If housewives are gathering in these post-Idul Fitri holydays, what is the exciting topic being talked among them? The hottest topic, apparently, is house maids (please forgive me, madams). Please don’t ever belittle this topic, because the housewives will always take its matter seriously.Some maids didn’t return to their employers after Idul Fitri holidays, instead they seek other families who offer a better payment. Some others – like my daughter’s babysitter - even didn’t go for mudik (going home to homeland) but asked two weeks leave to substitute another babysitter in a family whom their babysitter took leave. The family had no objection to pay 150 – 200 thousands rupiahs per day during holidays. This is a common practice among maids or babysitters, so just forget about the faithfulness of maids or babysitters in Jakarta.
The maids - especially in the big cities - have been playing a key role in managing our daily household duties. They are more important than anybody else in our home. A husband and wife sometimes have to fight each other because of maids. Some story says, because of maid, a family’s harmony is in danger when a husband defends his maid against her shrew wife. Some people even say, a faithful maid deserves to replace the position of unfaithful wife (Oh my God!). So absurd, but this is real. No one allowed divorcing husband-wife, but a maid can.
For you who are in your bright career, do you ever realize your maid indirectly contributes your success? You can do your job peacefully because your children are with the trusted keepers at home, right? Some families even rely the “children education” on their maids at home since they are so busy doing their business.
Couple days before Idul Fitri, I met with a colleague and had a lunch together. We supposed to talk about business, but we spent only ten percent of our time to do so, whereas a topic of maids dominated our conversation. “This time is annual chaos at my home. No food, no coffee, terrible housekeeping, and so on..,” he opened the chat.
“Well, how long does your maid leave for mudik?” I asked.
“Two weeks,” he replied.
“Are you sure she will come back to you?”
“Of course, she has been with our family for more than twenty years.”
“Great! She must be so faithful, trustworthy and perfect for your family. That’s not easy to have such maid,” I said.
“Oh, no. Sometimes she made mistakes, too. She’s even illiterate,” he said.
My colleague then explained how he treated his maid. He gave her trust to manage all of household duties. Since she always delivered every job well, my colleague didn’t need to do much intervention. He provided appropriate meals, monthly salary, one-two days monthly leave, and things that made me so surprise: medical checkup and pension insurance!
“You provide medical checkup for your maid? Am I not wrong?” I asked.
“Sure. If she gets serious illness, do I not spend a lot of money for doctors and hospitals?” I rather take preventive action, right?” he answered.
“And pension, too?”
“Why not? She served my family very well for more than twenty years, and dedicated two-third of her age to my family, she deserves it.”
I astonished. I’ve never found such care, a care as shown by this man to someone we consider in a lowest strata of our society. I wanted to give some comments but he continued: “I have told her she can ask to retire whenever she want, return to homeland and bring her money home. Sometimes I show her the amount of her pension’s account from the bank.”
“It must be a lot of money in her pension account so far,” I commented.
“But, she seems not too care about that numbers.”
“Perhaps she just wants to be with your family,” I said.
“I don’t know,” he answered. “I don’t want to throw her away when she’s being old and unable to work,” he continued.
I gazed at him, tried to seek an answer from his eyes why he did that. Then he said: “I just want to offer myself as a neighbor to her, though she’s only a maid.”
***
Serpong, 24 Sep 2010
Titus J.
