A Day in the Life of a Mexican Cleaning Lady

In Mexico, if you are one of the “haves”, then there is an implicit expectation that you will share the wealth to an extent and employ one of the “have nots” as your maid. As an expat you are perceived to be one of the “haves”, whether in reality you are or not. I say this not because I enjoy feeling like I am more privileged than others, but because the class division is very evident here and there is seemingly a lot of pressure to “keep up with the Joneses”. Anecdotally, I have discovered that this pressure to look prosperous has led many people to live their lives at their credit limit, holding their collective breath and hoping that the the slightest change in economic climate wont bring their house of cards crashing down.

When we first moved here, I struggled with the idea that I should employ a maid to clean my house. It was expected as one of the “wealthy gringos” that we would employ a live-in maid who could cook, clean, iron and baby-sit. This was not an idea that sat well with me for a number of reasons, not least because I could not justify in my mind, as a stay at home mother, that I would employ someone else to look after the house and at times, my children. What would I do? Become a lady who lunches? Perhaps sit round the house reading and writing blogs? (Oh wait, that’s what I do do! ) For a working mother, I’m sure some help around the home would be much appreciated, but for my situation, it didn’t seem right.

I was pregnant with my second child though and I was swayed by the noble cause of creating employment for people who really needed the work so it was decided that we would get a cleaning lady (we’ll call her O) to come two mornings a week. Just to clean, no cooking, ironing and no babysitting. Now that O has been working for us for over a year, I look back on that decision and am so happy that we made it. Obviously, I am thrilled to have a house that is much cleaner than I could ever have made it, I’m not going to lie about that. I may not have expected to have someone else come in to do the cleaning, but now that we have it, it is blissful.

But more than that, I am so happy to have had O in our house and in our lives. She has taught me so much about Mexican life and about a side of Mexico that we do not see (not to mention improved my Spanish) . In many ways our lives are parallel; we are roughly the same age and have 2 children of similar ages; but in so many ways we live in different worlds. I now have an appreciation for the struggle that it can be to get by day to day. There have been occasions when I have lent money to her because things have been desperate - last year her father had (non-fatal) heart attack and the family could not afford to pay his hospital and medical bills.

This week we had a conversation that brought home the differences between her life and mine. I asked O how her other jobs were going (she works for 2 other friends here for the remaining 3 days of the week) and we got to talking about what her typical day was like:

• O gets up at around 5am in order to get breakfast for her husband and children and help them prepare for the day of work or school. Breakfast is a full cooked meal.
• Her husband leaves for work at around 6am and doesn’t come home until about 7pm. He works six days a week.
• Once her two kids are ready for school, she walks with them (around 20 minutes each way) before catching 2 buses to my house, or the other houses she works at. The bus travel takes around an hour. (Incidentally in her son’s Year 2 class there are 36 kids with one teacher)
• At my house she cleans from top to bottom in 4 hours, including cleaning 4 bedrooms and 3½ bathrooms (is it common for each bedroom to have its own en-suite), changing sheets, washing dishes and dismantling the stove for a full clean. I didn´t ask her to do all these things, by the way, I´d be happy just to have clean floors and bathrooms, but she has taken it upon herself to do it.
• For this work, I pay her $6 an hour, which is well above the going rate.
• She then catches 2 buses home and walks to school to pick up her kids. She makes lunch for them and then walks her son who is in Primary school back for the afternoon session.
• In the evening she feeds her family and sorts the kids out with homework, bath, bed etc
• On the weekend O cleans her own house. Her husband complains that their house only gets cleaned once a week, unlike her employers´ homes which are twice a week.
• She has one day of rest, but she is still cooking and caring for her own family. I asked her if her husband helps out around the house and she said “No, he works very hard at his job.”

O´s story is not a unique one here in Mexico or in many parts of the world. There are a lot of working mothers out there working hard in their jobs and in the home. I feel both grateful and guilty for the lifestyle we have. I feel uncomfortable to watch O clean my house for me, although of course I appreciate it greatly. At least, I feel some satisfaction that I am helping her family to afford a more comfortable life. I don’t think I will ever get used to the overt class distinction. I certainly won’t be embracing it like some of the other expat women who talk about their maids like possessions. When we leave Mexico, I will miss O. She has had a huge impact on our lives.

UPDATE: Just after publishing this post I read a post from an expat blogging friend who lives in another part of Mexico, talking about Mexican wages. Misschris’ post is well worth a read - she has done quite a bit of research on this issue and her attitudes are very similar to mine. I think a lot of “wealthy gringos” take advantage of the cheap domestic labour here and cause division in the community, but not all of us are happy with that state of affairs.