So how did it go with the…uh…do I call her a maid?  Housekeeper?  I used empleada through the whole last post and I was comfortable with that.  Maid makes me feel like I’m calling her something derogatory and like I’m living in an episode of Downton Abbey (which I just started watching b/c of this whole experience).  Housekeeper makes me think of Alice on The Brady Bunch.  Empleada will have to do, but it’s tedious to write, so I’ll just call her by her name, Marta.

I could not focus on work while she was here.  I was so nervous.  I hate confrontation.  I hate having to be authoritative.  I hate everything about what I was supposed to be and how I was told I was supposed to act towards this woman in order to get her to do the job we are paying her to do.  I hate this whole system.

I don’t like the idea of someone else being in my house and touching my things.  We don’t do this in the States.  Our homes are very private places.  We close our bedroom doors when we have parties.  People ask which restroom they should use.  They ask before they go looking for a glass if they want water.  For someone to come into my home and for it to be her job to touch everything I own…I just couldn’t take it.

Since I’ve known Eric, he’s had someone come clean his house once every two weeks.  This, somehow, is very different for me.  I still preferred to be at work or out of the house with this person would come, but I was much more comfortable with the situation.  For one, I think, it was because Eric handled it.  For most of the time before we came to Panama, it was Eric’s house.  We weren’t married yet.  He gave instructions, and I feel that he is very good at doing this with authority, yet being very nice about it at the same time.  He commands respect, but people still love him.  He has a wonderful personality for it.

I have to wonder, does it also have something to do with his gender – at least in these situations?

At any rate, by 10 am, I was horribly nauseous.  I told my co-worker that I was utterly useless.  I couldn’t think about anything other than where Marta was or what I was going to say to her next.  What if she did something I didn’t like?  What if she went ahead and ate the food that we had set aside for us rather than for her?  What if she…fill in the blank?  Finally, I was so nauseous that I dry heaved, then went to lie down in Eric’s office, telling him I just didn’t know what to do.

I fell asleep, and the rest of the afternoon, not surprisingly, passed without incident.  She did a great job cleaning, told me what supplies we are lacking, and even cooked the corvina (local fish) that I asked her to cook for us.  She made a sandwich for Eric, as I requested, and one for herself.  She then served herself a portion of the fish, after we agreed that this was a one-time special meal since we were not prepared with the appropriate food for her.  She made a list of foods she would like for lunch, and hopefully next week we will be ready for that.

I did note that, while no one was eating at the dining room table, she still took a chair from the table and ate her lunch at the kitchen counter instead.

I did get taken on a few parts of our deal.  Generally in Panama, empleadas work an 8 hour day, and the $25/day we pay pays for the full 8 hours.  Marta insisted that it doesn’t work like that, but that she leaves when the job is done.  This week, she left around 2:30 or 3, I was ready for her to go, and the place was very clean, considering that we were lacking a squeegee for the windows.

Eric and I had also made a very detailed list of what we wanted to be done around the house.  When Marta came in, she scoffed at the list saying that she had experience, that this was her work, and that she didn’t need the list.  However, there were several things on the list that were not completed.  Common things, such as washing our clothes.  I’ll have to address this with her, which of course, causes me additional anxiety.  I hate this stuff.  She’s used to facing off against employers.  I’m not used to putting my foot down and being forceful.  I don’t like to do it.

This is exactly the part that I don’t like about being a lawyer.  I don’t like that you walk into the courtroom and the atmosphere is antagonistic.  I would much rather we all work together to find out the truth of what happened.  Did the DOC guard actually beat my client and cause his fractured jaw?  If it happened, can’t we all agree that that is wrong?  Okay.  Let’s work from there.  Let’s all open up the information that we have and figure out what happened.  Eric said today, and I have often thought the same thing:  I should’ve been a British barrister.

One thing I did start thinking about last night though, was a possible project.  I’m interested in this whole system.  It’s got it all.  Human rights, women’s rights, politics, interpersonal communication, language barriers, culture clashes, class hierarchies, family issues…the list goes on.  What if I started purposefully talking (in Spanish) to people about their experiences with empleadas?  What if I turn into Emma Stone from The Help (or the woman who actually wrote the book…my apologies to the purists, I only saw the movie) and interview folks, get the stories, learn about the politics, the reasons why people act as they do?

What if I also talk to some of the women who work in these homes to hear their experiences with their employers?  To hear their backgrounds, where they come from, what it was like when Martinelli (the ex-president of Panama) changed the immigration laws and allowed nearly everyone to get legal status to work here?  How do the Panamanian empleadas feel about the influx of Colombians and Nicaraguenses?  How does that affect the job market and how did they have to change their tactics?  What is it like to be ignored at work all day, to be expected to work in silence?  How do you feel about the “man of the house”?  How do the kids treat you?  What is the worst experience you’ve ever had?  Do you feel that you have the freedom to seek other work?  Have you ever gone into a job knowing you just want to work for long enough to afford a particular pair of jeans and then quit as soon as you have that certain amount of money (this was another story I heard)?

I don’t know what I would do with the information…I’m not looking for a book deal.  But I do think it would get me out, get me practicing my Spanish, and that it would be interesting.  We’ll see if I’m still interested in the idea tomorrow.  But for now…it’s a thought.

If you have a second, please say a quick prayer that God would help me with this anxiety surrounding my relationship with this woman.  I don’t know why it’s such a big deal to me, but I’ve still be struggling with it all day today.  Even just writing about it now, my stomach is tight and I’m dreading seeing her on Wednesday.  I know, I know, 1st world woman in a 3rd world country problems.  But anxiety sucks.  It’s crippling.  And it doesn’t make sense.  You can’t tell it to be practical and think through things.  It doesn’t listen to that.  So instead of talking to it, I’m trying to talk to God about it instead.  And, gracias a Dios, sometimes I’m doing that in Spanish b/c that’s what is starting to come to my head more and more!