from there. Yiannis' English is great and he understood exactly what we needed. He sent us to an office almost directly behind us with no signs. There a nice man send us to the next unmarked office 30 meters down. In that room, we found a man at a desk working away at his computer, helping someone with a stack of documents and numerous other people waiting around with their legal documents. 

The man behind the desk couldn't be kinder, though his English was limited. But he understood what we wanted. Whatever he was doing, notarization was only one small part – he seemed to be recording documents and transactions more than anything – the County Clerk, in effect. His system was a little chaotic – he worked on one person's stuff, then sent that person off to retrieve something and worked on someone else's documents in the meantime. He worked on our case in several bursts between other people's. By the end, the man had printed our document, had us sign, recorded our passports and placed two notary stamps on our document with notations of our names, passport numbers and the date within his stamps. He wanted no fee and sent us back to the other office Yiannis sent us to 30 feet away. I expected that was where we would pay for the service, but instead a man there took the document, stamped it and sent us on our way – assuring us no payment was required. All I can assume is that it's a public service.

The main thing is that we accomplished what we set out to do, but only thanks to the kindness of locals who were very happy to help us. Not one person – especially not the notary looked perturbed, annoyed or had a bureaucratic air. We were clearly an aberration in their day and system – but that made no difference. I think most of them would have been just as kind no matter what, but it helped that Yiannis pointed us to the right place and that our faces have become part off the landscape of town.

Unlike Ailyn's situation, adults don't solve all their intercultural problems with "Kalispera" and "Cinderella", but when people are open and willing, it doesn't have to take that much to begin to bridge the gaps.