help

Having a maid is a confusing thing. I tried to organize my thoughts into an orderly progression complete with smooth transitions and a tidy conclusion. It didn't work, so I settled for snippets.

(Also, saying "the help" makes me think of poo-pie. Just putting that out there.)

***

“Excuse me for bothering you, but I have a favor to ask.” Jovita nervously fiddled with the broom handle.

I was getting ready to leave for work and had come over to where she was sweeping the kitchen to say goodbye.

“Sure. What is it?” I asked.

“Would you be able to loan me 500 quetzales?” She looked everywhere but in my eyes. “My children need help with their schooling and we have been having a lot of difficulty lately. We don’t have enough food, either, and last night the children didn’t have supper.

This wasn’t the first time Jovita had asked for money. Back in the beginning she’d asked for a raise. We were still in the negotiating stages and I’d raised her pay by five quetzales.

Then she asked for a paid Easter week holiday. Answer: yes, of course.

She’d asked me to be the godparent (er, fairy godmother) for two of her children. Answer: no.

She’d asked for money for the children’s schooling. Answer: no.

And now she was asking for a loan. Quite frankly, I was fed up with all the asking.

***

Jovita has been working for us for about three months now. We decided to let Luvia, the woman who helped us in the very beginning, go once we moved out into the country. The distance was pretty great for Luvia. Plus, she wasn’t all that great at housekeeping, so we let her go.

Jovita is 39 years old. She has seven children. She walks one hour each way to get to my house, and she comes three times a week: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. She arrives at eight and leaves at noon.

While here, she sweeps and mops the floor, scrubs the bathroom, and sweeps the patio and porch. If there is time leftover, she washes windows, wipes down doors, etc.

She is quiet and unassuming, and after Luvia’s chattery, bubbly bossiness, I appreciate the calm.

I pay Jovita Q40 for four hours of work. This is the equivalent of two bags of cornflakes.

***

Here, the person who cleans your house is called your “muchacha” (girl). Even if the woman is fifty years old, if she washes your underwear, she’s called a girl. This makes me profoundly uncomfortable.

In fact, having a servant makes my conscience get the nervous twitch. I was raised that it was uppity to expect other people to do my dirty work. Whenever I baulked at getting my hands dirty, my mother would shrill, “There aren’t any princesses in this house!” (She made no mention of queens.) (Actually, that’s not true. I think she periodically crowed, “I am queen! Obey! Serve!” Or maybe I’m confusing her with me?)

The do-your-own-dirty work logic went something like this: if we get so busy or have so much stuff that we aren’t able to scrub our own shower scum or corral our own dust bunnies, then we had better slow down. Caring for our living space and possessions helps prevent us from getting all-consumed with the rush-rush of life. It keeps us grounded. Furthermore, scrubbing a toilet gets us more than a clean toilet—it gets us some much needed perspective (and a loopy high from the cleaning products).

But then I wonder, is it even within a Guatemalan woman’s paradigm to believe that cleaning her own toilet might give her some perspective? Or could it be that that's only what an elitist North American might think about the porcelain polishing? And if that's the case...oh, the irony!

***

One of my biggest fears is that with a maid to pick up socks, my children will transform into entitled brats. According to this photo, it looks like they already have.


They haven’t, though, I don’t think. Taking a break from vacuuming and window washing isn’t going to shrink our souls (I hope). And besides, they still pick up, fold laundry, wash dishes, and do other odd jobs upon demand.

They even cut the grass by hand. With machetes.


The fact is this: our life is different here. At home we have zero-turn mowers, cars, and central vac to help out. Here we have Jovita.

And if I'm to be completely honest, having a maid is wonderful. It feeds my repressed Lady Grantham fantasies.   

***

Mother’s Day was coming up. Jovita had made mention that all women have off from work on that holiday. I didn’t say much—I wanted to check with someone else about the local customs first.

So one day at lunch, over our bowls of potato stew, I asked one of my co-workers if it’s the custom for house help to not work on Mother’s Day.

“No,” she said. “But you can give her the day off if you want.”

The dinning hall was mostly empty so I pressed for more details. I learned that:

*her house help works six days a week, from 7 am to 4 pm (or was it 5?)
*her help does the sweeping, laundry, cooking, and child care
*she pays her Q500 a month
*when paying per day, Q20 is the going rate

That night at supper, I reported the conversation, and then we had a mini math lesson, and then we all spent some time reeling.

These women work all day at the end of which they haven’t even earned enough money to buy a gallon of milk.

Why do they do it?

And how?

***

Jovita’s pleas for money tie me up in knots. I feel belittled and used, like all I am to her is An Opportunity To Exploit

It’s not her fault that she thinks all North Americans are wallowing in cash. We handed that idea to her via our smiley, let’s-help-all-the-poor-people short term missions, our wildly unrealistic reality shows, soaps, and pert newscasters, and our foreign policies that dictate, control, and ravage.

I get that it’s hard for her to understand that there’s another side to North Americans. That some of us drive clunker cars and have one income. That some of us toil for hours over our garden plots. That some of us pull two shift to pay off the college loan. That some of us have said no to credit cards and yes to saving.

Sometimes when she asks me for favors, I feel like shouting, Hey, look. I come from a rich country and you come from a poor country. Neither of us had any say in that. We each have to work with what we’ve got. I struggle with comparing up and wanting more, too—

But I can’t really say that to someone who has less than me, can I? That would be crass. Thoughtless and cold.

So what do I say? I say, I’m sorry, and then I explain that all the money we are using right now is through our sponsoring agency (a mostly true statement). We are volunteers. We do not have an income.

And when she apologizes profusely for bothering me, I tell her not to worry about it, that I’m sorry she’s struggling, that I’m glad I can provide her with a job.

And I leave it at that. Because it’s impossible to explain mortgages and homeowner’s insurance and the cost of living and our huge, wonderful supportive community and doctor’s bills and the ridiculous price of a college education. The gap is too wide.

I want to treat her well. I want her to feel respected, and in turn I want to be respected. For who I am, another woman, only two years her junior, attempting to raise children, love my husband, and make a go of it in this little world, just like she is.

***

So that’s where we are. It’s convoluted and messy. I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing, and I certainly don’t have answers. Straddling two worlds can be awkward and uncomfortable. It might even be silly, impractical, and unhelpful.

But hey, for what it’s worth, my floors are clean.

***

Ps. My sister-in-law, living in India, pointed me to this blog post. It. helps flesh out the conundrum even more.

people watching and baby slinging

Last Monday, a group of Bezaleel students—the ones who are participating in the vocational arts program—went to market to hawk their wares. My husband went with them while I stayed at home to do other work. But I didn’t get much done because my husband kept interrupting me with phone updates.

Him: They’re actually selling stuff!

Him: I can’t believe how much stuff is selling! Are you going to come in?

Him: Are you coming in soon? No, no, you don’t need to rush.

Him: When are you coming in? No, no, you don’t need to get a taxi. You’ve got time.

Him: Where are you? I’m sending a taxi!


The kids—with permission for the market overseer—had staked out a part of the road at one end of the market. They were selling shirts, bakers’ caps, and baby huipils (sewing class), flowers (agriculture), bread (baking class), grates for holding pots set over the fire (welding class), and little chairs and assorted shelving (carpentry class). And the stuff was selling!

After admiring their handiwork and buying some bread, I sat down on the curb, camera in hand, for some focused people watching. This is what I saw.

A man carrying something heavy.

A purple flower-headed woman.

An old woman with a chicken.

A woman with a black bag on her head buying welded-together bits of metal.

A woman with a cloth-wrapped bundle on her head buying bread. Or a shelf?

A woman with a basket on her head.

A pint-size shopper.

As you already know, I am drawn to pictures of mothers and babies. And of mothers carrying their babies. And of mothers breastfeeding their babies. Really, anything mother and baby, I’m all over it. So I got an extra big kick out of the following pictures.

Here are two mothers. One is nursing and the other is carrying.


Do you see how she is carrying the baby? In an over-the-shoulder cloth sling made from a bed sheet.

Here. Take a closer look:
 
It took me a good long while to figure out that there were real, live babies in those shoulder “bags.” (And we in the States fret over suffocation via a loose crib sheet or co-sleeping, ha. Something tells me these mothers aren't exactly plagued by those worries.)

Here’s another one:



Instead of an over-the-shoulder effect, this mama is sporting the across-the-forehead look.

As is this mama:





Once they get too big, just plop them on the back like so:




In the photo below, can you find the nursing baby?



Or, shall I say, the lump of nursing baby?

Babies are everywhere!
Sacks of babies.
Bags of babies.
Babies, babies, babies, babies!

It’s never ending. Never ending, I tell you!

Ps. I have yet to see a baby carried in a basket on top of a mama's head. If I do, I'll be sure to share. Pinky promise.

maseca cornbread

Last weekend when I made the black bean chili, I made a cornbread to go with it. Except instead of regular cornmeal, I used Maseca flour.

The only cornmeal I’ve been able to find here is instant polenta. Actually, I found a box of cornmeal once, in a hole-in-the-wall shop, but I didn’t buy it (silly me) and I’ve never seen it anywhere else since.


The instant polenta works fine as cornmeal. The resulting cornbread is a little heavier than normal (I prefer my home-ground yellow popcorn), but still yummy.

The cornbread made with maseca, however, was completely different. There was none of the coarse grittiness that comes with cornbread. It was soft and tender. It was like cake, but with a corn tortilla-y flavor. We loved it.


(I still love my cornmeal cornbread, but after reading this post, I do wonder if maseca cornbread might have some nutritive benefits.)


Of course, considering that the K’ekchi’ love anything and everything related to corn, I taught the girls how to make it. We made only six double recipes and sold it all, much to the disappointment of those who didn’t jump-jump into the buying and eating frenzy.


Maseca Cornbread
Adapted from my standard recipe.

1 cup maseca flour
1 cup white flour
1/3 cup sugar
4 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoons salt
1 egg, beaten
1 1/4 cups milk
1/4 cup oil

Mix dry ingredients. Whisk in wet. Pour batter into a greased 9x9-inch baking dish and bake at 350 degrees until an inserted toothpick comes out clean. Serve warm. Pass the butter and honey.

Ps. All photos, except for the one of the flours, are from the baking day at Bezaleel.

happy weekending

A thrilling read: 501 Spanish Verbs.

This is pretty much exactly what I feel like right now.

After a morning of more-intense-than-normal Spanish, my brain is fried, sizzled, zapped. I have a pile of emails to write and documents to create, not to mention what feels like 26 blog posts almost boiling over on the back burner of my mind.

I like The Busy, make no mistake, but I can only sit in front of a computer screen and tap out words for so long before my eyes cross and my shoulders seize up. So forgive my lack of blog inspiration.

Or lack of discipline required to force myself to write out the blog inspiration.

Or just my plain old shortcomings in general.

Whatever.

I gotta go make pizza.

Ps. I’ll probably be back tomorrow with some sort of verbage for you to muddle through, but for right now I’ll pretend that I’m one of those bloggers that considers her blog a job and therefore actually doesn’t blog over the weekend because those are her days off. I don’t know what “days off” are, though if my life continues to careen along at the rate it went today, I may need to figure that one out.

black bean and sweet potato chili

On Saturday I made soup.


I was going to tell you about it on Sunday, but I got distracted by church. On Monday I got distracted by the quotidian. And then Tuesday I got distracted by all things lack tay shun. So now it’s Wednesday and even though I’m tempted to get distracted by my mile-long list of things I want to unload here, I am going to buckle down and force myself to write about Saturday Soup.

It was good, that soup was. Even my husband, aka Mr. No Compliments, took one bite and let loose with a loud, “This is good.”

“Of course it is,” I said, my indignation at his surprise—as though the chances of me turning out a tasty soup are slim, thanks a lot, you ungrateful wretch—tempered by a mouthful of riotous flavor fireworks.



The soup is simply a meatless black bean chili bulked up with carrots and sweet potatoes and with a handful of weeds thrown in for flair.

See, while I was a-soup making, the neighbor stopped by and we got to talking about the market produce I can’t identify. She attempted to match names with descriptions, but I remained clueless, so she took a hike around the property and returned with a handful of green, the roots still clumped with dirt.

I tore off the leaves of the purported good-in-soup plants, washed them well, and chopped them into the soup. There wasn’t much of a flavor difference—I had already added a whole pile of fresh cilantro—but the green added good vitamins and (more) pretty green fleckies.

If you have edible weeds in your yard, mince a nice handful up real fine and toss them into the pot. If nothing else, it’s fun to put weeds in soup.


Black Bean and Sweet Potato Chili

1 onion, minced
2 large carrots, peeled, quartered lengthwise, and chopped
1 large sweet potato, peeled and diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons canola oil
3-5 teaspoons chili powder
1 teaspoon cumin
1 quart chicken broth
4 cups cooked black beans, drained
½ cup chopped fresh cilantro
weeds, optional
salt and pepper

Put the onion, chopped carrots, sweet potato, garlic, and oil in a large soup pot. Cook over medium high head until mostly tender, 10-15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Do not brown. Add the chili powder and cumin and stir to combine.

Add the broth and beans and cook until heated through and the flavors have had time to get acquainted, about 10 minutes. Stir in the cilantro and weeds. Taste to correct seasonings and serve. Feel free to condimentize, but we did not.

so far today (updated)

I made French toast for breakfast, packed lunches (tuna salad with some chopped boiled egg on bakery buns, hacked-up watermelon pieces, plums, and bananas for those that wanted), shooed the chillins out the door, washed dishes, hung up laundry, straightened up, did email, and walked to town where I a) met a goatherd, and b) talked to a bakery saleswoman who pleaded with me to take her to the states.

The goatherd encounter was kinda funny. I was following him through the streets, admiring (wincing at) the one mama goat’s almost-dragging-on-the-ground udders, when I noticed that the guy was carrying a bag of paper cups in one hand and the lead rope in the other. And then I noticed that he was saying something. Specifically: Goat milk for sale!

Swinging udder alert!

(Here's where I wish I had a pink arrow...)

It kinda gives new meaning to the phrase "fresh milk," don't you think?

I caught up to the boy and asked if I could take his photo.

“If you buy some goat milk,” he countered.

“Oh no,” I laughed. “I don’t like goat milk all that much.”

“It’s really good with honey,” he said. Was there a honey bear in his shoulder bag?

I laughed  and made to walk away.

“Okay, you can take my picture anyway,” he said flatly.

So I did.

And then I turned the corner and there was a bakery that I’ve been wanting to photograph.



So I did.
 

The girl, unlike the goatherd, was all sorts of chatty.

At school, I checked out the cookies that aren’t selling. They’re not moldy yet, and people say they like them, but I’m kinda left with no option but to believe they’re just being polite. Because come on, every cook knows that if something is good, you eat it.

I took photos of my husband’s carpentry class.

They are making two tables, via the mortise and tenon method (whatever that is).

My husband fixed the table saw yesterday, so now there’s that.

I made photocopies of tomorrow’s math problems for my baking class (simple fraction reduction), visited with the teachers (there was an interesting discussion on when’s the best age to get married), and made the first inquiries into finding another group of students to tutor. I waited in the library for an appointment with a student who never showed. I attempted to improve my crocheting skills and ended up dropping a bunch of stitches. I planned supper, made to-do lists, and texted my husband.

After a couple hours of Being Present, I caught the bus back to town where I bought two avocados, a flat of eggs, and a bag of bread.

At home, I fixed myself lunch (tuna salad on a bun, a huge, juicy-sweet mango, and some leftover cake and coffee) and settled in for a whole two hours of writing, emailing, work planning, etc.

When the children come home at 2:15, there will be chores, homework, outside playing time, baking experiments, laundry, showers, supper cooking, and bedtime reading...but that hasn’t happened, so I shan’t write about it just yet.

Ps. Speaking of udders and milk: on the bus ride home, I happened to glance out my window and saw a woman. Actually, I didn't see the woman per say. All I saw was her one enormous breast—nursing baby must of just been detached and shirt not yet pulled back down—dripping milk. I saw the white droplets falling to the ground. Now don't you wish I had a photo of that?

Thursday Morning Update
My husband just phoned.

Him: "There's a honey bear in his bag!"

Me: "Huh?"

Him (giddily): "The goatherd! He's here! He has a honey bear!"

Me (incredulous, because he's lactose intolerant): "You bought some?!"

Him: "No, but the bus driver did! The goatherd squirted honey into a cup and then milked straight into the cup! It was frothy and everything! You should buy some milk just to see it!"

Maybe I will. Guess I better pack my camera...

the quotidian (5.6.13)

Quotidian: daily, usual or customary; 

 everyday; ordinary; commonplace
 

A day off from school: enjoying a relaxed morning.

These happened. 

And then we ate them all.

Love her.

The pond. 

This week's baking project: cinnamon cookies. 

Lesson learned: Guatemalans like cake.

 

Pliable and compliable: this dog will do anything.

Stomach problems: still a layabout. 

(But he ate a mountain of food yesterday, so here's to hoping.)

 

Forcing the issue.

Made by the neighbor boys: a...contraption.

Our windy driveway and a hill of beans (and cilantro).

 

Friends: a-chilling and a-plotting.
(They do boy things such as write important messages
and leave them at their fort for the other to discover.)