Sri Lankan Maids Pay Dearly for Perilous Jobs Overseas The teacher held up an electric cake mixer and told the class of wide-eyed women before her to clean it properly. If it smells, "Mama," as the aspiring maids were instructed to call their female employers, "will be angry and she will hammer and beat you." Sriyantha Walpola for The New York Times More than a million Sri Lankans - roughly 1 in every 19 citizens - now work abroad, and nearly 600,000 are housemaids. Sriyantha Walpola for The New York Times Some maids being trained in Kegalla, Sri Lanka, will find brutal work conditions in the Middle East. "This is where you go wrong," the teacher continued. "That is how Mama beats you and burns you - when you do anything wrong."
posted by kmtharakan on May 8, 2005 - 27 comments

Joshua Allen has had to live in a motel while he looks for somewhere to live to accompany his new job. He seems to have found all of the minor irritations: "The toilet seat won’t stay up. I have a smallish heart attack when it slaps down while I’m in mid-stream, not paying attention. I feel obligated to clean up after myself since I’ll be running into the maids all month. I desperately want them to like me, to confide in me about the other guests, the things they find in the rooms." He doesn't include the one I encountered in Paris, "The way the maid leaves your room unlocked all day while you're out after making your bed..." Luckily I had all my valuables with me...
posted by feelinglistless on Jun 7, 2003 - 7 comments