On how much the families relied on the help of these foreign hired household helpers to care for the aging elderly population, translated…
Today, finally, Dun’s turn came to get the vaccination.
As she’d fed grandma, and taken grandma to the toilets, Dun carried grandma back to bed, then, my husband took over. She’d changed into her going out dress, with the red hijab, headed out with me.
Dun is not even five feet tall in height, came to my home, and, carried grandma up and down all day long, and yet, grandmother scratched and bit her lot. We had to trim grandma’s nails, and we’d told Dun, to put the mittens on grandma’s hands before she moved her around.
After the shots, the individuals needed to stay put for observations for fifteen minutes. We’d found ourselves a bench, and sat down next to each other.
Dun opened up her cell phone, showed me the new furniture she’d bought for her home in Indonesia.
“I bought all of these,” she’d said, I’d also, “bought two patches of land.” “My younger brother and sister didn’t need to work, not like me, working so very, hard.” She’d poured her sorrows out, “my younger sister’s husband works in Korea, gave her a lot of money; I got married at fifteen, both my husbands weren’t kind enough to me”.
Dun had a total of three children with her ex and her current, as she came to work, her children from her second marriage were still very young. In the six years, she’d only gone back home once, and the photos she’d sent back had two kids barefoot, one holding on Dun’s hand, staring at the camera shyly.
“Eli and Ava rushed me all day long, ‘mommy, mommy, you need to come back home by next January!’”
illustration from UDN.com
Dun’s contract with us is set to expire in three months. The kids are calling out to her, she said, that after this term, she’d, wanted to go home.
But, Dun has an old baby here in Taiwan! Every day, before she’d carried grandmother to bed, she’d always used one hand, wrapped around grandma’s shoulders, and, helped her sit for a bit by the edge of the bed, grandma, who’d become, infantile, would often, bury her head in Dun’s breasts, mumbled on, “mommy, mom”.
As the epidemic got to an all-time high, I’d handed Dun an envelope, with a sum of money, if the two of us were unfortunate, and contracted the virus, or that we needed to be, quarantined, Dun can use the sum to care for herself and grandma for a while. But, if Dun is the one, who’s, fallen ill, then, what would happen to the families back at her home country, and us? I’d lost, a lot of sleep in the nights, when the night fell deep.
We are almost home, I’d told Dun, that she just got her vaccinations, her arms will be sore, that she shouldn’t carry grandma now, she should feed grandma in bed. And yet, as I changed my clothes and came downstairs, Dun had already, moved grandma onto her wheelchair, and readied to feed her. She put the bib on grandma, and, used the Mandarin she wasn’t fluent enough in, ranted on, “Dun can’t leave granma. Mr. and Mrs. are close to seventy, can’t carry granma. If Dun go back to Indonesia, who will carry granma, who will feed granma?”
And so, this, is how this hired help, because a member of your family that you can’t live without, because the family is in need of this foreign nurse’s help to care for the elderly, and, the migrant worker had a bad past, and, she’d, found her life in working for this family in the country, and they’d, treated her as one of their families too.