Throwing Shoes

On Sunday, Samara went to Anchorage for a meeting. She was gone until today, Wednesday, and I missed her. She brought back goodies, though: blackout curtains, various and sundry bath and hygiene supplies, and some new books. Always good.

I don't have a lot of pictures to share with you today, so I'll start off with the ones I do have. The bay is clear of ice now, so the barges have started rolling in. There's a really nice place on the edge of the bluff, behind our apartment, where you can watch the bay.

In the above picture, you can see the edge of the bluff, the retaining wall at the shore below, and a giant barge out in the bay. It's hard to get a sense of the scale of the bay when it's empty, or even when there's ice in it. It takes a large boat like this to realize just how big the bay is.

There's actually two boats out there.

A barge.

And a smaller boat--maybe a fishing tender or some kind of smaller barge? I really don't know. I'm not very familiar with the different kinds of boats they use around here. I know that there are small fishing vessels, larger tender boats that take on fish that are caught by the smaller vessels, and then there are tugs and barges. I know a barge when I see one, because they're covered with shipping containers. Well, except the one above, which is empty, because it already offloaded at Dillingham's dock.

That's it for pictures. How about a story?

This is a work story, but it's one of the more interesting things that has happened since I started working at the courthouse.

It seems there was a fishing tender (a vessel of the sort mentioned above that collates the catch of smaller vessels) that was anchored in Togiak Bay. Many people come from around the world to work on fishing vessels. For instance, the clerk of court related to me that she has fished with many Russians. On this vessel in particular, there was a gentleman from Somalia. He had a bunkmate, of perhaps the same nationality, although I don't know for sure. He and his bunkmate did not get along.

As a result, this Somali gentleman threw his shoe at his bunkmate and threatened to kill him. Allegedly. In many nations, including Somalia apparently, it is a grave insult to throw a shoe at a person. The bunkmate was not pleased, and spoke to the skipper of this vessel. The skipper, no doubt concerned about keeping his crew happy, contacted the Alaska State Troopers and reported the assault. The Alaska State Troopers sent one of our local troopers over there in a chartered helicopter to pluck this gentleman from the boat and bring him to Dillingham to face the music.

He was charged with assault in the fourth degree. (That's the lowest level of assault, reserved for placing someone in fear of imminent physical injury by words or deeds.) Having lodged him in the local pokey, the trooper decided that his conduct was not exactly the crime of the century. He called up the local district attorney to see about having the charges dismissed. He figured that putting this guy on the next plane to Seattle would be sufficient to resolve the issue. The district attorney was out of town, convening a grand jury in Anchorage. He called the back-up DA, who refused to make that call without discussing it with the full-time DA. Left with no choice, the trooper contacted the courthouse, hoping to have this footwear-heaving miscreant arraigned before the magistrate.

Ah, but there's a rub. Have you guessed it yet? Our Somali friend speaks no English. In fact, the folks down at our Dillingham jail didn't know what language he spoke. Never fear, I thought, puffing out my chest. I have a degree in diplomacy! I wikipedia'd Somalia and learned that two languages were predominantly spoken there: Somali and Arabic. Aha! I have a very good friend who is both a public defender in Kentucky and an Arabic speaker. He had taught me some Arabic phrases. (Okay, mostly how to cuss, but I think my pronunciation is fair.) I looked up a few phrases in Arabic on the internet, transcribed them phonetically, and went to the clerk's office.

The clerk got the jail on the phone, where I could hear the jailor asking our Somali pal what language he spoke in louder English, as if that would make him understand any better. The clerk got the jailor to put the defendant on the phone, and put it on speakerphone. I cleared my throat and gave it my best: "Hal tatakallum al-lughah al-arabiyah?"

"No," he said. "Somali." Okay. So he doesn't speak Arabic. Well I don't know a lick of Somali, that's for sure. We hung up, but now at least we knew what kind of translator we needed. We got the AT&T language line paperwork out and called them up. Sure enough they had a Somali translator. Great! We could arraign Mr. Fourth-Caliph Prophet. (I won't actually say his name, to protect the dubiously innocent. But he's named after both the fourth Caliph and the Prophet, in that order.)

The trooper who helicoptered him off the boat brought him up the courthouse. We hooked up the translator on the overhead and the magistrate used every last bit of patience he had to wind his way through an extremely long version of a simple misdemeanor arraignment. When the magistrate first read the charges to Mr. Prophet, he broke down in tears and started sobbing. It was hard to watch. We learned that he had grown up as a nomad in Somalia. Considering that Somalia is a failed state with no government, I can only imagine what it was like to live there. He was likely worried that we were going to take him out back, shoot him with an AK47 and kick his body into a ditch. Once the magistrate explained all the rights he had under our justice system, he calmed down quite a bit. When asked for his position on bail, the trooper recommended that our Somali friend be released on his own recognizance and be allowed to travel to Seattle. If that happened, we'd probably never see him again, and I'm pretty sure the trooper knew that. I really don't think he wanted to pursue the charges, but the district attorney just wasn't around to sign off on dismissing the case. After the arraignment, we kept the translator on the line and the trooper used her services to try to discuss with the defendant how he might be able to travel to Seattle once he was released. This officer really went above and beyond to help out this guy.

The magistrate didn't actually just let the guy out of jail completely--he appointed the public defender agency to represent him, and required that they get an address in Seattle from him before he could be released. Unfortunately, the person that he thought he could stay with in Seattle told the attorney that they had never heard of the guy. So she couldn't get him released from jail. And by the end of the day, we still hadn't heard from the district attorney about whether the charges should be dismissed. Our Somali friend, therefore, is still in jail here, but I hope that he'll be released by tomorrow.

It was an interesting day, and I recommend taking this lesson away from this story: don't throw shoes at people when you're in a country where you don't speak the language.

The final bit of news from this blog post is that I'm finally going to get to do a little traveling. Samara just returned from Anchorage, but next week she has a training in Fairbanks. I'm buying a ticket to go with her. Her flight, hotel, rental car and per diem are paid for. I just had to buy my ticket, essentially. It's going to be nice to get out of Dillingham. Her training is Wednesday and Thursday, so she was originally going to be gone from Tuesday through Friday. We're leaving on Sunday instead, and staying until Friday. We'll get a hotel room or camp for the first two days, do some sightseeing and shopping, and just generally enjoy a little vacation. I'm personally really looking forward to seeing some of Alaska outside of Dillingham.

And I figure we'll get some more good pictures for the blog out of that trip.