These past few nights, I've been attending my uncle's wake. Most of my immediate maternal relatives whom I'm closer with would be present. One of their domestic helper has been asked to be around to help. She is very helpful, pleasant, and make herself very useful indeed. Of course, some of my relatives have gotten her to help do some errands for them too. But most of them hardly ever say, "Please" or "Thank you". They just simply call her by her nickname or "shorter" name followed by their specific instruction (to put it mildly) for her.
I just can't understand this?!! These relatives of mine are some of the kindest and dearest people to me. They would bent over backwards for me, and have done so. Yet, whenever they are communicating with the domestic helper, all humane respect and kindness seem to disappear into the thin air! As my daughter would often say, "Aaaarghhh!!".
Domestic helpers are human beings. They've got feelings. They got brains - maybe not as "clever" as we think they should be but they are certainly not stupid. In fact, if given a chance to prove, many may be cleverer than us. I'm sure, if they had a choice, they would rather not work as domestic helpers for us ungrateful arrogant eccentric inconsistent children-of-immigrants. We sometimes forget that we could easily be in the same plight as they are.
In fact, it was not too long ago that some of our parents/aunts/ relatives were working as "amahs" for the many British/European expatriates in Singapore. My late godma certainly was one. I'm quite certain her employer didn't treat her with such disrespect. So why are we like that? Have we become too affluent to appreciate what it means to be poor and helpless - a sad victim of their own country's poor and corrupt mis-management? Many of these people painfully leave family, children, philandering and scum of the earth fathers/husbands to eke out a miserable living that guarantees no salary for the first six months of their employment here despite working 12-16 hour days and no off-days. Thanks to another bunch of scum of the earth agents at home and here. They do not deserve such a shit life any more than we do! Have a heart please.
Fermina, 16 years old, domestic helper in Malaysia
Sure there are the usual black sheep. But they are mostly defenseless "aliens" here. Many of them have no one to turn to. You could chop her up, cook her with curry, even worse, rape her, abuse her, wrongfully confined her, sell her....no one will probably know. How much would it cost us to just treat them like a decent human being? Have a heart please.
But the irony of it all is I think they will one day have the last laugh. I believe our ability to contradict ourselves in how we treat another fellow human being whilst preaching and demanding for our own perceived "basic" and "human" rights will backfire on us some day soon. Our ability to lie to ourselves will continue to numb our ability to check our own weakness and value. We become people who are completely blind to our own inconsistencies. There is one group of observers we are not likely to fool though. Our children. Some of them, hopefully, will grow up to question our actions and behaviour. Unfortunately, many of them will grow to be like us. They will ape the way we treat another human being, and when we grow old, they'll probably treat us the only way the know how - they way we unwittingly "taught" them by our negative example. Mark my words!
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