“Ma’am, we can’t communicate with her, can you translate for us?” the nurse asked me. From her bed, my grandmother looked at me like a sick bird. She was nauseous, she told me. And her stomach hurt. The nurse promised to come up with a medicine. I also had to tell her not to go to the bathroom by herself. For her, stubborn as she is, no superfluous information.
I was about to go to Turkey when I heard that my grandmother was in hospital. I came to say goodbye to her, because she is very bad. My grandmother belongs to the first generation of Turkish immigrants who came to the Netherlands through family reunification. My grandfather, who preceded her to come and work here, passed away some time ago.
The visit to my grandmother reminded me of the training I gave years ago with a psychologist to the staff of care center WZH Transvaal in The Hague. First-generation immigrants are cared for here, a vulnerable group. Compared to native Dutch elderly, immigrant elderly often have poor health and their well-being is lower.
The subject of ‘nursing home’ is a very sensitive one for bicultural families. The training meant that the healthcare workers had to become more resilient to the anger they received. It arose from the shame of family members because they had ‘hidden away’ their mother or father in a nursing home: in other cultures that is not done.
Like my grandmother, many people with a foreign background in care homes do not speak Dutch. In this phase of their lives – and their illness – elderly people with dementia often fall back on their mother tongue, even if they speak Dutch. Shouldn’t healthcare institutions ensure that they also have Turkish, Arabic and Berber-speaking staff?
When I recently reported on social media that my grandmother is in the hospital and doesn’t speak Dutch (and how difficult that is), I noticed how quickly people make their judgment about this. Yes, these first-generation guest worker women do indeed speak no Dutch. They came straight from the Turkish countryside, where illiteracy was a given. The wives of the Dutch who moved to Australia and New Zealand in the 1950s also hardly spoke English.
My grandfather has always worked very hard as a guest worker in the Netherlands. He never held up his hand. My grandmother, like many other guest worker women, has always taken care of the children at home. If you don’t work in another country, you don’t learn the language either. Only now do I realize how lonely it is when you don’t speak the language in the country where you live. The total dependence on others when you have to go to the doctor or need something in the store.
The members of this first generation are now slowly approaching their end. Judging them is easy. But a little respect is in order.
2023-07-28 04:22:37
#Grandma #hospital #speak #Dutch #column
