The Help

Yeah, I know there's a film out at the moment with the same name.  I haven't seen it yet, but from what I gather it is somewhat related to the content of this blog entry.  Whatevs.

Incase you didn't know already, I am working as an English Teacher here in Brazil.  It's really hard to classify people into 'classes' in Brazil, since the gap between the rich and the poor is a massive gaping canyon, and classifying people is never a good idea.  What you need to know for the purposes of this blog is that Sao Paulo is the economic hub of Brazil (and South America in general, for that matter).  There are a lot of wealthy, rich people living in this city and they live very well.

However, you don't need to be a multi-millionaire to have help around the house.  We live in a one bedroom apartment and we have a maid come once a week to completely blitz the place, wash our bedclothes and defrost the fridge/freezer when it needs it.  In London I would never have been so extravagant.  I would have done the bloody cleaning myself, it's only a one bedroom flat for chrissakes.  Here, having a maid is not considered an extravagance - some people consider it a necessity.

I have mentioned before how labour is cheap in Brazil.  For most people here who are what I would normally categorize as middle-class in England, it is very normal to have a maid clean your house.  Most of the students whose homes I teach in have a maid (or two) who comes in every day.  I've been to a couple of homes that have a live-in maid.  When I tell them I have a maid that comes in once a week, my students often ask me: "What do you do the rest of the week? Once a week isn't enough!" The general consensus is that I should have a maid clean the flat twice a week.

The first apartment I stayed in did have a maid twice a week & apart from cleaning, she cooked rice, beans and some Bahian (as in, from Bahia - a state in the North East of Brazil) specialties once a week for the owner of the apartment.

A lot of larger houses and apartments were (and many still are) built with a maid's bedroom near the kitchen & service area, hidden away from the rest of the home.

It's all a bit Ancient Rome/Pre-war England, really.  A significant amount of people in this city spend their lives having everything done for them: dry-cleaning, laundry, cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping - the list is endless.

However, as a student said to me last week (she employs two maids at her house), this state of affairs cannot go on forever.  The Brazilian economy is experiencing a massive boom on a scale never known before.  Brazilians have never had this much money or opportunity.  The army of maids, valet parking attendants, cashiers, doormen etc will not want to be doing these jobs forever.  As the price of living increases in Brazil, they will demand higher wages (as they should: they are usually paid minimum wage, about £250 per month), they will (hopefully) receive a better education, they will have higher expectations of their lives - basically the whole hiring of 'help' will become something less and less accessible.

It's very interesting to be living in a country that appears to be right in the middle of a modern Industrial Revolution.  They might even end up having an actual revolution.  Errr....come to think of it: I hope not, that would be quite scary.