Bogota Blogger

Colombia is very, very divided between the rich and the poor.  The rich are a great minority but have many, many times the money that most of the population lives on.  Wealthy people are used to having lots of help, so that an upper class family might have one or two live-in maids, a driver, a nanny.  But I’m going to talk about the level of domestic help that a typical gringo might have.

A maid in Bogota usually makes the minimum wage, if employed full time, which is the equivalent of about $200 a month.   There’s lots more supply than demand, with Colombia having very high unemployment, so that finding someone to work as a maid is never difficult.  Maids are more often referred to as empleadas (employees), by the way.

Since I, like most middle class people from the US, am not used to having maid service on a regular basis, I am really enjoying being able to afford it here.  I have Maria Ines three days a week for a half day each time, which can be anywhere from two to five hours, depending on how much she has to do.  I pay her $50,000 pesos (approximately $22)  per week, which is sightly more than the going rate.  Most people pay between $20,000 and $25,000 for a full day’s work, but a full day to a maid is probably about 10 hours.  With half days, Maria Ines can be flexible and can work for other people on the same days (one of the days she works for me she also works for a friend of mine).   She also works for a  couple other people part-time.

Maria Ines used to be a live-in for an older lady for many years (this lady had two live-in maids), but had to quit when her daugher’s husband died of a heart attack and Maria Inez had to move in with the daughter to help with the kids.  There are hundreds, or thousands, of stories like this in Bogota.

If she’s sick or if I go on a trip and don’t need her each day, I pay her full salary anyway, which apparently is not really standard.  She can eat what she wants when she’s here, and sometimes I buy her things for her family or give her things I don’t use much to take home with her.

Maria Ines leaves the place looking great each day.  She does all the laundry and irons everything (I don’t have a dryer, and most people don’t have dryers, so ironing is how things are done).  She doesn’t take much initiative, but will do anything I ask her to do.  I remember looking to buy a mop with a squeezer on it, and not being able to find one anywhere.  A friend of mine who had lived in Colombia a few years explained that only one kind of mop is sold here because the maid is expected to squeeze the water out with her hands.

There doesn’t seem to be much chance of mobility for people in this class in Colombia.  Education and hard work don’t necessarily amount to improved opportunities, and Maria Inez’s children are likely to end up in similar professions.  I see lots of maids and nannies in the streets and in the shops who are young, attractive, and smart, but their social status has determined that they work in these types of positions.  It was explained to me when I moved here that, even if I liked doing housework for myself (which I don’t), it’s expected that since I make a very good salary by Colombian standards, I should contribute to the economy and help out a lower-class Colombian by hiring help.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 29th, 2007 at 11:29 pm and is filed under Daily Life in Bogota. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.