Submitted by Sage Schwer on the 2016 winter session program in India sponsored by the Department of English…
For the past four days I have been staying at a homestay in Assam. It has been a one of a kind experience. Our home is very large and gated. The first floor is the home of our “homestay parents,” the second floor is a guest floor where people can pay to stay and be cooked three meals a day by the house maids, and the third floor is the roof, which has a steel and bamboo hut for one of the maids and her son to live in. I and three other girls have been staying on the second floor in two rooms with our own bathroom and together we have truly bonded over the experience.
There are three women in the house. The owner of the house, our “host mom” named Mamani and her two maids (or servants) who are constantly doing things around the house, Angelie and Puperie. Throughout our time in Assam, the girls and I have grown much closer to Angelie. She wakes us up every morning for breakfast, makes breakfast, lunch and dinner, gets us anything we may need (water bottles, our laundry done, toilet paper etc.) and spends the most time with us out of any of the other women in the house. At first, we were a little nervous around Angelie. She is such a goofy, sweet, yet sometimes overprotective and invasive character. She always means well, but at the beginning of our homestay she made us nervous when she came into our room unexpectedly and anxious when she insisted on chaperoning us everywhere we went. Aneglie was always sweet and giggly with us and over time we came to truly adore her. She was constantly making us laugh and was always there when we needed her.
One day, we had tea with Mamani and I specifically watched her and Angelie interact. Something seemed different. Angelie was much more proper and did not speak much. With us she felt like a maid and a friend, but even though she lived in the house with Mamani, their relationship felt much more professional and the line between boss and friend was extremely clear. We had the chance to meet Angelie’s son who lived in the hut on the roof with her and he was able to answer a lot of the questions we had been wondering about their relationship. We asked him if he liked Mamani and he told us “not really”. “Why not?” we asked. He told us that she treated his mother extremely poorly when there were no guests around. He said Mamani puts on a nice act when guests are around and once they leave she is really mean, yells and does not treat Angelie with the respect she deserves. He also told us that he had never been into Mamani’s house. He had lived there six years with his mother, yet she had never allowed or invited him inside her home.
This was extremely upsetting to me. Angelie and he were living on the roof of a house, forced to use their own bathroom outside and cook their food in their hut even though there was so much extra room inside the house. It was so surprising and upsetting to learn that Mamani wouldn’t have treated her maid with more respect. I would have expected Mamani to treat Angelie much better not only because she works so hard and does anything and everything she asks, but also because they are both women and usually relationships are stronger between same genders. I am not under the impression that every family treats their help the same way, but this extreme example definitely left a mark on my opinion of their family.
At the end of our homestay we made sure to show Angelie just how much she meant to us. We wrote her a nice card, gave her a ton of little gifts from America and took a polaroid with her so she could remember us forever. We gave Mamani gifts as well, however there was much more thought and effort put into Angelie’s present because she had been the one caring for us and making us feel welcome and safe. I will remember Angelie, her goofy laugh and huge heart for the rest of my life. Her son is in college studying to become an engineer. I hope he gets his degree, finds a good paying job and can afford to get Angelie out of that house and live somewhere nice so she can live the life she deserves. I wish the best for them. I believe Angelie and her son have a bright future ahead of them.