Muchacha Moment #1
First off, thanks to all of you who commented about the sleepover issue, I really appreciated all of your input. We still haven’t come to a firm decision on what our family policy is going to be, but when we do, I’ll let you know. And now, onto today’s topic. A major part of ex-pat life is the opportunity to have domestic help. I have had lots of experience over the last five years with the different forms available: live-in, daily, 3X a week. When I moved to Venezuela one of my first impressions of ex-pat women was not a favorable one in regard to maids. I found that at playgroups and social events, they spent a majority of their time talking about the problems they were having with their help at the time. This disgusted me. So much that after a few months of being there, I said, "enough with the maid thing" and I didn’t have one for 7 months. But, all the bathrooms and the tile floors get annoying and not having anyone to help with the kids because all of your friends have maids and family is out of the question, we went back to having someone. And now, I find I talk quite a bit about our maid situation. So, I apologize to you if you think that in writing about this topic I sound like a spoiled brat. I know I am lucky to have someone else to clean the house and help babysit my kids. But, there are some funny stories that go along with having a complete stranger from another culture living in your home. Bloggable stories. With all that being said, I will embark on a new series called, "Muchcha Moments." A "muchacha" is what Mexicans (and Venezuelans) call their maids. I hate the term and usually when I talk to someone about our maid I will say, "the woman (or girl) who works in our house," because I can’t bring myself to say, "muchacha". But, I figure since I didn’t come up with the term, and everyone uses it, and "Muchacha Moment" sounds much better than "A Curious Thing the Woman Who Works in My House Did," that it’ll be ok. So for today’s Muchacha Moment I will share something that happened this weekend after our maid had left (she has Saturday and Sunday off). We could not for the life of us find Guapo’s tennis racket. ANYWHERE. So, I checked out the maid’s closet. No tennis racket, thank goodness we finally found it partially hidden in the boys’ closet, but somehow a can of Campbell’s Chunky Soup and a can of Spagetios (both rare commodities here in Mexico) got moved from here, the canned food shelf in the pantry:
To here, her closet (along with a bottle of hot sauce that I don’t care about at all):
Just so you know, I told her she is welcome to eat whatever she wants. That goes along with having a live-in, but hoarding the food so no one else gets to it???
I was flabbergasted.
That is a little flabbergasting. (Flabbergasting, is that a word?) As one who likes to give people the benefit of the doubt, I wonder if there is a good reason, at least in her mind. Is she poor enough to sometimes run out of food at home? Maybe she’s worked for someone whose pantry frequently would hit the empty stage? Are you going to ask her about it?
Comment by Nettie — September 14, 2006 @ 12:04 pm