28 degrees, 7' North
15 degrees, 25' West
on the GPS
While Heidi and Stefan were with us on the island of Gran Canaria, we rented a car to see a bit of the island, including driving up to the highest point, Roque Nublo, which is a volcanic cone.
During this drive we were six people in one of the smaller, least expensive rental cars. In order to accommodate everyone in an easy style while driving, Anneleize volunteered to sit in the back of the car, seated sideways. Philip and Stefan were in the front, Heidi, Jabez myself in the middle, and Anneleize, perpendicular to the rest of us, bringing up the rear. Off we go.
We arrived during market day at one of the hill towns and the village was over stuffed with cars, We saw cars lining the road before we entered the small town, cars parked on sidewalks, in every place imaginable, so we dropped Stefan, Heidi and Jabez off and went to look for a place to leave the car.
Because the roads were winding and curvy to get up to this hill town, Anneleize had a bit of motion sickness, exacerbated by her reading in the back. Yes, we did tell her not to.
As we were looking for parking, and she was feeling sick, and starting to cry, she said she wanted to get out of the back. Philip abruptly stopped the car, I was sitting behind him and jumped out to open the back of the car, pulling a crumpled Anneleize out, pushing her into the back seat while teary eyed.
A woman in a car behind us honked her horn, stuck her head out the window and shouted in Spanish, 'What are you doing with that child?'
I yelled back, 'She is my daughter and she's sick!'
I knew immediately what it looked like to her : child abduction.
There were 3 reported missing children last year in Gran Canary, none recovered to date.
We met up with Heidi, Stefan and Jabez and spent a good two hours walking through the market, tasting some locally made cheeses and sausages, stopping for a coffee, and meandering our way back to the car.
Just as we arrived to the car a policeman on a motorcycle pulled up in front of the car and stopped. Within a minute another policeman in a car pulled up next to the car behind us and stopped.
Clearly that woman had taken our license plates down and phoned the police.
Now it was our job to convince the police that yes, the children were ours, and no, the police were not about to break open a case of child kidnapping. It took some doing.
Philip and I did have our passports as we used them to get the rental car that morning, so they were with us. Anneleize and Jabez's passports were on the boat.
We had no identification to prove that the children were ours. No identification that they would consider appropriate, officially appropriate, that they could tick off in the correct box. So we gave them all that we could think of.
Philip pulled out his wallet and showed a picture of Anneleize and Jabez together, arms around each others shoulders, taken 4 or 5 years ago.
I explained that we lived on a sailboat, the boat's name is 'Abracadabra'. I told them the boat was in the marina in Las Palmas, the gate number and slip number and asked them to phone the marina to verify this information. I didn't have the marina phone number with me but I figured they could find the number easier than I could.
I then told them that Anneleize and Jabez's passports were on the boat and we would be happy to show them the passports if they wanted to escort us to the marina. (An hour or more drive)
If you read the last post, you would remember that we were on the local Canaries television, an interview about how we were spending our New Year's eve in Arrecife, another of the Canarian islands.
I now used that as further proof that we do exist, that we are a family, maybe an unusual one, but we do have these two children and they are our own. I wrote the information down on a paper and asked the policeman to verify this television transmission, and that he would see all of us documented, with our boat, in the Canaries, on one of his very own TV channels. .
All of this explaining took the better part of an hour, and in the end, after conferring with his superior officer, the policeman told us we could go. He seemed not sure if he could believe all the information I gave him, and so readily, and was a bit stumped about the TV part.
The good news is I am not writing this to you from some jail on a tiny island in the north Atlantic!
