Our Maids - Part III

It was Sunday evening when the maid left. I tried to contact a few agents to check out part time maids but couldn't find any. One of the friends that I contacted offer me her maid for part time since her maid is usually free at home during daytime.

So, in the morning, Alvin picks the maid from her house and sends her back in the evening. Her house is not very far, takes about 30m to and fro each time. This went on for 2 months, every Monday to Friday.

Although she is an Indonesian, she is very good. Shes good at cleaning, cooking as well as looking after Samuel. They get along very well. Since shes good and we had enough of those excuses from Fillipino maids, we decided to take an Indonesian maid. I asked her if she has any relatives who is as capable and as good as her who is seeking for a job. She then introduced her sister in law, 39 years old, who claimed that she used to work in Kuala Lumpur as a domestic worker before.

We thought about it and decided to take her. Our reasons were:

1. Introduced by someone - know where to find her if the maid runaway
2. Has experienced in working as domestic helper
3. No need to wait for bio data from agents

I thought since we found someone it will not take long to process the documentations but I was wrong. It actually took about 1 month for her agent to send her over. Never knew the process was so long.

When she arrived, we went and pick her from the airport. Gosh... we can still remember the first thing we did when she entered our car. Both of us wind down the car window immediately!! Never expected her smell to be so powerful. Well, I guess we can't blame her too. She has travelled almost 24 hours without a shower.

She doesn't seem like she has any experience in working as domestic helper when she first arrived. She doesn't know alot of things. She can't even speak proper malay. She doesn't understand what we say. She speaks very loudly too. In short, she was not what we expected and her passport states that she was 45. She couldn't explain the reason for the age difference. She is not a good domestic helper and yet still we kept her for so long. Infact, trying our best to be patient with her, we still scolded her almost everyday. The main reason we kept her for so long is because she still treated Samuel good even after we scolded her.

Her contract was suppose to end in December 2007 but 3 months before it ended, she told me that she wanted to continue for another 1 year without going back to Indonesia. But the labour law here doesn't allowed a year extension. The maximum is 6 months. So, I decided to send her back in May 2008 and asked her to come back for another year.

Since she is willing to extend her contract for another year, I decided to bring her to Hong Kong. After coming back from HK, I told her to go back in May then come back for another year. She told me she would rather go back in January then to come back to work for another year. The following day, she told me she wants to go home in February for good.

I don't understand in the first place, why we actually requested her to continue to work for us since she is really a blur maid. We brought her to Hong Kong because we thought she was staying for another year. If we knew she was going back for good we will not have wasted our money. The money we paid for her flight, meals and additional bed can actually be used for the maid agency fee for a new maid, which is lesser than what we have spent on her!

I would consider her being the luckiest maid among all. We brought her to Kuala Lumpur 3 times and to Hong Kong once.

We sent her back 01/03/2008. I am actually prepared to be a full time mother for 2 weeks since I thought the new maid will not be here on time. We really thank GOD that the new maid arrived the day our old maid left.