June 5, 2006
With all the orientation and reading we did before we came here,
we were simply not prepared for some aspects of life in Pakistan.
One of the most difficult things for us has been the matter of
employing household staff. I’ve been raised in the strong
Dutch Calvinist tradition of hard work and self-reliance; my parents
have always told me that my first sentence was “I do it
myself!” And while our flat with 12 to 15 ex-pat teachers
in Cairo where I taught as a young adult was carefully tended
by Abdel Zaher, he was employed by the school rather than us personally.
Here, there is an expectation that the ex-pats will provide much-needed
jobs to poor Pakistanis as housekeepers, cooks, gardeners, or
drivers. Within hours of our arrival, we were presented with people
who needed work.
And they keep coming. There isn’t a week that goes by that
someone is not at our gate with papers or appearing in my office
seeking employment. There is lobbying by relatives for jobs for
their family members, heart-felt pleas from people recently returned
from working in the Gulf, inquiries from people working elsewhere
and looking for a better job. Some are clearly looking to play
on our sympathies; others are obviously desperate. We cannot possibly
employ them all, nor are there enough jobs available among our
ex-pat colleagues or on campus to solve the unemployment problem.
Most of those coming are Christians, for several reasons: because
Christians are among the poorest people here and often make a
living as household workers; because they want to work with Christians
or Westerners (who are assumed to be Christians); because there
is more job security on the Forman campus than many other places.
We are living in a context where middle class families almost
always employ one servant. And that’s what they call them.
The houses on campus have “servants’ quarters”
attached to them. We have to admit that terminology has made us
squirm. The fact is that labor saving appliances are in short
supply over here. There are lots of unemployed people desperate
for work, and housework is so time consuming and demanding that,
in pure economic terms, there is plenty of supply and demand to
go around. And so it is that we have come to employ a cook and
a housekeeper. There are those reading this who will probably
think, "Isn’t that elitist? How can you feel good about
that?" Honestly, we don’t know sometimes how we feel
about it. In the end, however, we believe on the whole it is part
of what we need to do here. We are providing a living for two
families who are truly grateful for the wages we pay. We treat
them with respect and value their work; from what we hear, that
in itself is a blessing to them. It has required us to think of
things from a different set of eyes and humbled us in ways we
could never have imagined. Here is one story as an example.
I came home for lunch one day and was sitting in a chair in the
living room, reading the newspaper after my bowl of soup. Saddiq
and Sam, our household staff, came to see me to express concerns
about something. They stood, I sat. Offering them a seat is always
met with polite refusal: today was no different.
“You know, Madame, you Western people do not understand,”
Saddiq said. “It is a matter of honor for us to serve you
and to show you respect. We show you respect by always standing
in your presence. We honor you by respecting your things and treating
them as if they belong to us. We take care of our own things so
we will take care of your things. It is our duty to cook for you
and to clean for you. You pay us a salary and treat us well. We
are happy working for you. We do not need to sit on your furniture;
our place is to stay in the kitchen or outside. We will come to
your living room to cool off in the heat and to rest, but we will
bring our stools from the kitchen or stand quietly. We have learned
to honor you by showing you respect in this way. This is the way
we Pakistanis do this.”
I was humbled. They really do see things from a very different
perspective and in their very honest and humble way, they were
showing me what “servant leadership” is all about.
And I was reminded of this passage from Ephesians:
Slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling,
in singleness of heart, as you obey Christ; not only while being
watched, and in order to please them, but as slaves of Christ,
doing the will of God from the heart. Render service with enthusiasm,
as to the Lord and not to men and women, knowing that whatever
good we do, we will receive the same again from the Lord, whether
we are slaves or free. 9 And, masters, do the same to them.
Stop threatening them, for you know that both of you have the
same Master in heaven, and with him there is no partiality (Eph.
6: 5-9).
This has always seemed an anachronistic passage to me, one that
had only allegorical relevance in my modern American life. Here,
it is real and alive. While Sam and Saddiq are not “slaves”
in any sense of the word, substitute “servant” or
“housekeeper” in the passage and you will perhaps
read it as I do now. They render service with enthusiasm; they
seek to honor God and us in all they do, and they live simple
lives in service as a testament to their faith. They are walking
sermon illustrations every day.
And so we ask you to pray for them, just as we did when we wrote
about them last month. Saddiq’s wife is not in good health,
and he has injured his shoulder in a fall. Sam worries about how
he will pay for his daughter’s wedding and his son’s
education. We value their dedicated service and daily support
of our lives here. We only hope we are treating them as we are
admonished to do in the passage above.
And in other news, Robert Johnson is now the Rev. Dr. Robert
Johnson, having received his Ph.D. on Saturday, May 27. He returned
safely to Pakistan on May 30 and we’re glad to have him
back!
The boys’ school is out for the summer and we are working
hard to find ways to keep them busy. They will be doing some fundraising
in June for our planned trip in August to Azad Kashmir (the name
used in Pakistan for the Pakistan-controlled park of Kashmir)
to help rebuild a school in a village devastated by last October’s
earthquake. We are excited to be able to help as a family in this
small way. We’ll join a group of 40 Forman students, fellow
faculty members, and residents of the village we plan to help
as we build a simple structure that can serve as a school, mosque,
and community meeting place. The entire village is living in tents,
about nine kilometers from the Indian border. We’ll live
in tents, too, washing our clothes in the river and experiencing
firsthand what it is like to rebuild when you have lost everything.
Just prior to our trip to Azad, we’ll be in northern Pakistan
for a month studying Urdu. We’ve found we just cannot dedicate
the time and attention to language study with full-time jobs and
family needs. We’ll be gone, then, a total of six weeks,
all of it spent in the mountains of Pakistan where the average
temperatures are well below 100 degrees F! Since we have edged
up to 115 degrees F with lots of rain and dust storms recently
here in Lahore, we are looking forward to having at least part
of the summer at higher altitudes! We’ll have limited access
to email from July 1 through August 15, so please be patient if
it takes us a while to respond to messages.
We hope the summer brings a chance for a change of pace for you
as well. We appreciate your concern and interest in our work and
value your prayers and good wishes.
Marianne Vermeer
The 2006 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p.
112 |
