“EMPLEADA”

Daily life in Bolivia requires an enormous amount of time and energy. Food is not “ready-made” at all, so each meal requires a lot of planning and preparation. For example, on a normal weekend in the States, Derek and I would probably make a frozen pizza for dinner. Take it out of the freezer and just pop it in the oven—easy, right? Here, making a pizza would require walking all the way to the outdoor market (while carrying a squirmy 11-month old ;), buying all of the necessary toppings from vegetable sellers, purchasing a chunk of mozzarella cheese and grating it by hand, chopping up the vegetable toppings, you get the idea. So really, Claire is spending a ton of time just going to the market, buying food, preparing food, and serving food, even when the meal is something “simple” like a pizza.

To facilitate this labor-intensive lifestyle, Bolivian families often hire “empleadas” to help with domestic chores, such as cooking, cleaning, ironing, etc. Our Spanish teacher referred us to someone whom we have hired to come over for three hours each week. Her name is Lourdes, and cleaning houses is her way of supporting her family and paying school fees for her kids. She is very friendly and a hard-worker too. She is very much in need of money and is also actively searching for employment for her sister and teenage daughter. This is the story of many, many women here who have the desire to work, but lack the important resources of education and training to access a wider-variety of job options. We wish we could do more for her! However, we are glad that we can provide at least in some small way for her family.

We’ve enjoyed getting to know Lourdes over the past few weeks and look forward to seeing where God may lead this new relationship. Thank you to all of you who financially support us so that we may pass on these blessings to Lourdes and her children! I know she truly appreciates your generosity.