We've Got It "Maid"!

    Well, guess who this is!  It's our new maid, or cleaning lady.  (Is there actually a difference?  I truly don't know.)  Anyway, my concern and apprehension was all for naught.  She arrived early, cleaned every inch of this place and didn't get in my way, nor I in hers.  It wasn't uncomfortable at all to have her banging around the apartment while I was present.  And she was self-directed, once we went over the basics, so I think she'll do fine during the month when I'm "off station" and hubby is fending for himself.     

   

     She's dispatched by an agency called Comfort Cleaning, which goes to Indonesia, finds and trains the maids, brings them over and sends them out.  That's reassuring, I'm told, because if something goes wrong, the agency will make it right.  Or try to, anyway. 


     We've already had a small-scale crisis when I gave this poor gal a very harsh bathroom tile cleanser to use that discolored the black marble flooring around one of the showers.  She came out cowering to confess it, and I suppose some Malaysian employers would have beaten her about the head and shoulders (or worse).  But this could have happened to me just as easily as to her, since neither of us realized that it wouldn't work on marble the way it did on sturdy mosaic tile.  So, I just handed her a black permanent marker and told her to cover it up, which she did!  Maybe the black pigment will sink in as well as wear off and it'll heal itself . . . . (she said hopefully). 

   Anyway, I was greatly pleased with what she did and amazed at all the things she was willing to do.  I'd heard that maids are often reluctant to do showers and toilets, but this little lady went to town on ours. (Which is more than I can say for myself!)  The moment she left, I was on the phone asking the agency to have her sent to our place every time, which is twice a month.  Any more often than that, and I don't know what there would be for her to do.

   In fact, I'm utterly amazed at the prevalence of maids in Malaysia, and not just hired by ex-pat wives.  The Malaysians themselves rely on them to such an extent that when the Indonesian government closed the tap and stopped sending them over a couple of years ago, the whole country panicked.  Indonesian maids are preferred because they work for lower salaries than others and because they speak more or less the same language as Malaysians, so there's not much of a language barrier.  (Tho' today our little gal and I had to use a lot of gestures and intuition!)  But some of the maids were mistreated by their employers and to such an extent that the Indonesian government stopped the supply.  There was a great deal of distress caused by this move and only recently have they begun to inch toward agreement.  Meanwhile, the newspapers have been wondering editorially whether it's possible for Malaysians to learn how to clean their own homes or raise their own children.  Evidently some  35,000 Malaysian families need maids and the wait list is seven months long. 

    As  newcomer, it's been very enlightening to get advice from the ladies in the Scrabble group who do have maids.  Their comments range from "What would I do all day if I had one?"  (which used to be me) to "Well, I have a gal who comes in on Mondays and Fridays and another who comes on Wednesdays. I never cook!"  Then there's the gal who has no pets, no kids at home and a husband who travels a lot (they're Malaysian).  Yet they have a full-time, live-in maid.  But then, they have an apartment twice the size of the house I grew up in and five times the size of the Japanese apartment I dwelled in happily for 17 years.  But you do have to wonder what the maid does all day every day, don't you?

    And from now on, you can wonder what I do all day, and I'm wondering that myself.  Guess I'd better get busy writing the Great American Novel!