Page 16 - ARUBA TODAY

A16 LOCAL
Tuesday 27 december 2016

exchanging three or four Immigration had caught tracted me to serve as their tary Brown and 33 others
Continued from Page 15- letters a year. In 1980 she up with her and she was interpreter.” She must have perished in a plane crash”
obtained a tourist visa to deported back to Zagreb. had difficulty controlling and listed the victims. The
Dragica realized that to the United States and In March 1996, Ron Brown, her emotions thinking that one before the last name
work in the States she had joined some friends in Los the popular Commerce she would be working for a was ‘Dragica Lendić Be-
to be proficient in another Angeles with the intention Secretary in the Bill Clin- member of the cabinet of bek, Interpreter.’
language more widely of working there and later ton’s cabinet, went to Yu- the president of the United Dragica’s son Mario who
spoken than her native Srp- sending for her son who goslavia with a group of States.At lastshe would re- had declined an invitation
sko-Hrvatskiso she decided had stayed behind with her industrialists on a “mission alize her dreams. to go along, received the
to study French. After finish- mother in Zagreb. Dragi- of hope” as Newsweek tragic news from a CNN
ing a few courses with the ca’s marriage meanwhile named the tour. The group But it was not to be. On bulletin.
Alliance Française in Tripoli, had ended in divorce. With needed an interpreter April 4, 1996 the plane car-
Dragica went to Aix-Mar- the help of her friends she and they chose Dragica rying Secretary Brown and Dragica, who had
seille III in Aix-En-Provence, found employment, but as to serve from all the appli- his entourage from Zagreb dreamed of working as an
France. an ilegal alien she could cants. “How ironic,” Drag- to Dubrovnik crashed as it interpreter in the States,
not get much work as an in- ica must have thought “ was trying to land in heavy died working as an inter-
After I left Libya I remained terpreter. She later wrote to the same government that rains. Radio, TV and news- preter for the States,but in
in contact with Dragica, tell me that the American deported me has now con- papers headlined “Secre- her own country.q

This is the 17th of 22 chapters in English of my book originally published in Papiamento. After the last chapter
has been published, they will be compiled into a book to be published and sold for the benefit of the Queen
Wilhelmina Cancer Foundation of Aruba. All profits, 100%, will go to that foundation. If you want to reserve
a copy, you can do so by contacting the author at the email address below. Because of space constraints,
the material that is published weekly (text and pictures) might not be as extensive as what eventually will
appear in the book. Alumni of the Oil Companies School of Tripoli and members of the former Libya expatri-
ate community have expressed an interest in the English version. Convinced that the Aruba Today readers
also would be interested in the stories of an Aruban on the shores of Tripoli and eager to support the Queen
Wilhelmina Cancer Foundation, the editorial management of this newspaper has agreed to make one page
available to have one chapter published every week. If you would like to have future (and past) chapters
sent to you in your electronic mailbox when you are back home, just send me your email address. I’ll be
happy to add you to my subscribers. I would also welcome your comments. clydeharms@yahoo.com