When you'll rather be hungry than take a Cleaning Job - false Pride in Indian Society

We are now two weeks into the new school year and slowly it seems as though the teachers and the children have found a daily rhythm. The excitement is getting less as everyone is getting used to each other and the children get to know their new surroundings. With the children back at school, we also increased the staff at the Ashram, as we need more hands to cook and of course also to clean. When talking about cleaning staff, we once again found a controversy, an absurd idea which is very common in this society: many poor people would rather be hungry than take the post of a cleaning lady.

It seems logical: we are looking for staff. We know a lot of children with parents who are earning very little, who have to search for daily labour work and who don’t really have qualifications for any higher job. Why don’t we employ the parents of these children and give them a steady job, cleaning work for which they don’t need to have learned anything?

Partly, we do. We would be open to fill our complete cooking and cleaning staff with parents of our school. Unfortunately however, they are very often ready to work in the kitchen – but refuse to pick up a broom!

Ramona told how they were, in May, going from one home to another, visiting all the newly admitted children at their homes. They talked with every family and found out what the parents were working. Many times it was only the fathers, as the mothers would take care of the children at home. In one home, however, we heard a story that was especially evoking our compassion: the mother and two children live in the house of the children’s father. He however is a good-for-nothing, not working, not earning, drinking and gambling whenever he finds a few rupees.

The mother thus depends on the mercy of her brother-in-law, her husband’s elder brother and her mother-in-law to feed her and her two children! She does some embroidery work but as she is not very skilled, she doesn’t earn enough for making a living. Her brother-in-law told us in a complaining voice ‘She can only earn a few rupees, how long can we take care of her?!’

Ramona wondered and answered straight away: ‘Why, if she goes to clean somewhere, even just half-day while the kids are at school, she can earn good money!’ And it is true, women who wash the dishes and wipe the floor are well-paid here! Oh, but the moment she said it, she could see or rather feel how the whole family shut down, as though they were disgusted and shocked how she could suggest such a thing!

They made some excuses and talked their way out of this question by saying it was good as it was, that she could help in their own home, no need to go anywhere else.

So even while people are struggling to make ends meet, even while they are looking for a job just in order to not be hungry, they would rather depend on their relatives and suffer through the bad times than go cleaning somewhere.

It is a bad attitude, a wrong pride and a wrong image of a fully perfect work.