My wife and I received an unexpected contact via Facebook Messenger today. It led to a video conversation with an old friend. I was reminded, yet again, that one never knows what the Lord is up to or how long his mercies stretch.
When we arrived in Arequipa, Perú in 1993, we were assigned to live at a house owned by the mission in the Vallecito district of Arequipa. That house had been lived in by various sets of missionaries since the 1980s. To our surprise, we were told that we were being sent the empleada of a missionary family that had already left so that she could be our empleada. So, all of a sudden we had a house in a mini-compound and a live-in.
Empleada means an employee (female), but the reality in Perú is that a household empleada is a maid, most often a live-in maid. We had had an empleada in Bolivia, but she came each weekday. We simply considered her our daily employee who had a job with us. This was our first experience with a live-in. It rattled us because Americans do not have live-in maids, at least not middle-class Americans. However, at the back of the house, within a walled area was indeed an additional bedroom and shower for the maid. And so, we inexperienced Americans suddenly acquired a live-in maid and moved into the Peruvian version of “Upstairs Downstairs.” Except that we had no idea of how to work with a live-in maid!
So, we decided that she was just an employee and would be treated that way. She arrived and we found out that she was a braided Quechua who dressed in traditional indigenous clothing. She only left our house at midday Saturday after lunch and came back early Monday morning. She would go visit friends and relatives as well as checking on a little house she was buying in a “pueblo joven.” The little house was cared for by others during the week.
As any of you who have seen “Upstairs Downstairs” know, the relationship with live-in servants is quite different from the relationship with an 8-hour employee. She was not prepared to be treated as just an employee. She had no idea how to be just an employee as much as we had no idea how to work correctly with a live-in maid. It was a learning experience on both sides. We had to learn to bow down to the local culture and behave somewhat as expected and she had to learn how to work for crazy Americans who had odd ideas and did not seem to know how to be her bosses!
In spite of it all, we built a solid friendship, within the boundaries allowed by the cultural expectations of master/mistress/maid. We bent a few of the boundaries and she learned to flex with us. But, we had to learn to not break the cultural boundaries just because they were different than ours. We left on furlough and when we came back, she came to our house and asked if we would hire her again. However, we could tell that we had wrought some changes as she asked to be able to go to her little home at night rather than sleep at our compound. We quickly agreed, and she opened a little tienda that she ran at nights and on weekends to make extra money she could use to pay off her house.
One of my biggest cultural learning experiences was when we offered to pay her way through high school and give her time to study. Note: Perú had private night high schools for adults. She turned us down, and not because of pride. She told us that she was Quechua and why would she need a high school degree? I told her it would open up more opportunities. She looked me in the eyes (one of the rare times she did) and told me that even if she had a high school degree that no one would hire a cholita for a good job. I had read of the bias encountered by the traditional Quechua, the village Quechua who had come in from the campo. This was the first time that I was struck by what that bias meant. She never did go to high school.
There is more that I could tell you, much more. When we left, there were tears from all of us as we parted from her and tears from her. She had watched our girls grow from young girls to teenagers. She had seen us at our best and even at our worst. But at the end of our years there, we knew that we had accomplished something with the mission and that we had a true relationship with our empleada. (I am deliberately excluding her name for privacy reasons.)
Then the years passed. Imagine our surprise when I received a Facebook friend invitation from her just a couple of days ago. Today, we received a Facebook video call. It was our empleada, except that it was not. She is now a married woman with a 17-year-old son. She has a stepdaughter. Her stepdaughter attends the university. Glory be!. She is happy. From the video, I could tell that she lives in a lower-middle-class home. She spent most of the time talking to my wife, as it was with my wife that she mostly interacted. And, she still remembers us fondly. She called us with excitement to tell us about her life. She asked about each of our children. And we rejoiced.
I told my wife afterward that I need more calls of this type. It is helpful to know that back when the time we spent with someone was worth it. I do not yet know about her Christianity, but she said a couple of Gloria a Dios during the conversation so I am happy. I admit it, sometimes I just need to know that the years our family has put in at various locations have been worth it. I am not a St. Sophrony or St. Silouan that has learned to not look back. I am less than a saint who can still use the encouragement of a fruitful past. Today my wife and I were encouraged.
Congratulations Rosa.!!!?