A Mother's Sacrifice; A Domestic Helper's Plight

Posted by May October 24, 2022

A Mother's Sacrifice; A Domestic Helper's Plight

We have a part-time helper and her name is Ni Ni. She is from Myanmar. She has been helping us since 2020. How can I describe her? Trustworthy, humble, quiet and hardworking. You know after going through several helpers who are the ones who are just passing time and who really puts their hearts into work.

Ni Ni works for her family. When you are paired with a helper like that, you know you're bound to have a reliable help. If they are here for pocket money, the focus is different.

It's funny how we crossed path. Helpling, a part-time helper agency, reached out to us for a collaboration two years ago. They assigned Ni Ni to me and I could never let her go again. We chat sometimes while she worked around the house; always when I initiate the conversation [I like it that she isn't talkative]. We would talk about her job, her happiness, her plans going forward and her family. That is when I learnt she has a son as old as Ewan. Ten years old.

This age *sigh* They are still very sweet, still dependent on mommy but with that little streak of defiance. Boys at this age are starting to discover the art of assertion. Their emotions are probably a little bit more bumpy and they may use harsher words.

I wanted Ni Ni's son to know that it breaks his mother's heart to be away from him for so long and it wasn't a choice of hers. I was afraid his sadness from not having his mom around would turn into anger and then animosity. The most heart-breaking thing for a mother to hear is, "My grandma/aunt is more a mom to me than my mommy." I know because I wrote a composition in Primary School before, "My Maid Is My Mother". How can I put the point across that his mom sacrificed herself to work abroad? Like how my mother sacrificed her time at home with me to be a working mom during a time when it was not common. That we children, can be guided to see the struggles our moms put in for us and not lightly brush it away with, "She doesn't love me."

My father recommended I find this book, “My Mother’s Half-Built House” written by a group of students from Raffles Institution, for Ewan and Faye understand the struggles of domestic helpers and migrant workers in Singapore. To show them what simple bliss like having the family at the dining table together is something we had took for granted. Ni Ni hasn’t had a meal with her 10 year son for at least three years now.

I decided that this picture book would be a great conversational tool for him to realise his mother's reasons for working in Singapore. I included a note for him and had it translated into Burmese with the help of my IG community.

“You have been a brave boy all these while with mama working in Singapore. Because of COVID and the Military Coup, she couldn't come home to see you. Know that she misses and loves you very much. She is working very hard in Singapore and hopes she can return home to you every single day. Hope you like this book and from it, will understand the reasons your dear mother is away from you for so many years.”

၊ သားက သတ္တိရှိတဲ့ ကောင်လေးတစ်ယောက်ပါ။ အမေက စင်္ကာပူမှာအလုပ်လုပ်ရင်း COVID နဲ့ အာဏာသိမ်းမှုကြောင့် သားနဲ့တွေ့ဖို့ အိမ်ပြန်မလာနိုင်ဘူး။ မေမေက သားကို လွမ်းပြီး အရမ်းချစ်တယ်ဆိုတာ သိပါစေ။ မေမေက စင်္ကာပူတွင် အလုပ်ကြိုးစားပြီး နေ့တိုင်း အိမ်ပြန်နိုင်မည်အောင် မျှော်လင့်ပါသည်။ ဒီစာအုပ်ကို သဘောကျပြီး သားရဲ့ချစ်လှစွာသောအမေ သားနဲ့ နှစ်ပေါင်းများစွာ ဝေးကွာရတဲ့ အကြောင်းရင်းကို နားလည်လိမ့်မယ်လို့ မျှော်လင့်ပါတယ်။

This morning when I read the story to Ni Ni, we broke down in tears and embraced in a tight hug. I trembled and controlled my voice as I summarised the story. At first she smiled and acknowledged. Then her lips quivered and she fell silent. She said, “Thank You Mdm.” and we cried a river.

Even though she is only our part-time helper and I see her only once every two weeks, I cannot help but feel deep empathy, love and trust for this girl. I credit our relationship to her earnest and humble attitude towards her work. I see her pride in all that she does and it isn’t just a job to her! Her employer must have noticed the same and this the reason why she is promoted and on a 5-day work week with benefits like annual leave, health insurance, training and fair working conditions. She is now the person who ensures the helpers assigned to you uphold a certain standard like she does! Well, she tries.

As I prepare a Christmas gift box for Ni Ni's son, I realised he was extremely small for his age. A 10 year old smaller than Faye. He doesn’t seem to be eating enough nor is he able to go to school because of Covid and the Military Coup. Ni Ni says his sister is educated and is the one teaching him English at home now.

This book is available at National Library and my kids had read it over a couple of times. I teared the first time I read it too.

Raffles Institution published another book together with "My Mother's Half-Built House". It is titled, "My Father's Skyscraper Dreams". It is about a little girl in India yearning for her father's return from Singapore where he worked as a Migrant Worker. She does not understand why Singaporeans think her baba is dirty and lazy. Her thoughts, "My father is not lazy. He has to work hard in a noisy and hot construction site. He must stay alert and cautious as carelessness can cost lives."

Do consider loaning these books from the library and have it dissected with your kids. Note that these books are no longer in print and are not for sale.

About Helpling: I have engaged some other helpers from them before and I would like to be very upfront about my review. There cannot be two Ni Nis. Even if Ni Ni seems to be a great fit for my family, she may not be for yours because our family dynamics and expectations are different. Some of whom I've tried just aren't meant for me while some did impress me. If you are thinking of engaging a helper from Helpling, you can take $25 off your first service with referral code "LIANGMAY25".

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