Class and Prejudice

One of the things that I took for granted growing up was household help. One of the benefits of being middle class in a third world country is that labor is cheap, and for 50 euros a month, a lady, sometimes two, lived with us and took care of the children and the house and the cleaning. Granted, sometimes things get stolen, or the occasional maid runs away with the construction worker next door. However, the benefits outweighed the dangers. We never had to worry about food. The house was always tidy. The kids didn't need daycare, my mother could go to work. There was someone in the house 24/7. We eventually lost the keys to the front door and never bothered to replace them, since, well, there was always somebody in the house. If a maid stole something, or is under suspicion of having stolen something, we fired her. That was that.

Over the years, a family has served us on and off. It started with a woman in 1987, who then referred us to her cousin when she got married...we eventually adopted the daughter of one of these women, she went to college during the day and cleaned and cooked at night. She works at an office now, a job that my mother placed her in. That is called moving up. Two girls from her little barrio now cook and clean for my parents. One of the girls looks after my nephew and nieces.

Reading The White Tiger reminded me of the shock I felt when Thomas pointed out that I treated the help like dirt. I never shouted at them or abused them. But as he pointed out, they were invisible to me, noticed only when I needed something. I mean, I thought I was being kind, I never really gave my treatment of the maids second thought. Leaving the Philippines and coming back made me see things with fresh eyes. By then, I was used to doing the household chores myself, and I felt almost embarrassed when I asked a maid to hand me a spoon, or when she would wordlessly pick up my barely used drinking glass. Almost.

I am aware that things work differently there than they do here in Germany. There are times, times like now when the baby is coming, that I wish that I could hire a yaya to take care of the baby while I go work. But mostly, I am kind of happy that I do my own housework here. I didn't have maids when I moved out of my parents's house when I was 23, but the satisfaction and appreciation of seeing a clean window done by my own hands didn't hit me until I moved here.

It is a very different mentality. Over here, people would call it slave labor. In the Philippines, people think that they are doing a good thing by giving somebody a job. In a country with high unemployment and population, these two things coming together provide this economic set-up. In the novel, the boss, Mr. Ashok, was seen as "softened" by the West. I sometimes think if it was actually a good thing that I began to see the maids as human when I went back in 2008. Thomas said that it isn't such a good idea to treat the maids as equals, since this will never work in a country like the Philippines. A country where class determines whether you can speak English like an American or not speak English at all. This fact spells the difference between staying where you are or moving up in society. It is telling that all of my acquaintances and friends in the Philippines talk like me and dress like me, while the rest of the world equates Filipina= domestic helper. Isn't it enough that they eat the same food as you do and have their own room and own fan and own toilet, he said?

I still don't know the answer to that.