helpers in hong kong
there are many benefits to living in hong kong. the food, the proximity to india, the interesting people, the proximity to warm places (it takes less money and time to fly to thailand from hong kong than it does to fly air canada from calgary to victoria…scully, that statistic is for you). being able to live in another culture gives you an appreciation for your own.
when you have children and aren’t travelling, dining out or seeing your interesting friends as much as you used to because your spare time revolves around your recently released NICU graduates, one of the best benefits to living in hong kong is the opportunity to have domestic helpers.
like everyone else in hong kong, we have a domestic helper. actually, we have two. mila and lita are from the philippines, and both have families of their own, that they see once a year, all because they can make more money working in hong kong as a domestic helper, than they could in the philippines, working as a teacher and an engineer. how sad is that.
these women are true mothers. it pains them not to be around to witness their children’s growing and lives, but they are determined to make a better life for their children.
mila became a grandmother on monday night for the second time around. another grandson. his name? jasper. magnificent charles and i were so touched.
i am godmother to lita’s only daughter, four month old melissa. i take the task of godmother seriously. all i can do right now is buy melissa clothes and toys, but i am diligent about that.
mila and lita, and domestic helpers in general are amazing. the majority of hong kong’s (and singapore’s) helpers are from the philippines, but helpers from thailand, sri lanka and india are also typical. imagine living in someone else’s home, and not speaking the same language, and having to determine their nuances, what they were saying, care for their children, do their washing….all while dealing with living in a new home, a new culture, and homesickness.
these women do it. the majority of domestic helpers work for chinese families. the chinese tend to have more people in a flat, and so it is not uncommon for the helper to sleep with the children, in the kitchen or under a table. no place to escape.
many great domestic helpers have very tough lives. one excellent helper i know who i trust my children with, told me about the first family she worked with, where they would not let her eat food from the refrigerator on sundays, her day off, because she was not helping THEM that day. the wife would portion out the food for the helper, she could not help herself to the contents of the pantry. any food she wanted to make, she had to pay for herself. on her day off, she would come home and find the sink stacked high with dishes. she often was not paid. and when she was, it was not her full wages.
this is common practise. and the helpers could complain but the sad thing is, if they raised a fuss, they would be fired, and without a letter of reference, very unlikely to get another position, and they would have to go home and face the recriminations of their family.
most helpers aspire to work with a western family. not because we are better employers. one main reason is because when working with a chinese family, the helper often suffers from the relationship between the mother in law and the daughter in law. it is common for multi-generations to live together, and relationships between the women is not good. usually the older generation owns the flat, so the daughter must be subservient, but takes her anger out on the helper.
working in a western household, where they are likely expats without parents in law living with them, is much easier. it is also easier, because there is one less language barrier. filipinas speak tagalog, and usually have a good grasp of english. western families, be they australian, spanish, or german, tend to speak good english as well. whereas when working in a chinese home, the helper has to start learning cantonese, and both communicate in broken english. can you imagine reading recipes?
mila (at left with Carys and reading) is the bottle whisperer. she can coax any of the babies to slurp back a few more millilitres, even when the rest of us have tried and given up. she is a lovely Christian lady of about 57. she sleeps in the guest room when magnificent charles is out of town, knowing that i don’t sleep well when he is gone.
lita (pictured with sebastian and jasper) is about my age. she and sebastian are very close, as she was our only helper at the time the triplets were born and the one who picked up a lot of the slack at home. she reads the same books i do, and loves the patricia cornwell thrillers i have never gotten into.
we are blessed to have our helpers. we have made our back area into a living room for them, and every night i smell the rice cooker and hear the laughter of the ladies and a few of their friends who come over. i find filipinas to be incredibly resilient, industrious and optimistic. the majority of these third world women are working to put their siblings and children through school, are constantly pressed for money, are working at a job that is tiring, requires extreme diplomacy and has many unenjoyable aspects to it, yet if you were sitting down with magnificent charles and i and listening to the laughter and shrieking voices coming from the back terrace, you wouldn’t know it.
i like listening to them. i can’t imagine being them.
