It always comes back to trust. Can Brazil trust China not to buy up all its land and turn its inhabitants into neo-colonial serfs ? More importantly, can Brazilians ever learn to trust each other ? How many people said to us after the robbery, "You can never trust a nanny here, even if you got her through an agency. The only way is to get someone from personal recommendation, preferably from a family member or a close friend."
Right now I was supposed to be teaching a new English language student, someone who saw my ad in a local cafe and got in touch. A few emails passed between us and I assumed this would suffice as preamble. But P had other ideas. She had a bad feeling* and phoned the would-be student to ask her for a few more credentials and identity checks, such as her place of work. The replies seemed evasive and overly defensive - the woman said she had her own security concerns about revealing too much to us, including the name of the "Japanese bank" for which she worked. The upshot of this awkward aural encounter was the sound of a phone being abruptly hung up at her end, increasing P's conviction that this person wasn't whom or what she claimed to be.
I'm philosophical about the non-class. Perhaps P has just saved me from another robbery, kidnapping or worse. Or perhaps her fears were overdone. But as the police detective told me, "It's different in Brazil". Trust doesn't come cheap around here.
* For example, banks in Brazil generally don't allow the use of a personal email account during office hours; she said she needed authorisation from a supervisor to email us from her work email account. Yet she was supposedly senior enough to be going on a business trip to New York, for which she needed to improve her English. She also claimed to be "too afraid" to come to our apartment building for the class, even though it is in a posh area and has security staff in the lobby.
I said that she shouldnt be afraid of coming to our address because there was security guard at the reception and also was a well known street near her work, she yet insisted in going to a cafe and refused to come to our place.
ReplyDeleteBut for me she failed to hang up the phone when she felt she couldn't convince, when she mentioned she needed authorisation of a supervisor to send me an email and I said how come a senior staff didn't have working email, she seemed to lose her credibility for me ....
Pri
i think you were right to follow your instinct. She could have offered some references. Not worth taking a chance given the circumstances.
ReplyDeleteLuiz, who is also a language teacher, comments:
ReplyDelete"Most banks and companies don't allow their staff members to send personal e-mails. Element of risk runs on both sides, teacher as well as student. First of all I don't know why all arrangements were made by e-mail only. The telephone once it was used was a commercial, home or Cell phone? If it was a commercial or home telephone I wouldn't go paranoid. Otherwise I would have met her at a café, as she suggested and then conquer her trust. Hard to say whether you escaped another robbery or lost a student."
It was a cellphone.
ReplyDelete