A word about domestic help in this country. Many, many Lebanese have live-in domestic help, even people who are not particularly wealthy. Very, very few Lebanese are interested in having such jobs, so the vast majority of domestic help are brought in from abroad. From what I have read, the help is brought almost exclusively from 3 places- the Phillipines, Sri Lanka, and Ethiopia. You typically go through an agency to find these women and you pay a fee of $1500 or so, which includes their airfare, work permit, etc. Wages are usually set, are very low and vary by some sort of bizarre and presumably racist class system – Phillipinas are paid $200 a month, Sri Lankans are paid only $100. For the first 3 months or so, you are not even required to pay them anything, as they are expected to work off part of the fee that you paid to acquire their services.

So far, I have already heard a lot of tales about these servants working long hours, with no days off, and some of them are not permitted to leave the home unattended. I’ve also heard stories about Asian residents (maybe tourists, too) being met with many racist attitudes, as the locals assume they are maids and therefore below them.

It goes without saying that the many Palestinian refugees who live here are discriminated against. They have few rights and are not legally allowed to work– many have been here since 1948, or have lived here their whole lives.

But about the maids, the Sidanis told me that we could use theirs whenever we want, we just need to pay them a $5 tip. $5 to clean the whole apartment. It’s actually kind of fun to clean here, in a way. Most places here use the (in my opinion) genius innovation of having drains in the floors. So you can dump a bucket of hot soapy water on the floor and use a squeegie type mop to push all the water down the drain.

I’m sure it will get old pretty soon, cleaning is cleaning, in the end.