‘Christian!’, I screamed through the big white hall. He looked over his shoulder, ‘Adinda! Another alarm?’ I nodded and I told him the address of an old woman. He nodded and screamed to his staff. Six other men in blue suits came over and ran through the hall. I saw them going and sighed: everyday the same story. Everyday this department ‘Foreign Control Commission’ must save old people from refugees from all over the world.

I ran back to my desk when I heard the phone ring. I picked it up, preparing for another terrible situation, but it was ‘The Boss’, the leader of our Dutch Department. He said we need to talk about the situation. He hang up and I ran over the office: my condition is getting better since I have this job. I closed the door when I was there and sat down in the big red chair. He looked at me and grabbed his beard and I knew he only did this when he was thinking.

‘How is it going?’, he asked. ‘It’s chaotic, as always’, I said and he frowned. ‘You know’, he said, ‘sometimes I just wanted to have a time machine’. I smiled, I wanted to have one when I was a kid too. I became serious when I saw he had not finished his sentence. ‘Adinda, I imagined I had a time machine, then I should go back to 2015 and slap that stupid people right in the face, because they invented this stupid plan. They should have known this was going to escalate totally’. I smiled, ‘The Boss’ was younger than me – ten years. He did not experience the time when lots of refugees came to Europe, because of the war in North-Africa. He did not experience the lots of people who died in the old boats they used to get in South-Italia.

No, he was still in his nappies when they came up with the idea to let the foreigners attend the old people in Europe, because the refugees weren’t the only problem: people became older too and there were not enough people to take care of them, because they have made through the years more medicines to dangerous illnesses. So they came up with a plan.

The EU decided to give the old people more money for their retirement and let the refugees live with and attend them. It seemed a great plan and the EU decided to introduce this to the countries: they could decide for themselves to slide in. I live in The Netherlands and the Dutch government decided to be part of the plan. We had a lot of refugees in our own land right at that moment, but a lot of old people too. The Dutch government became ‘importing’ refugees from Italy and gave them a place in our society.

They made this callcentre for foreigners who wanted to know something about the country they live in. I have studied African Languages, so I applied and was going to work here.

Although this plan was in the first few years very successful, it escalated dramatically. Two problems were formed within the years: first, there was the problem with too many refugees who came to Europe, I mean, there were opportunities for them here. Secondly, some foreigners, especially the ones who were not allowed to attend (because they were not even suitable to care for themselves) and the ones who were saying they were not respected, because they had to change people’s nappies. These people started demonstrations and a lot of refugees already being attending were affected and refused to take care of their caretakers. I understand their points in some ways, but this plan was so involved in all societies you cannot just abolish the whole system. The international governments decided to persist iss plan.

Nowadays this callcentre is an emergency centre, with a special team to rescue old people from terrible situations like negligence or the refugees from fights between foreigners and inhabitants, because the inhabitants became more territorial when other people badly attended their old people.

‘The Boss’ slapped his hand of the table, the moment was over. ‘I don’t know if this is going to stop someday, but we have to do everything we could to prevent a civil war’. ‘But what can we do? I mean, we just rescue people’. ‘I know, I know. I’m going to ring up some colleagues in France, Belgium and Germany, maybe they know how to deal with this. I mean, it’s conspicuous that almost all countries in the EU deal with the same problem! And they couldn’t expect this twenty years ago! If I had lived then…’, he growled. I just sat there: he could never imagine how big this problem had been these years, otherwise he would not say the same words every week.