'Maids' go abroad

I love coming back home and chatting to my mum, because we always have really good conversations and really great discussions. We are very similar and she doesn’t look at me like I am a total weirdo when I say certain things.

Anyway, she told me a story that completely shocked me.

Middle class families in Peru (and most of South America I presume) have ‘maids’. Some families treat them very well, and the maids actually become part of the family and just help out with the cooking and looking after the children. However, the ‘snobbier’ families think it is acceptable to make them wear a uniform, not leave the house and have dinner in the kitchen on their own.

When I lived in Peru, I never really noticed this to a great extent. My grandmother was one of the kindest people I have ever met, and when she was in the Peruvian highlands at a young age, she essentially ‘found’ a little lady called Juanita, whose dad was in extreme poverty. Juanita’s dad asked my grandmother whether she could look after her, because Juanita was so skinny and she was so close to dying due to malnutrition and bad health. My grandmother decided to start looking after her. She helped my grandmother raise her children, she is like everyone’s second mum. She is an AMAZING cook (not sure whether you have been to Peru or not, but the food is simply delicious...) Anyway, this story doesn’t really have anything to do with the story my mum told me. I just wanted to mention Juanita because I am probably going to dedicate a whole entry to her at some point.

Basically, my mum’s friend works in London and she used to be a lawyer. She somehow met a Peruvian ‘maid’ in the queue of a shop, in her uniform, looking down (they get told not to look at people in the eye, if they do, they get very told off... naturally....?!) Emma (mum’s friend) is a very opinionated person and she is very fair, she hates injustice (like most of us I would hope). This poor Peruvian girl told Emma that she used to work for this family in Peru, and when the family decided to move to England they asked her whether she wanted to go with them and carry on working for them. They made the whole idea look very appetising obviously... ‘it’s a First World country, you might meet the Queen!’. For an uneducated and naive Peruvian this would sound like a dream, so she accepted. Anyway, the point is she moved to England and when she got here, she was not allowed out of the house. She had to wear a uniform, she was not allowed to take drinks into her room (no cups of tea at the end of the night either), she was only allowed to go out one hour a week and she had to clean, cook dinner and look after the children. This family kept her passport so she was not able to return to Peru. They would not let her watch TV or listen to the radio because this could potentially allow her to learn English, which would be a ‘disadvantage’ for the family. Sadly, I don’t really know how the story ended. Emma told my mum that the girl managed to get away, but I don’t know whether she managed to get back to Peru. This is a common case, believe it or not. This happens to a lot of Peruvians, a lot of Latin Americans. They think the ‘First World’ is perfect, they think it is a dream. They are so naive, and these oppressive monsters take advantage of them for their own ‘benefit’. If you are interested in this, please comment on this and let me know what you think because I am hoping to organise some kind of campaign to raise money for the indigenous. I think this is really important and it is an issue that should be much more addressed.