MaID in Zambia.

I think my first roommate in college suffered as much of a culture shock from rooming with me as I did moving to New York. On what must have been my second or third Monday there, having had a good few weeks to suss each others patterns out, she asked me, “Dude, why the hell do you get up before class on Monday to do your laundry and then leave it all in that neat, ironed, folded, colour-coordinated pile on your perfectly made bed, and why on earth do you make your bed everyday?”

“Well, “ I began, “I do my laundry early on Monday mornings because that’s the only time there is no one else in the laundry room and I can use all the machines….”

“Erm,” she interrupted, “why do you need all the machines?”

Was this a trick question? “So I can do one white load, one dark, and one colour…?”

“You do realize that costs you three times more than just putting it all into one machine, don’t you?”

“Yes, dear, I can do the math, but a new white Ralph Lauren shirt would cost me a lot more than a few quarters if I had to replace the one that the mixed load had tinted pink.” She stared at me with a blank face. So I continued with my explanation, “…and I make my bed everyday and put the laundry on it in that pile because at home my maid did that for me every day, and I’m just used to having it like that. I couldn’t bear to come home to an unmade bed. And seeing as she’s not here to do it for me, I do it.”

“Dude. You have a maid?!”

Yes dude. “Two, actually.”

“Woooooah.” That was the end of that conversation and more or less the end of my making any new friends. News travelled pretty quickly and from that day onward I became known as the rich, snobby, stuck-up Zambian princess….so much so, that a few years later, somebody randomly walked up to me on campus and said, “Sorry to ask you this, but are you, like, really, like, the princess of Zambia (like)?” Erm, no. Dufus.

I spent a lot of time at college trying to justify, explain or just understand where I came from. It’s quite normal to have a maid in Zambia—I don’t know anyone who doesn’t. And I’m not talking about a Pole or Puertoriqueña who comes in once a week for three hours to do a mediocre sweep-mop-flush of a job that will earn her £40, as we have in London. I mean full-time, seven days a week, hands’n’knees scrubbing, ironing and chopping vegetables maid. And they probably get paid about as much as a Polish maid in London could make in a day—monthly! Its normal. But try explaining that to a bunch of ultra-left-wing, pot-smoking, ‘we-are-the-people’ people who don’t even drink Starbucks coffee because, oh lord knows why, somebody somewhere in the coffee picking labour chain didn’t get enough pats on the back. It took me a long time to understand, and then to accept, that things were relative…a long time to earn a measure of perspective. And perhaps all too ironically, I have two people to thank for that—my maids. For just as my roommate had her “Dude!” moments on that side of the ocean, my maids have their own almost everyday on the other side.

One day, having found me in my room when she came in to put that neatly stacked pile of laundry on my bed, she carefully picked out a piece of my underwear, held it up under the light like a lab specimen of guinness-book-worth-curiosity and said, “Madam, what is this?” Uh-oh. The word “thong” was too generous a title for the item she had in her hand, even “g-string” bordered on the euphemistic, that little number was just a string.

“Its underwear Agnes…panties,” I responded, knowing exactly what was coming next.

“But how do you wear this?” she said turning it around like it was a Rubik’s cube. Fearing that any attempt at explanation would only further entangle her confusion, I just put it on over my clothes and in a ta-da! tone said, “Like this!” Noticing the even more bemused look on her face, I glanced down just to make sure I had put it on right (you never know), which I had, but I suddenly realized what her next question was going to be for in that moment it formed in my mind too. “What the bloody hell is the point of that!?” To put a simple end to the conversation, I just said, “well when you wear underwear like this under trousers or a skirt then you don’t see the lines from the underwear.” To which she only had one response:

“Crazy mzungus.” (Crazy white people). I don’t think I’ve worn a g-string since. I either go seamless or commando, but I’d hang myself on that string before I ever put it in between my bum-cheeks again. Thank heavens. And Agnes.

Pelina, the other maid, who works mostly in the kitchen and is spared from the quantum physics of figuring out crazy white people’s laundry, has a whole different set of questions. Upon noticing a photograph of a sculpture from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York one afternoon, she said, “Madam, what’s this?” with a rather cheeky grin.

“A sculpture,” I responded, not quite getting the joke, adding, “you know, like the independence sculpture in front of the supreme court?” to give her a local point of reference.

“Ahhh, yes! Like a piece of art?”

“Exactly!” I exclaimed, rather impressed, and thinking the Q&A duly accomplished.

“But, eh, Madam…” she then pressed, as the cheeky grin turned into a light giggle, “why is it naked?” I couldn’t help but laugh. We sweetly laughed together like schoolchildren who had just encountered a pair of older students kissing in the playground. Though I am still searching for a way to answer this one…

A few days later, watching me as I put my hand in and out of a duck’s bum filling it with stuffing, she said, “Madam, are those your nails?”

“Yes,” I said, holding them up so that we could both admire my recently painted French manicure. She took one of them in her hand, and touched it with the wondrous gaze of a toddler fondling his mother’s colossal fingers for the first time.

“Sure, madam?” she asked again, in disbelief, “with this white tip?”

“Yes, Pelina, they are mine, but they are painted to look like this. Why, you don’t believe me?”

“No, madam, it’s just that us we buy nails like this from the market. Exactly the same.” So, its not only mzungus who are crazy. (Stuffing duck is an altogether different matter).

And the latest…my all-time favourite moment of perspective enlightening: Having put my iPhone down on the table as I reached to get something from the fridge, she looked at it in awe, and said, “Ahhhh, Blackberrrrrry,” with an enunciation that so piercingly revealed her pride in knowing its name. “iPhone” I gently corrected her. “Its your phone?” Erm, yes. It is indeed.

But as I walked away, I was suddenly reminded of those first few weeks at college again…when amongst millions of other things, I discovered that everyone, everyone, had an iPod. “Your whaaaaaaaaat?!” If only I could respond to that now! Whatever dude, yourPod, iPerspective.