Monday's and Thursday's

One of the many perks of living here is this amazing lady.

Lilebeth the Lovely

She is here twice a week to clean our house. And my goodness she does an awesome job. The whole maid/cleaner thing over here is a topic of much conversation amongst the expat wives club. I am always so interested to hear the different perspectives from "I am not used to having someone in my house cleaning" to "I clean before she gets there so she doesn't judge me" to "she comes on holiday with us".

Being South African, I have grown up with maids, the first load of washing I ever did was when I was 23 years old! I can remember when I arrived in Perth in 2008 and my mum handed me a bucket full of cleaning products which I was like "um, so do you want me to leave this somewhere for the cleaner?" - which got the response of "my darling, YOU are the cleaner, this is Australia". Talk about a shock to the system! And my goodness I detest it! I am very happy to be back in a country where it is seen as the right thing to do - I mean come on, we are helping the unemployment rate out!

It is a bit of an 'abusive' occupation, most of the cleaners are educated and from the Philippines, Cambodia and Indonesia. They cant get work here or in their home countries so they end up being cleaners, most of them are illegal. Which totally opens the door for crappy stuff to happen. They sign up with cleaning companies who end up keeping most of the money leaving the cleaner which not much for themselves.  The amount of stories I have heard of employees taking the cleaners passport off them, not paying them because they threaten to hand them over to immigration... its really not very nice.

So I am really glad we have Beth. I am not 100% what her visa status is, but thats okay I do not need to know! She worked for a few families in the condo area for a while before they moved back to their home towns. She originally asked for RM10-15 per hour. Thats a huge $3-$5 per hour. Freak, I felt like I was breaking some labour law so didn't really think that was fair compensation. She is more than just a cleaner, she is a friend,  person I sort of pay to be my friend. Which is kinda weird! We have the best chats - well that is before I had my nose in my studies - and I really have got a huge respect for her and her story. She makes my life a breeze!

High five to you Beth x