Marc here:
It's after 9pm and the kids should be asleep but they're not. Today, there was a good reason.
One of our main motivations for coming overseas was to have a true cultural experience. Tomorrow is "Koreatea" (couldn't find the spelling online) which is the end of Ramadan. Also called Eed (sp?) in other parts of the world. So, there was an extended call to prayer tonight just after sundown and Julienne and the kids were listening to it and talking about what it was all about. We are sometimes awoken in the morning by the same call to prayer - an expected occurrence in a mostly Muslim country.
And so, a cultural experience was had, as well as a later bedtime.
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We went downtown to a large department store. A driver from the school drove a small bus for us to go do some house shopping. We had not been in the downtown area before. It was exactly like so many movies I have seen where there is a scene in an African downtown. Goats tied up, ponyies pulling carts, potholes, women sitting in front of a small table selling fruit, and lots and lots of people sitting around on the street.
Of the new teachers, there are only two of us who have not worked overseas before and I am easily the one with the least overseas travel experience. Most of the other teachers rattle off their list of countries where they have taught overseas. It's a bit daunting.
That said, one of the other teachers with many years of overseas experiences, summed up the downtown experience like this. "I was just in Vietnam and you don't see anything like this in Asia anymore. Asia isn't really 3rd world anymore. This is 3rd world."
Slowly, the lives of the people around us are starting to come into focus.
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Tonight was our second night where we ate a meal cooked by our maid, Madeline. She is a very sweet woman who really runs the house for us and whom the children quite like. Her first day on the job, she played with the children and helped them unpack their boxes. We had hoped they would connect with her and they did, which is nice.
It's also nice having her in the house because this house underwent a number of upgrades before we moved in, so there are a number of things that need to be given their final tweeking - getting the toilets all working, the doors all locking smoothly, the drains all flowing. Since she's here all day, the workers from the school can easily get in and get stuff done. Oh, like put up curtain rods!
In many parts of working with a maid, I am taking my cues from Madeline. Dinner is a strange time because in my past experience, unless we are going out to dinner, everyone in the house sits together to eat. Here, in this reality, Madeline is working in the kitchen while we sit, enjoy her cooking, and talk together. For some reason, it struck me as stranger tonight then it did the first night.
Which it is strange, in one sense. The only place I have experienced the reality of the white family sitting to eat and the black person serving them is in movies situated in the South. Then, I remember a story a friend of ours related. She was living in a poor country and a local woman asked if anyone was doing the cleaning for our friend.
Well, no, she had said. But our friend felt uncomfortable about having someone come in to do work for her that she could do for herself. The local woman put it thusly. "You can afford to pay me to work for you. I would like to make some money and cleaning is something I can do to make money. You should let me come and work for you."
And so, sitting there at the table, eating food I did no prepare, I remember that yes, we can afford to pay Madeline and that yes, she is happy to have a reasonably good paying job. She's not sweating it, so I shouldn't either.
Plus, her daughter is grown and in university and she enjoys being around the children. And they, tonight after they learned a new thing on their guitars, were happy to go show it to her. It is fun to have someone else in the house.
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