Humbled

We decided to move to Saudi Arabia for many reasons, obviously the main reason being financial.  Sure it is somewhat of a sacrifice because we are so far away from our family and friends.  Living in this country in it of itself comes with its own set of sacrifices.  But when it is said and done our payoff will be huge.  We are and will continue to be blessed with opportunities and life experiences that not even money can buy.  But lets face it, we had a great life before this came along. 

I knew that when I left this place I would be a completely different person compared to when I arrived.  Today reminded me of this.  I have had some of the worst days of my life over the last month and a half.  Despite this, I have tried to remember what a wonderful life I have.  I'm pretty sure that most people I know recognize that they have it pretty good, even in the hardest of times.  But then you have those opportunities when you gain a whole new perspective on just how good your life really is.  Let me tell you about the man that cleans our house.  For privacy reasons I don't want to use his real name so I'll call him Khalid for the purpose of this blog.

I heard about how cheap it is to have someone clean your house here, but even so I wasn't sure that it was something we would do.  I mean, I stay home all day...surely I can clean my own house.  Harry got Khalid to come clean a few days before he left to meet us in Dubai.  He told me about how good of a job he did for only 100 SAR (roughly $27.00).  Keep in mind that this is his rate, not a price that we came up with.  I thought okay, I'm 7 months pregnant and for 27 bucks it's worth it to not to have to clean.  So when we got to Saudi and got settled in, Harry had Khalid come over so I could meet him.  We agreed that we would pay him 100 SAR a week and he would come every Friday at 2:00.  Now Khalid works here on our compound and cleans houses on the side for extra money.  Friday is his only day off.  I didn't like the idea that he would have to spend his only day off, which also happens to be the Muslim holy day, working at our house but he insisted.  He said he would rather do it on his day off so that he wouldn't have to worry about his boss calling him out to do something.  He moved to Saudi Arabia from Pakistan about 10 years ago, right around the time his son was born.  Of course his family is still in Pakistan and he is here working to send money back to them.  According to his contract, every two years he is allowed to go home for three months.  He is going to do this until his son graduates from school.  His son is nine years old.  So my first impression of Khalid was that he is a very nice man who is making a huge sacrifice to try to give his family a better life.

Today we spent all morning grocery shopping so after we got home and had lunch I decided to take a nap.  Connor and I went upstairs to lay down around the same time Khalid was coming so I told Harry to have him start downstairs and then wake me up when he was ready to come upstairs.  This was at 2:00.  I woke up at 3:30 and Harry still hadn't come to get me up.  I couldn't believe that Khalid was still cleaning downstairs.  It wasn't even that dirty!  After he finished he made his way upstairs.  Connor and I made some fresh squeezed lemonade and started making supper together while Harry went play squash with some guys he works with.  I didn't hear a peep out of Khalid as he cleaned.  Harry got home around the same time I was finishing up with supper.  Khalid was still cleaning.  He even went outside and mopped the back patio!  I was starting to feel bad because he was working so hard for very little.  I thought asking him to stay for supper might be inappropriate so I fixed him a bag of snacks (water, oranges, a couple of muffins, chocolate, and some fresh hazelnut bread we bought this morning).  This man cleaned for 4 and 1/2 hours for $27!!  And when I say cleaned, he was literally dripping with sweat when he left.  He didn't even want to take his pay today.  He said we could pay him at the end of the month.  No way were we going to let this man work that hard every week and have to wait until the end of the month to get paid.  We told him we would pay him every week and then had to assure him that it was no problem.  He thanked me for the food and left.

I could not stop thinking about him after he left.  I began to feel more and more guilty as I thought about how hard he is working and the sacrifices he is making for the sole purpose to provide for his family.  I'm thinking, here I sit with my family in this nice house with my nice things wondering what grand vacation we will take next while this man just busted his butt to be able to send $27 back to Pakistan.  All to make a better life for his son that he has spent a total no more than 15 months with in the last 10 years.  I couldn't take it anymore.  I told Harry that we had to pay him more.  100 SAR was not enough for what he did.  He deserved more.  I figured an extra 25 SAR (not even $7) would be a good amount.  It would let him know that we appreciated the job he did without making him feel like a charity case.  He said okay we'll give him 50 extra SAR next week, 25 for this week and 25 for next.  I said no way, we had to give it to him tonight.  So Harry called the clubhouse and told them that when they saw Khalid to let him know we wanted to talk to him, but that he could just stop by tomorrow if he wanted to (it is his day off, remember).  An hour or so later he rang our doorbell - ready to clean.  He thought we wanted him to come back because he hadn't done a good enough job.  Harry explained to him that we thought he deserved more.  He refused to take the money.  He said he was happy with the food we gave him and would sleep good knowing we were satisfied with the job he did.  Huh!  Who does that??  The only thing I can figure is that he didn't feel right taking more than we agreed on, even though we thought he deserved it.  You definitely don't meet someone like that every day. 

I will still enjoy all the things I did before...time with family, material possessions, traveling to different countries, etc.  But I have gained an even deeper appreciation for all of my blessings, all thanks to Khalid, our housekeeper from Pakistan.