#617 – The Expat Files: Domestic Help, Water Scarcity, and Life in Latin America

Automatically transcribed from the original recording; names and wording may contain errors.

[00:00] South of the border down Mexico way That's where I fell in love when the stars above came up to play and now I wonder Hello there all you expat wannabes. I'm Johnny Mueller and you're listening to the expat files living in Latin America The show that tells you just what it's like to live work play and or retire down here in Latin America It's a mix of the good the bad the ugly and the great and it's all right here. So let's get started Well expat Eddie has resurfaced again and every time I run into him man. He's got stories to tell this time He gave me a completely unexpected cleaning lady slash maid story You just have to hear this but first let me explain a few things for you new listeners

[00:47] I hope you all know by now one of the great advantages of living down here in Latin America for us Gringos and expats that is is that we can have maids cleaning ladies gardeners maintenance guys full-time part-time live in whatever Even though that kind of thing is completely unheard of in middle-class even upper middle-class society in the States In fact, I know great numbers of Gringos and expats who've been down here a while They've retired on a small pension of maybe 20 or 30 grand a year enough to live on the top brand of hamburger Helper and cat food up in the States Yep, people who live the solid middle-class life way back when they come down here and suddenly they realize they can have a full-time cleaning Lady a nanny for the kids and a maintenance guy And you know what we're really buying when we hire those people is time time for ourselves

[01:35] So get ready to have a lot of spare time I mean just imagine it yourself never having to clean the garage or the kitchen or the basement again Never having to wash your windows do your gardening clean the toilets put up and take down the screens wash your car Or even bitch at your other half for not doing his or her share of the chores How about that far fewer little household arguments and fights over nothing? Yeah, I know I know some of you listeners out There actually enjoy washing your car doing a little bit of gardening whatever But surely you get the point you're gonna have a lot of time on your hands to do all things You really wanted to do or maybe you just thought about doing and never really intended to do like Maybe write that not so great American novel Hey, I've even taken a crack at that and you know There's an age-old saying that every one of us has a book or two in a somewhere or maybe just an e-book or a pamphlet

[02:27] Who knows if only we had the time right? Well, that's it. Here's a book I think that needs to be written it probably could be a best seller We'd call it maids and cleaning ladies for dummies wouldn't sell a copy up north But here in Latin America man You'd sell a million because you know all our lives up in the first world We never ever had a chance to dip our toes into that world the world maids gardeners and cleaning ladies live in I mean, let's face it long ago when my expat buddies and I were living in Chicago Cleveland Duke's on in my jammy the closest we ever got to understanding that slice of life Was watching drawing room dramas like upstairs downstairs on masterpiece theater. Hey, am I showing my age yet? Sure, those of us wet businesses occasionally had cleaning services and such

[03:13] I mean someone had to do that work, right? It wasn't gonna be the owner or his wife or heaven forbid his kids The truth is when I lived up in the States when you heard that a person had a full-time maid or even one that Came in one or two days a week Man, that was a sign of success. You were even a bit jealous Well down here you'd be surprised how many tens of thousands if not millions of Latin to make 800 to a thousand bucks a month Fit that same description of really making it. Yes, because they do have maids and cleaning ladies That said a long-term gringo or gringo really does have to write that book maids and cleaning ladies for dummies Because most of us start out believe it or not being clueless dummies when we hire people like that Yep, we think after hiring that maid our troubles are over. Well for some of us. They're just beginning now

[04:03] You could say my case was somewhat typical once I got down here 25 years or so ago and got settled in In other words found a place rented it in a decent neighborhood and such I hired a maid a couple days a week and a gardener to come in just once a week Now I figure since I've been down here I fired probably four maids and two gardeners slash maintenance men now the maids I always ended up firing because they stole something and One of the gardeners first dealing to the other one just because I caught him sleeping on the job get this He went up on the roof found himself a nice little cubby hole Fixed himself a little makeshift mattress and never suspected I would climb up on the roof and check things out now You will find that your maids cleaning ladies and garters and stuff will make a lot of dumb mistakes actually not dumb to them

[04:51] It's just the way they're used to doing things to us with our first world attitude and sensibilities We just start noticing that they're terribly inefficient and disorganized kind of like most things in Latin America, which is par for the course Therefore no reason to get upset or blow a gasket and you could just let them go about doing things their way But it does great on you unless of course you're the extremely laid-back and forgiving type Which I ain't good example here your cleaning lady who let's say you have only two or three days a week She comes in in the morning first thing she does she sweeps the floor Remember smart gringos and expats do not have carpets. They have tile or wood floors So they're very easy to clean maintain and keep looking nice Anyway, it's typical. She'll come in in the morning sweep all the floors Then she'll mop the floors down with some kind of disinfectant like the local brand of Lysol

[05:42] They call it disinfectante here tough to remember, huh? Disinfectante and she'll go over the whole floor every room and of course It'll be a little moist and it'll air dry in about maybe in half an hour Okay, so far so good. That'll leave a really clean floor. So then you're thinking what's wrong with that? Well, all of us love to see a nice clean floor like that However, your average cleaning lady will go through that very same process in your whole house about three times a day And of course that's clueless gringos. We let them in in the morning thinking they know exactly what to do And of course, we're off on our little missions that we do all day We're not paying much attention as long as she doesn't get in our way You know right in that not so great un-american novel and stuff And as long as we see her popping around corners and dusting and wiping down things, man

[06:30] We're thinking hey, she's doing her job and she's doing it good And we just can't believe we're getting all that for 12 to 15 bucks a day And you know, I'll tell you it really takes a gringo woman gay guy or metrosexual to see the obvious inefficiencies redundancies and errors because you know us average gringo guys All we care about is that someone's doing stuff. We don't want to do The stuff that if we didn't have a maid or cleaning lady would build up until our own living quarters got so disgusting We eventually have to dig out from under it. Maybe even fumigated ourselves Ladies, you know what i'm talking about So anyway, it actually took me years to figure out that my cleaning lady was cleaning my floor three times a day Now is that efficient? Hell no The fact of the matter is she should just come in

[07:16] Do all the other necessary things around the house and at the very end of the day right before she goes home She should sweep it all down and do the mopping Otherwise, you know the owner and whoever else is living in the house is tracking things all over the place From the moment she's done sweeping and mopping and remember when she's done mopping You've got a half an hour of moist floor there So anything that touches it's gonna leave a smudge which is why by noon the floor is all marked up and she does it again Then around four in the afternoon, she does it yet again Now, of course your cleaning lady might just do it two times a day or maybe four you never know In her mind, she's doing the absolute right thing. Just keeping that floor clean for the owner But let me tell you in a year there's hundreds of hours wasted

[08:01] Just doing the damn thing three times a day and that's not all one minute She'll be in the master bedroom doing all she's got to do in there And then she'll run downstairs get him up a pail some water some rags and some bathroom cleaning supplies Run up to that bedroom again go in the bathroom clean the toilet to sink the shower Whatever head to the next bedroom or guest room clean that room Then change over all her supplies and go into the bathroom there clean that do the toilet sinks and bathtub and stuff And you know after a while you start thinking man, that's not efficient at all She's gone up and down the stairs a dozen time to get supplies and water and stuff Why doesn't she just stay put on one level for a while? Well, they just don't have a system. So you'll probably have to give it to him Like for example, how about cleaning all the rooms first?

[08:48] And when that's all done hit all the bathrooms besides it's a hell of a lot more sanitary that way I mean you really don't want her making your bed right after she cleaned the toilet, right? Oh and guys by the way, they make beds too a hundred percent better than you can But they don't have a nice efficient standard plan of attack instead You know, they just doodle around and go from here to there hoping that they'll get it all done by four in the afternoon I guess oh and about the hygienic and sanitary aspect here Cleaning ladies maids and gardeners are not used to using a lot of water for anything Why? Because remember in their little houses the water is only on maybe Six or eight hours a day and it comes out of the faucet or spigot pencil thin looking like well Let's just say not looking good

[09:35] And you know first world people use between 80 and 100 gallons of water a day and latins Specifically the middle class lower middle class and poor latins use a quarter of that or less Therefore it's a guarantee. They just do not wash their hands as often or as well as they should then again Do you? In fact get this not so long ago. I walked into a public high school In fact, it was actually a school that specialized in music if you can believe that public school that specialized in music Well as bad as the public schools are here in latin america Sometimes in the big cities They'll have some schools with special programs to throw some money at that they got from you guessed it foreign do-gooders and ngo's But you'll never see that in the schools out in the bony, but that's another subject

[10:23] Anyway, I went to a band concert there Not because I wanted to but because i'm such a good guy actually i'm an easy touch I donated a trumpet and a little girl that ended up with it sent an invitation out and I Went just so well, you know kind of you have to do that kind of stuff once in a while By the way, this trumpet cost me all of about a hundred bucks Which isn't much of a big deal, but you have to choose your charities, right? And since i've always been kind of a b grade musician myself. Well, pretty good cause, huh? Anyway, not to toot my own horn bad pun Huh as I was walking through that school to go to their music assembly When I sat down in the hallway before going in I saw a big poster on the wall Showing a generic unisex kind of person, you know, neither male nor female. In fact, it was a health and hygiene poster

[11:11] Showing the parts of the body you should wash daily Taking into account that shortage of water in the average person's house And to a first world person it comes as a bit of a shock Since we've always had unlimited access to water where we come from but it made you feel good to know They're actually teaching the kids where they should wash where they should concentrate their efforts However soon enough you find out that latins don't think there's a shortage of water because they get what they get And it's always been like that It's not as if there's been a recent cutback and there was water 24 seven in the past It's not the case water has always been spotty almost never 24 hours a day when it's taken from municipal supplies That's why so many people have little plastic cistern collectors on their roofs

[11:57] They're really ugly terrible eyes sores, but they work Generally, they fill very slowly and at night because you see when people are asleep and no one's using the water There is some pressure But you knew that already right and a lot of middle class and upper middle class people have an electric booster pump So they can get pretty decent pressure and water flow during the day But unfortunately for at least half the population here the poor and the lower middle classes Well, they can't afford those pumps and most often they can't even afford one of those plastic cisterns So well you do without or actually you do what a lot of people in that position do they have some 55 gallon drums Around the house and they fill them up with rainwater That works fine But only half the year because you know, you've got the rainy season and the dry season each a half year long

[12:42] In fact, let me tell you what it's like when you're way out in the boonies and for example, you have to use the bathroom So you pull into a gas station or uh, seven eleven got a lot of names from down here They're called super bente cuatro which is super 24, which means they're open 24 hours, but they're really not It's just a name of a franchise spanish short of 24 hour joint, but the owner closes whenever he feels like it Makes sense, huh? This is latin america Anyway, you'll find even at gas stations that you know well from up in the first world like shell texaco or chevron Surprisingly enough sometimes there'll be no running water at all in the bathrooms. Not good, huh? Instead get this they'll have a 55 gallon drum or a garbage can filled with water right outside the bathroom door

[13:30] With a little plastic dish floating on top of it People use that to wash their hands if they feel like it Hmm, of course, you're not supposed to stick your hands in or wash your hands in the big barrel lest you Contaminate that big open barrel of water. Nope You're supposed to scoop some water into the dish and pour the water in the sink over your hands So then what about the toilet for a flush? Is there no water there either? Maybe maybe not 50 50 chance out in the boonies in the dry season But again that water there in the 55 gallon drum can be used to fill the toilet tank So you can get a flush if you need it But you'll have to lift the lid off the toilet tank and fill her up with the plastic bowl However, I don't know many first world gringas who are willing to go through that process

[14:18] Depends how many times you've had to rough it or if you know any backpacker tricks or not I know it sounds like disagreeable work But you know that's the way it is here in latin america especially way out in the boonies Where during the dry season water is scarce, which is why if you think about it for a second For almost all the latin male population the world is their urinal. I mean, come on if you're on the road Why would you have to hunt out a bathroom when half the time there won't be any running water? I know all this sounds a bit distasteful and disgusting but It's not as bad as all that if you're in a city or a town They almost always have bathrooms with running water at least for the toilet as for water in the sink Well, there's no guarantee there Oh and just a little trick here if you find the water is working in the toilet, but not in the sink You know what they've done don't you they've turned off the valve under the sink so you're unable to use the faucet there

[15:09] So why do you think they do that? Well, that's because as I mentioned a million times before Latins are not big on maintenance. It barely exists in their vocabulary So any sink that's a little bit older usually leaks and in a culture that's chronically short of water A leaky faucet could soon wipe out that water reserve in the cistern on the roof and you wouldn't want that So the tip here is and this is for ladies Especially if there's water in the toilet and the sink's not working put your hand under the sink locate the valve and turn it on You'll get water, but we were talking about maids and cleaning ladies, right? Well us gringo men really appreciate a cleaning lady coming in However, we have almost no interest in what she's doing after she's been hired as long as she seems busy

[15:55] That's okay with us, but it shouldn't be like that In fact, you'll find only if you have a significant female other half living in the house to point out what the cleaning lady is doing wrong And in all her inherent inefficiencies that situation could be going on for years and years and a guy would think things are just fine Meanwhile, there's tremendous room for improvement. Oh, and here's something that kind of relates to the water problem Your cleaning lady maid gardener and stuff will come from a household. That's very very tight with water So there's no way they'll be as clean or hygienic as we are or we think we are and I mean about anything So beware if your maid or cleaning lady is cooking for you There's just gonna be a hell of a lot of cross contamination going on I mean, let's face it You don't even want to think about the fact that your cleaning lady just cleaned the toilet in the guest room and suddenly she's in

[16:45] The kitchen chopping raw vegetables and tossing the salad with her hands Just check out those gigantic produce markets where ladies are forever handling driveway chickens They're wiping their hands and their aprons and touching money And then you walk by five minutes later and you see them sitting down eating tortillas in a sandwich with their fingers Of course and no running water in sight and you know It's your cleaning lady maid and gardener who have those same habits because they come from the same background and families Which is why expat eddy has a good rule of thumb there He owns restaurants, you know, and he can't afford for people that have montazuma's revenge I was talking about expat eddy at the beginning of the show, right? Anyway expat eddy told me another one of his maids bit the dust Nope, not because she was lazier a thief But as he explained she's just an airhead and repeats the same mistakes over and over

[17:34] For example, she destroyed his good real leather jacket. How'd she do that? Well, she put it in the washing machine with the rest of the clothes But that's just the beginning she repeatedly explodes things in the microwave He says and just recently she was the instigator of a complete microwave meltdown You see she continually misses the timing by one digit. So is that a three minutes 30? I know. I know you're thinking I would never use a microwave. Those things are bad for your health Well, just telling you eddy's experience here Well as it turned out there was a meltdown in the stove under her watch too wasn't the first time This time she heated up a pizza in the cardboard box and it caught fire And get this she took a brillo pad and she decided to clean the outside of eddy's stainless steel refrigerator

[18:22] And his nice expensive stainless steel kitchen extractor fan permanently damaging the finish. What a mess Nope, you can't fix that And you can't fault her for trying either, right? But here's what you can fault her for and why he fired her Turns out we're the victims of our own success now that there's cheap somewhat smartphones here in latin america Even shoeshine boys have them you can get one that got an internet connection for even as low as 25 bucks And even though cell phone minute rates are relatively cheap Turns out if you buy your minutes on those special three and four per one days You can call back to the states and do local calls for as little as three or four cents a minute But for locals who love to talk and text that really adds up Especially when a full-time worker makes only two or three hundred bucks a month. And now guess what?

[19:12] Local latins have discovered what's up. Yep. All you need now is a minimally intelligent Kind of smartphone for 20 or 30 bucks and you get an internet connection and you can install what's up and everyone's doing it down to the shoeshine boys now This is just a recent thing too. And why are they doing that? Well because it's like skype So what's up texting and regular calls are almost free because like skype they're going over the internet Instead of through the telephone lines that said cleaning ladies maids and gardeners have gotten into the act They've all got what's up and are becoming completely addicted to it the under 30 crowd Anyway, not to mention they're absolutely obsessed with selfies too and posting everything and anything on what's up

[20:00] In fact, listen to this the other day. I was taking an escalator in a big shopping center And there was a troop of indigenous kids and their parents look like they're out from the boonies for a day in the city What do you think they were doing? Taking multiple selfies on the escalator. Hey, whatever floats your boat, but talk about culture clash You get it? They're in the city taking selfies and posting things on the internet when they get home They're back to drinking contaminated water and cooking with wood Man, aren't humans the strangest animals? And believe me you could tell your cleaning lady that you don't want her to use the phone or tell her to leave it in Her purse or in the little maids quarters still many of them will find a way to sneak it out Now expat eddie says he has the very same problem at his restaurant only worse All his workers have was up now and everyone's addicted to their cell phones

[20:48] So he's got hard and fast rules for his workers but you can't really control the cleaning lady because well with a big house and garden like his She's all over the place and often out of sight for hours at a time as it happens eddie travels a lot He's often out of the country for weeks at a time So about six months ago eddie had some surveillance cameras installed in his house Now it's not that he didn't trust his gardener and maintenance man and cleaning lady It's just that he wanted to be able to check it on his smartphone when he's in another country traveling around You know, that's kind of the neat thing to do with surveillance cameras these days, right? Especially people with little kids They just cannot stand to be out of contact for more than two seconds with their precious little monsters Yes, first world parents can be overprotective idiots at times, but you won't see that down here in latin america

[21:38] I don't get it somehow. We all survive without baby monitors and yno meters, but I digress as usual Anyway, since eddie has surveillance cameras in all his restaurants It was an easy step for him to have some installed in his house Including multiple views of the gardens in the streets leading up to his place And he's got a couple of them in the big living spaces, too Now his system has a really nice motion detection feature that sends him an email when something's up He's got it set up so that it only kicks in when an object the size of a person walks past a camera That way dogs cats squirrels iguanas Hela monsters skunks and politicians won't set it off which leads directly to the reason why eddie fired his cleaning lady Well, he forgave all the other stuff the ruined leather jacket blown microwave the stove meltdown

[22:26] By the way, he wouldn't let her near the electric dryer or the dishwasher Well the thing that really got eddie pissed off and there was no turning back when some weeks ago He was on a little trip and he happened to flick on his smartphone Looking at the cameras around the house and his maid his cleaning lady was doing her thing cleaning the living room and Making poses around the house and taking selfies And in fact, she was posting all that stuff to her friends on what's up? Now if you think about that for a second, you know If you value your privacy and security last thing you want to do is to have the inside of your house Photoed and posted up all over the internet and you know People always ask me about security and safety here in latin america And you know what? It doesn't take much to be secure and safe and to have a very low profile Unless of course the interior of your nice expensive home is pasted up all over the internet

[23:16] And you think about the type of people that are looking at it. Remember There's a lot of petty crime and theft in latin america The attitude being you've got so much and i've got so little you've got two toasters and three radios and i've got none Not to mention down here Everyone seems to have a cousin or a shirt sleeve relative with one too many tattoos on his neck And you don't want them to see what your house looks like inside So that was the last draw for eddie and she had to go and you know, I don't blame him However, the photos of his house are now still out there on the internet So that calls for a new rule a new regulation when you hire a maid cleaning lady or gardener No selfies or photos around the property period. Oh by the way, speaking of cleaning ladies and maintenance guys and such

[24:02] There's this conversation I get into occasionally especially with new green expats and gringos They're wondering or actually I should say they feel guilty about paying those low salaries to the maids cleaning ladies and gardeners Would you feel uncomfortable paying someone 12 to 15 bucks a day? Would you pay more I say in the interview You should always ask them what they want to get paid and you'll find when you're off the gringo tourist trail Anyway, they know exactly what everyone else is getting and they'll ask for the same However, if you're on the gringo tourist trailer dealing with someone who actually speaks english Look out chances are the gouge is coming. So should you or shouldn't you? I mean pay more than the going rate This may sound crude and cruel But all you have to do is look at the case of costa rica

[24:48] The place where the gringo was flooded in for the last 20 or so years Many if not most of them felt sorry for the help and started out by paying them more than the going rate And now a maid gardener or cleaning lady makes about twice as much as their equivalent counterpart in almost all other latin countries So then you might say so what they're poor they deserve it However that wage inflation pretty much filtered through the entire country and now it's twice as expensive in many key sectors As adjacent off the gringo tourist trail countries In fact if you recall in a past show I mentioned that to get your permanent residency status in most latin countries off the gringo tourist trail You have to prove at least a thousand dollars a month income from a foreign source However in costa rica to get your permanent residency you have to prove more than twice that

[25:35] I think it's 24 hundred dollars a month now So what's that tell you that the trickle down effect has pervaded all levels of society there and now It's no longer financially advantageous For a gringo on a moderately tight budget to live in costa rica Let's do the numbers suppose you made fourteen or fifteen hundred dollars a month from social security You could easily have a live-in made in most other latin countries because you'll pay two to three hundred bucks a month However in costa rica you'll pay six hundred a month or more Which will eat up almost half of your social security check. So you're probably going to be cleaning your house yourself Now you might think this harsh or that i'm a jerk But really one of the main reasons you're coming down here to latin america is to take advantage of the very low cost of living

[26:21] And labor so my advice pay the going right to your help No more no less, but do give them extras that they'd never get working for a latin boss. Give them clothes food presents Give their kid a bicycle at christmas If someone in the family's sick or in the hospital help pay for the medicine Give the family one of your old computers There are a million and one ways you'd help out the families of people working for you Without wreaking havoc with the neighborhood salary structure. Of course, you can do what you want, but it's just my take on things That said with my january 2017 seminar kicking off in a few weeks I know a lot of you tried more scrambling to get in but just couldn't do it this time And really who knows if there's going to be a next time People are expecting very dire things up in the first world coming in the next few months

[27:07] So I really can't predict if there's going to be another seminar Which is why you really have to take a look at my new expat essentials course Just go to expat plan b.com Check out the videos and see how to get your plan b off the ground from right up there in cleveland Seattle new york new jersey, wherever it really is the next best thing to get in your boots on the ground www.expatplanb.com south of the border This is the expat files living in latin america If you want me to help you out with your own plan b just schedule a one-on-one consult Send me an email the expat files at gmail.com And if you want to learn how to move forward with your own plan b from right up there in the states go to www.expatplanb.com and check out my three videos. See ya nos vemos