Life in Malta – it's surreal
I moonlight at the hospital, changing bandages and slopping out bedpans.
Now we have a loan shark who turns out to have been a nursing aide, tending to the sick and dying by day and abusing of the vulnerability of his patients and their relatives to market his loan facilities.
Meanwhile, in his car parked outside the hospital, there were notebooks with details ‘which suggested moneylending’.
And when a woman to whom he lent money couldn’t pay him back, he recommended that she tries prostitution, and began sending men to her door.
Unbelievable.
This is one up from the veg-man, the unpaid bill, the sex-for-cabbages, and the extortion using pictures of the naked vegetable vendor taken by somebody hiding in the bedroom with a mobile phone.
Life in Malta: you can’t beat it. It’s just so….weird: all the sins of the big city and a mentalita tar-rahal, hothouse superstition and big-bucks dreams.
The Times, today
A loan shark was given a two-year jail term suspended for four and fined €5,000 after he was found guilty of extortion and lending money at a high interest rate and without a licence.
Anthony Mercieca, 51, was originally arraigned after Rita Farrugia, who he had lent money to, reported him to the police.
She had told the court she met Mr Mercieca, who was a nursing aid, when her mother, Josephine Saliba, was recovering in hospital. When she was discharged, Ms Farrugia said Mr Mercieca would still visit to treat her mother and it was then that she had told him she needed money. Ms Farrugia said Mr Mercieca offered to lend her the cash, which she accepted.
When he demanded the money back and she could not pay, she continued, he urged her to begin prostituting herself and sent several men to her house. She said she did not accept.
Throughout the court case, Ms Farrugia’s husband, Anthony, said Mr Mercieca had sent him a series of text messages insisting on getting the money he was owed.
When Mr Mercieca was first arrested, the police found notebooks in his home and car, similar to those they received from Ms Farrugia and which suggested money lending. When they questioned him, he admitted he had lent money to the woman and her mother but denied he had done so to others as well.
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We are living in dangerous waters.
these things happen everywhere
Yes, but especially in Catholic Malta, where corruption is rife and “blacks” are looked down upon (and host-gobblers openly stating that they should go back where they came from “because we are Catholic and we don’t want them interfering in our religion”),
Do The Times employ a proof-reader? The “who” in the first paragraph should, of course, be “whom”. As for “nursing aid”, well, I throw my virtual hands up in despair.
Not to mention ‘was recovering in hospital’ (= kienet rikoverata l-isptar), yet another transliteration. It’s no use telling us she was ‘recovering in hospital’ unless we’ve been told what she’s recovering from. The writer meant to say ‘was being treated in hospital’, surely.
But back to the story. Was this turd dismissed? Anyone got any idea?
Do proof-readers exist anymore? It’s pretty obvious that they make use of a spell checker, such as the one on MS Word.
Nurse Jekyll and Mr. Hyde speci ta.
He has the high interest of his patients at heart. Sorry ’bout that.
Meanwhile, a Polish cleaner who stole a car, allegedly to sleep in because he was homeless, is jailed for 13 months.
Why the surprise? Are nursing aides morally superior to the rest of the population? You find the good, the bad and the ugly in all walks of life.
No. But they’re more likely to be in contact with the needy and the vulnerable. That’s what makes this incident so awful.
Stennew ftit guys. Dan in-nursing “aid” kien qed jghin fis-psychological rehab tal-pazjent. Speci: Now you’re healthy enough to market your body.
‘All the sins of the big city and a mentalita tar-rahal’ –
This is one of the more insightful summings-up of Malta that I’ve read or heard in the past few years. Urban-cum-provincial mentality.
Ours must be times of transition. We are leaving the old, rural mentality and entering the new, urban mentality. And like all times of transition, there are elements of both worlds.
‘All the sins of the big city and a mentalita tar-rahal’
Well said, D and Banquo.