Of Nannies and Toilet Water

I don't mostly believe in judging other cultures, but this is simply so weird to me that I can't not comment.

Evidently, the rich in Indonesia go to hotels during Eid al-Fitr, the holiday that concludes Ramadan, rather than stay at home without the benefit of their nannies and drivers and other hired help, who are allowed to go home (often to their rural villages) to celebrate with their families.

This clearly isn't a difference in the way religion affects culture. It's fairly irrelevant which religion's holiday is causing so many family reunions.

The difference is in the way cultures deal with class. It's simply very, very foreign to me to read about how these wealthy people talk about their own lives and how their hired helpers fit into that. Clearly the structures of their economy are very different than ours. There is one reference to a woman who spent some time in L.A. who was using the weekend to prepare her children in case they ever had to live somewhere that live-in help was less affordable.

When I was in the Philippines, one of the families we stayed with had "helpers". In a strange (from my perspective) arrangement of priorities, the toilet I used didn't flush; but rather than getting it fixed, they kept a large (and I mean large) bucket of water and a smaller dipping bucket in the bathroom so that anyone using it could "manually" flush the toilet. All fine and well.

What was weird was that when the large bucket started getting low, the other girl sharing my room and I were basically helpless until we called upon the help. We didn't know where the water came from that filled up the bucket. We offered, once, to fill it ourselves, and it quickly became clear that was not appropriate.

It was a strange experience living with "help" like that for a while. We were aware of our cultural lenses. We actually did a skit about it during our de-briefing, in which we got home and had a weird dream about how the toilet at home started talking to us and telling about all the people involved in the (seemingly independent) act of flushing our American toilet. (There were references to presumed sewage treatment workers getting cancer, based entirely on supposition.) We had been let in on the fact that the jobs these "helpers" had in the household were really good jobs, and that the doctor who was the head of the household was doing a service by employing them. I believe that.

But it's still just so weird. And judging by the comments and behavior of some of the people in the article linked above, it can lead to some rather stark class distinctions. As Americans, I suppose it's not odd that we (I) find that jarring. We don't have class distinctions here in America, after all. (Like we don't have illiteracy or racism or limitations in general.) Anything we refuse to discuss must not exist. Ignoring things doesn't make them go away, but the American unease with bringing up class could possibly serve to make us more attuned to class prejudice when it's actually expressed, I guess.

I'm still not sure what it is about this article that strikes me as so strange. Maybe it's how helpless these rich people seem. Maybe it's how uninterested in raising their own children they seem. Maybe it's just the general idea of having servants, pardon me, helpers at all.

I'm kind of floundering here. Any thoughts? Please read the article and let me know what you think.