Don't Know What You've Got

When I first arrived in Kisoro, I had a translator named Bob.

Let’s all take a moment to giggle at his name.

Ready?

Bob is a skinny kid, probably about 20. He has a lopsided smile.

It always irked me that Bob seemed kind of bored doing translation. He would look off into the distance, play with the blood pressure cuff, always with a Why-am-I-here expression on his face.

Then two days ago Bob had to go home for a family emergency. Moses replaced him. Moses never acts bored. He never stares off into the distance, he’s always focused.

But Moses’s translations are nowhere near as good. Moses talks much slower, he often struggles to find the English words. The reason he's always focused and engaged because this is a difficult job for him. Bob was always bored because he was too smart for the job.

I would take Bob back in a second.

There's something else I only appreciated about Bob after I lost him. (no comments from the peanut gallery about that last sentence.) Bob quickly picked up on my insecurity: I wanted absolutely everything translated so I didn't feel like I was missing anything. Even when there were little insignificant exchanges (like “hold on, I’m going to translate that for the doctor”), Bob would then turn to me and say, “I just told her I’m going to translate for you.”

Why did he need to do that? Because I have some weird fear that in those little exchanges, Bob is saying “take six doses of lamivudine and then stop.” If I really trusted him, I wouldn’t need to know every last word.

But Bob didn’t try to challenge the irrationality of my obsession. He just accepted it and adapted to it.

Bob, I hardly knew ye.