{"id":5365,"date":"2016-08-14T04:00:25","date_gmt":"2016-08-14T11:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/?p=5365"},"modified":"2020-09-09T13:44:23","modified_gmt":"2020-09-09T20:44:23","slug":"two-maids-really","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/philippines\/two-maids-really\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Maids? Really?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Mom<\/a>In the earliest letters I sent to my family after we moved to the Philippines, I wrote about all the touristy things: the hot weather, the juicy mangos, the ornaments on \u00a0jeepneys. “We rode in one jeepney,” I wrote, “that had horses, Jesus, Mary, half-naked women, and Che Guevara on the hood.”<\/p>\n

Right from the start, though, it was obvious that being an expatriate was not at all like being a tourist. Expats don’t just observe a culture different from their own, they become part of it.<\/p>\n

The first big change in our lifestyle happened the day after our arrival when Nellie, our newly hired maid moved in with us. You\u2019d think one maid would be enough, wouldn’t you? But there was one important thing I hadn’t counted on.<\/p>\n

None of the houses we looked at had washers and dryers.<\/p>\n

When I mentioned it to the real estate agent, I noticed a hint of impatience showing through her professional smile, \u201cWe hire lavanderas <\/em>here in the Philippines,” she said. “Hand washing is much safer for your clothes, you know.\u201d<\/p>\n

Later I learned other reasons lavanderas<\/em> were preferred over washing machines. Most appliances were imported and therefore costly. Electricity was expensive and unreliable. And, due to a high birth rate, labor was cheap and readily available.<\/p>\n

Two-months later we finally found a house. Like all the others, it lacked a washer and dryer. So we hired our second maid, Clarita.<\/p>\n

\"Clarita<\/a>

Clarita and R at the beach<\/p><\/div>\n

I’d washed clothes by hand before. But washing the occasional sweater by hand had little in common with the job Clarita did. First she soaked the clothes together with bars of laundry soap in large plastic basins. Then she scrubbed and squeezed them, rinsed them in a sink in the breezeway, wrung them out, and hung them on the clothes line.<\/p>\n

In the afternoon, she ironed aprons, dresses, T-shirts, my husband\u2019s shirts and slacks, towels, cloth napkins, and even our underwear and the baby\u2018s diapers.<\/p>\n

With five people in the family plus two maids, we always had lots of laundry. The baby, with her cloth diapers, was a big contributor. (It was 1971, and disposable diapers were still a novelty.)<\/p>\n

I felt strange, maybe even guilty, about having two maids. Was I lazy? Was I taking advantage of the inequity that existed in the Philippines and the world? Or was it a good thing to provide jobs for these two young women?<\/p>\n

Before we left the Philippines twenty years later, there were more washing machines and fewer lavanderas.<\/em> Also, there were many Filipinos leaving their families to find work abroad.<\/p>\n

That’s automation for you.<\/p>\n

We’ve experienced similar results in the United States. When I was a new driver, pumping gas was a nice beginning job for young men. We drivers just sat in our cars while the gas station attendant pumped our gas, cleaned our windows, and checked our oil.<\/p>\n

We weren’t lazy. That was the way it was done in those days. In fact, it’s still against the law to pump your own gas in New Jersey. In Oregon you can only pump your gas in rural areas at night.<\/p>\n

Another example of automation leading to job loss: One of the jobs that helped pay my college tuition was driving a dump truck during the pea harvest. That job is gone now, along with the jobs of the tractor driver that cut the pea vines and the other tractor driver who spread the pea vines on the stack after I dumped them. Today an enormous machine drives slowly through the fields doing it all.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s automation. That\u2019s life.<\/p>\n

\"Mindanao,<\/a>

Clarita went to Mindanao with us.<\/p><\/div>\n

But in the early 1970s, Clarita had a job and a home in our house. It was a good situation for me. I think it was also good for her.<\/p>\n

Have you always had a washer and dryer? How about your mom and grandma?<\/p>\n

This post is part of a series inspired by the letters my mom saved. See also: The Letters My Mom Saved<\/a> and “Everyone” Has a Maid (or Two or Three).<\/a><\/p>\n

Next post: Crossing the Mts., Scenes of Eastern Washington<\/p>\n

\"my<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the earliest letters I sent to my family after we moved to the Philippines, I wrote about all the touristy things: the hot weather, the juicy mangos, the ornaments on \u00a0jeepneys. “We rode in one jeepney,” I wrote, “that had horses, Jesus, Mary, half-naked women, and Che Guevara on the hood.” Right from the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1340,155,1322,1317,148],"tags":[1330,1329,1326,1323,1328,1324,1325,928,1327],"class_list":["post-5365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-expatriate-life","category-family","category-letters","category-maids","category-philippines","tag-automation-and-job-loss","tag-cloth-diapers","tag-expatriate-life","tag-jeepneys","tag-lavanderas","tag-letters-my-mom-saved","tag-lifestyle-change","tag-philippines","tag-washing-clothes-by-hand"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3Kn1e-1ox","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5344,"url":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/philippines\/everyone-has-a-maid-or-two-or-three\/","url_meta":{"origin":5365,"position":0},"title":"“Everyone” Has a Maid (or Two or Three).","author":"Nicki Chen","date":"July 31, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0Back home, I was an independent woman. 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