The Employer's Woes

I have never been somebody’s boss before, not really. Being a Senior Branch Administrator with an administrator below me is something different. I didn’t pay her; the same person paid the both of us. As I left Girimkil at the front door to retrieve money for him, I thought, “Did I ever think I’d be asked that question: ‘Can I have my wages in advance?’” Not that that was what he said exactly: translating intended meaning is far more complicated than that. Neither did I ever plan on being the employer of somebody whose mother tongue wasn’t my own.

It’s just weird, really. Deciding how often to give raises, and how much of a raise is appropriate. Having to draw the line somewhere between wanting to support a struggling family, and paying them for services we neither want nor need. Let’s rewind: this working relationship began when a blind man offered to be our guard. Daniel and I stole side glances at each other, but eventually decided it would be good to have a reason to pay them. Now Girimkil is the ears of this outfit, and his sons the eyes: I feel silly now for not understanding it then.

The moment we step out of our compound, we’re bombarded with, “Give me money” at every corner. “Ginzab habani” if they don’t know English. Or simply, skip the “give me” and use “Money” as our names, shouted as they run after us. By people who need it, by kids who don’t need it (but want candy). Third world countries have been trained to expect and ask money from the first-worlders. Because we have it, and they need it. (This should be a simple equation to solve). And our histories are chock-full of our countries giving to theirs on the grander scale. But narrow is the path that leads to development and sustainability. Somehow we have to break the cycle and stereotype of Americans, Italians, the English having pockets full of disposable cash to bestow on everyone we pass. And yet we are Christians: we’re supposed to be giving the clothes off our backs, when asked. Right? (Cultural note: it is not faux pas to ask someone directly for something on their person. I’ve had Luam point to my earrings and say “habani”--“give me”--, and Nesanet ask me more than once to give her my clothes. Several little girls ask for my ring. Yet I say no, and feel awful afterwards. Embarrassed for them, guilty for me). So how the heck are we supposed to stay sane? How much do we give, and when do we say no?

When I gave Girimkil his guard wages, and Misilal her bread-making wages, three days in advance, Girimkil said, “There is some problem in my household.” He mimed raking twigs off our ground, and asked if we would pay them to do that for us also. About once a month they ask if we’ll hire Misilal to do our laundry, if we’ll hire Luam to wash the inside and outside of our home. Each time we politely decline. The twigs don’t bother us, we “enjoy” doing laundry (it’s cathartic and simple), and I can’t bring myself to hire someone to clean my own home. There’s not a trace of that in my blood. I will clean my home, thank you. I am a capable woman and housekeeper. But they’re running out of money, we’re running out of needed jobs to give them, and I’m running out of reasons to feel okay with all of this. Each time we catch them pouring water from a bucket onto our porch to “clean” it (essentially, creating mud), I want to say, “This is not dirty. Don’t worry about this. But what about the trash?”

You see, littering is very much a part of Ethiopian culture. (Okay, so it’s not “culture” but something else: a direct result of not having a trash pick-up service). Because of this, our yard looks like the third circle of Hell. The neighbor kids play in our compound every day. And since we agreed to have Girimkil guard for us, he and his boys moved into a room within our compound. As a result, there are bits of Styrofoam, homework, old shoes, old telephones, razors, shards of glass, nails, lightbulbs, and food wrappers all over our yard. We’ve tried explaining this to them a few times. I think the problem is, the authority figure can’t see what we’re pointing to, due to lack of eyesight, and he doesn’t understand either our English or Tigrigna pleas, in this case.

One day Daniel and I had had enough. We thought, “It may not be our trash. But it is our yard. It is beautiful, but they’re making it ugly.” So, in an animated huff, we covered the spacious grounds and filled two bags with nasty trash. As the neighbors stared, a few times I indicated the trash and said, “Nimintay?” (Why?) in the kindest voice of disbelief I could muster. They kept watching. I eventually said to Teddy and Shewit (4^th and 6^th grade, respectively): “Koshasha aydalin. Betami himak iyu. Maaz koshasha allo, nabzi, ishy? Bajakum.” (Translation: I don’t want trash. It is very ugly. When there is trash, put it in that trash hole, okay? Please). They nodded, took the bags out of my and Daniel’s hands, and finished the job for us. With all our might we tried explaining, in essence, we mean continuous present tense, not present tense. We mean future tense. Everyday tense. What we were saying was, “Please don’t throw trash on the ground.” But what they heard was, “Pick up this trash now.” It only took a week or so before the yard again looked the way it did before we embarked on this “education project.”

Fast forward to this week, when Girimkil offers to pick up twigs from our ground for payment. At the tip of my tongue I held the words: “Twigs?! What’s wrong with twigs?! W h a t a b o u t t h e t r a s h?” But then I remembered. I certainly can’t pay them to pick up trash that they throw in our yard in the first place. (Additional note for effect: Daniel reminisces about our first days here, when he was almost hit in the head by an airborne laundry detergent box that one of the neighbors threw over the stone wall, into our yard).

Why isn’t it easier? Why can’t I just find a time where no one is at their house, sneak in, and hide 100 birr notes under their bedsheets, in the chicken coop, in the injera holder? Isn’t that essentially what the main character in Dave Eggers’s You Shall Know Our Velocity did? And wasn’t it portrayed as a good thing to do? We were rooting for him!

Yet on the Peace Corps sustainability spectrum, we’re the oddballs for even tithing in our communities, giving to charities/struggling institutions we want to support. For Pete’s sake, I was given incredulous, disappointed looks by other Peace Corps volunteers when I excitedly told them about all the books our family and friends donated to the schools. One hundred and fifty-six books for empty primary school libraries! Praise the Lord, is what my racing heart is saying. But what they were saying: “I’m a foreigner. There’s no way I’d let anyone in my community see me giving boxes of things to anybody.” So, wait. We can’t give BOOKS either?

I am torn. Not in the nonchalant way that this adjective is used when you’re deciding between two peanut butter brands, but truly in the term’s intended meaning: shredded and tattered, ripped apart. I confess that the poverty here has not moved me to tears. Not once in our 8 months’ stay. The disabilities, the twisted legs, the baseball-sized goiters jutting out of necks: these things, yes. But not the poverty. It has become a normal term of life, nothing at all surprising.  I’m a bit amazed and saddened at myself, that I’m not always choking back tears. But maybe you only have those experiences once, and mine was that semester in Uganda. I saw it, I understood, and I went home and lived differently. I stopped buying clothes. We made a household rule to buy one canned good for the poor every time we step into a grocery store (am I allowed to recommend this to others? It’s been a joy for us). I will never willingly install a dishwasher, or any other pointless, pricey, pretty appliance that my own hands can race, etc. (We’ve been over this. My apologies). Ethiopia seems to have brought us to phase two: These are our neighbors, these are the sizes of their one-room homes, this is the standard of living in which they are placed, and really, what can we do about it? How can we become immobilized by sadness over these conditions that are the conditions of almost.every.single.home.in.our.community? It seems we just have to accept it, and go from there. Because, if every home is a one-room home, a one-room home can’t be the face of poverty anymore, can it? It becomes the face of average, of middle class, of everyone.

And yet here we are, two people sharing a three-bedroom home with living room, kitchen, and bathroom, making loads more than our neighbors on our “volunteer stipend,” and yet we feel our hands are tied. We have money to give, and hearts that want to, but what about the American or British volunteer who moves in after us? We have to think of them, and every other foreign worker who comes to Adwa, to Ethiopia, to Africa to do good work. And we have to think of the Ethiopians. Is it dignifying or empowering for them if they are just repeatedly handed money that they didn’t work for?

We cannot set a standard of just handing out money because we think it’s right. Because, actually, somehow it isn’t. And that’s what drives me crazy.