Camille adores her cousin.
Remember when I wrote this post about traveling to Dubai and seeing all the housemaids on their way to Saudi Arabia? This article, titled Maid to Suffer, from Y-Oman magazine, describes in graphic detail the conditions that await some of those women. Good for the magazine for speaking out against this horrific abuse of women. (Not that the men that come over to work are treated much better, but they tend to be working in labor camps with other men and are not isolated).
From the article: With stricter conditions being imposed on bringing Filipino and Indian domestic helpers to work in Oman, the demand for cheaper workers from other countries has increased.
This is exactly what we were seeing that day at the airport. An influx of even cheaper labor. The 50 to 60 Omani Rial mentioned in the article comes out to $130 to $160 dollars/month. And that’s if the sponsor doesn’t deduct for providing housing (sometimes that is only a sleeping space on the floor in the kids’ room), water or electricity. By comparison, the American Embassy required that we pay a minimum of 120 or 130 OR/month, but I don’t know anyone who paid less than 150. Most women aren’t fortunate enough to get jobs like that.
It turns out we have an itinerary for travel, but haven’t actually been issued tickets yet. Today Josh called me and said he has to pick up our passports and turn them in so they can scan our identifying information and our visas in order to physically get the tickets. He asked if I could get them together for him and I replied:
What do you mean? You have them, right?
No, they weren’t in the drawer yesterday so I thought you put them somewhere.
Noooo, I looked in the drawer yesterday and when they weren’t there I thought, “Wow, Josh is so organized, he already collected our passports for the trip.”
I don’t have them.
I don’t have them. Why would I take them out of the drawer?!
Well I didn’t put them anywhere. I bet Camille took them.
Well that was at least 2 days ago. Where could they be?
Hold on. I’m on my way home now.
I had visions of cancelled vacations and a strangled toddler because not only did she take our official passports, but our tourist passports (and our expired diplomatic passports). Vanished. Gone. The last time she took something (the keys to the refrigerator) and I asked her where they were she looked inside the waistband of her pants and then lifted her hands in the air and said, “I don’t know!” It sounds adorable. It wasn’t at the time.
Good morning America! We have tickets! We leave in less than a week (nothing like waiting until the last minute, right?) and have a stopover in Chicago before heading to California.
I’ve only been to Chicago twice and both times I was at the train station. My first visit I was a baby faced high school student and as my delicate California-kissed skin hit the heat and humidity of Chicago in July inside the underground train tunnel the first thought to enter my brain was, “this must be what hell is like.” 20(ish) years later and that’s still how I picture hell: the dark, thick, hazy air, the rumble of the train engines that I felt as well as heard, my ears full of hissing and spitting as my awkward duffle bag banged against my shins and the strap cut into my shoulder as we walked forever to escape the steamy deafening darkness only to enter steamy deafening brightness.
The second time was much like the first, though I was only in Chicago to change trains and I welcomed the loud steamy earthy groundedness of it all because it meant that I wasn’t miles above in a sterile tin can whisking me to Connecticut in 1/16th of the time. Nope, I was taking the safe way — a 20 something pregnant woman traveling alone for two days on a train. What could go wrong there? Thankfully the only nefarious creatures I ran into were the ones that stole my phonecard number when I used it at a pay phone (both technologies obsolete now) and spent the next month calling Russia/USSR/the Soviet Union/whatever it was called back then until I got the bill in the mail the following month and had to spend many hours on the phone sorting that out. Yep, train travel is awesome.
This time we’re heading to Chicago with a boatload of kids and luggage to visit family on the first leg of our tour de USA (ooh, it will be July so we can actually watch the tour in English this year — win!). I’m looking forward to seeing more than the train station, especially since we’re arriving the way that people who have conquered their phobias travel, by air. For the 3rd time it will be at the hight of the summer heat and humidity, though I’m curious to see how it stacks up against what is normal for us. I’m packing sweatshirts for all of us, just on case. Maybe I’ll have to change my idea of hell to searing, swampy, isolating, and sweaty Bahraini days.
