Laundry soap in 20-kilo bags, gallon-cans of milk powder, 10-Kilo bags of rice, 10-packs of Dove soap, chocolates, cookies, shampoo, conditioner, traditional Sri Lankan saris and six-dollar pairs of jeans, a brand new fridge, still-in-the-box IKEA computer desk, lofted bedframe, second hand queen mattress, and various baby supplies. Our nanny Chamri has been with us for almost two years now, and these are the items which, over that period, she has slowly beens stockpiling under her bed and in our various closets, in preparation for a major cargo shipment to support her family back home, in Colombo. By her estimate, she is sending enough milk powder to last her husband's extended family for an entire year. The fridge will be the family's first functional one in over four years, and the lofted bedframe is for a home-health worker she hopes to employ to take care of her aging grandma.
I only came to understand the extent of her project two nights ago, while we were having dinner, when a festival of Sri Lankan friends of Chamri's materialized in our front garden, with tape, giant rolls of plastic and other random salvaged packing materials, to help her get ready for the cargo guys who were due to pick up her shipment the next morning. Since it was still over a hundred degrees out there, it was a hot project, undertaken with the jovial industriousness that Santa in America might possess on Christmas Eve. While we worked through dinner, and offered help that was politely refused, "No, no Madum, we are not needing any help", Chamri went back and forth past the dining room carrying the vast stores of sundry goods out to her friends, who arranged and rearranged it, tied it, taped it and bundled it, into a huge mass of lumpy gray freight, with gifts and goodies of a very special sort.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
$100 bills... Just make it easier for her... $100 bills
Funny, and yes, I tried to discuss the economics with her - Maybe send money, or bring money, or go there over summer and buy stuff for them. But there are a few issues: She doesn't feel the cash would be well spent, if just handed over. And some of the most needed items for her family are either unavailable in Sri Lanka, or not available in the economy sizes we have here.. TVs for example are prohibitively expensive, and milk powder can only be bought in small relatively expensive containers.
Post a Comment