The Help

I just finished reading "The Help" by Katherine Stockett. It is by turns hilarious, sad, and sometimes so painful that I had to put it down for a while. I passed the book on to Jenny, my friend and officemate, who was thrilled because it was on her list. She is part way through it and convinced we have to have the book club read it too.

The book takes place in the late 1950's-early 1960's in Jackson, Mississippi, and is about relationships between white people, mostly women, and the black women they employed as domestics--house cleaners, cooks, caretakers of children. Katherine Stockett, a white woman, manages to give a voice and physical presence to more than one black woman and does so without being maudlin, mocking, or disrespectful.

I found many parallels between that book and the situation here on camp with the maids and houseboys. These people, who come from India, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, do all of the same things those black women did back in 1960-era Mississippi.

Two buildings over from me there is a Saudi family, husband, wife, three kids. They have a Filippino maid who lives in their apartment with them--and their apartment is the same size as mine, 810 square feet. Where does she sleep? Who knows? I've never seen the wife interact with the children at all. It's always and only the maid who is outside with them. I see the wife float along the sidewalk in her abaya heading to the car so I know she exists. I've heard stories about people (both Saudis and westerners, nobody gets to claim the moral high ground) who make their maids sleep on the floor of the kitchen or on a blanket on top of the washer and dryer or on the floor in the children's room or even the garage. Houseboys, all of whom are adult men, have a separate camp within camp. It is not very nice--crowded, the apartments are little more than closets with one tiny window A/C unit. I think they put more than one guy in each. It is heavily fenced and gated, a little houseboy ghetto inside the residential part of camp.

This social structure which relies so heavily on what can only be described as indentured servants has always bothered me. The more I learn about it, the less I like it. The houseboys and maids must have a Saudi sponsor. The sponsor can keep their passports, preventing them from leaving the country. The sponsors often only let them return home every other year. There is nothing to prevent abuse. The whole system stinks of trafficking.

Yet I'm not without my helpers: Upul who walks my dogs every day at 11, Renza who washes my car every weekend, Mohammed who drives me around and helps me with my car, my little gardener who rinses off my porch every day and steals plants for my pots. All of them have sponsors and a primary job but all of them moonlight, providing services on the side for people like me. The cash that I pay them gets sent back to their families. It is a tiny amount to me but proportionately makes a huge difference for them. The really enterprising ones who have humane sponsors can make quite a lot of money this way.

My helpers do help make things better for me but it still bothers me and I make sure that I pay them all well and pay them regularly.

This past Sunday morning, Upul called me in a bit of a state. His wife was having an operation, his sponsor was letting him go home for two weeks--and he was worried about finding someone to take care of my dogs because he was leaving on Tuesday. Yes, Upul was worried about me and my dogs on the eve of this trip. That is quite typical as you will see.

With Jenny's help, I found John, another houseboy who has been here on camp forever (more than 20 years) who has a reputation as a good hand with dogs. I met him at the house on Tuesday, passed the keys over to him, and introduced him to my crazed beasts. I told him that I would pay him the same rate that Jenny paid him (SR25 per hour, about USD 6.50) and that I would pay him for a full hour each day even though walking my dogs only takes 10 minutes. He was very concerned--he said, I've been here on camp many years, I can clean your house. I said, that's okay, it's really small. He said, what about the cat? I can clean the litterbox. No worries, I said, I clean it every morning. He was very upset that he wouldn't be doing an hour's worth of work for an hour's pay or that somehow I didn't trust him to do a good job. I assured him that knowing he was taking care of my dogs was worth a lot to me.

Today was John's first day to walk the dogs at 11. And it is clear that he wasn't satisfied with my statements the day before because he had washed and dried the dishes I had left in the sink!