Small thoughts on words, buckets and handcuffs

'Who has taken the handcuffs from the staffroom?'

After posting an update to my blog about working in Kazakhstan, I was contacted by a travel agency that was running trips to Expo 2017 in Astana. They wanted to reproduce my musings and were seeking permission, which was nice.

Perhaps I should explain. An Expo is an international event, of which few Brits have heard, but almost everyone in else in the world has (a bit like the EU being a good idea). Expos are essentially six month long cultural events that feature exhibits by up to 150 countries and often attract six million visitors. The main attractions are the national pavilions that provide a flavour (sometimes literally) of different countries. So, you can eat breakfast in the USA, lunch in Italy, dine in China, watch some strange 4m tall puppets parading through the streets in the late evening and finish with a major fireworks display. Countries can spend as much as $40 million dollars on their national pavilions although most spend a lot less.

I was fortunate enough to take part in two Expos. One in Lisbon, Portugal and the other in Hannover, Germany. With a huge range of possible languages to cater for, pavilions often recruit staff from around the world to hedge their bets. In Hannover for example the team spoke seven languages but even that small number caused problems. Although all spoke English, occasional lapses of memory and misunderstandings were inevitable. One young woman could not recall the name of an item and described it as:

‘The thing that we collect rubbish in, but usually holds water.'

On another occasion, I heard the following request over the radio.

‘Roberto and Juan have arrived and I must have a new rubber immediately.’

Just to clarify, we were running a crèche and Christina could not find a pencil eraser.

However, it wasn’t just the staff who presented me with linguistic problems. Every day we had around a couple of dozen people visiting the pavilion who were classed as VIPs. Generally, this much abused term means that people have classed themselves as important but there were a handful who actually were. One morning I received the following email.

‘Princess are arrive at 2. Needs eating and to let but not by others. Please confirm who will grit her.’

In fact, the bulk of this email made sense but the use of the word ‘are’ caused some headaches. Were we to expect more than one and if so, how many? Despite the fact that I had several phone numbers, none were contactable, probably due to long flight times. I therefore had to make a guess and ordered food for half a dozen to be on the safe side and closed one of the toilets and ensured there were fresh flowers.

2pm came and went, as did 3 and 4. Then, around 6pm the manager came in, face white with alarm. Apparently, there was a large coach waiting outside containing 24 little VIPs.

…and finally

On another occasion I heard the following over the radio.

‘Who has taken the handcuffs from the staffroom?’

Needless to say, I did not ask for clarification.