Me and my maids....and why I hate cooking

I live in South America. We're temporarily rich and so I have maids.

It's good, bad and ugly.

How lovely that I don't have to mop floors, scrub dishes, do laundry nor cook. Especially that last one. I hate cooking. I would rather be responsible for mopping twice a week than cooking every day, three times a day.

Yes, of course, like most members of my class I like going to Whole Foods, discovering what produce has been brought in from farms within a 100-mile radius, buying meat and eggs from free range, antibiotic-free, organic-fed animals and then with a glass of wine in hand and NPR switched on, cooking up something delicious. But for me the demands of feeding children several times a day and trying to do so with something other than just hot dogs and Kraft mac'n'cheese is akin to repetitive factory work....pure drudgery.

As a working mom, it was the chore I hated the most. Having to plan dinner. As a mom not working outside the home, I tried to get into the swing of meal prep, bringing out my cookbooks and making it as interesting as possible but it was to no avail... I only like cooking sometimes and my meat, no matter how faithfully I follow my grandmothers' recipes, is always too dry.

And so, a few months ago, in the throes of morning sickness and gagging every few minutes as I readied my children for school, I hired a second maid to do the work for me.

A second maid???? Well yes, my first maid is simply incapable of getting to work on her own before 10 and only gets to work at 9:30 because our company-assigned driver picks her up everyday at the train station. Do I need 2 maids? No, of course not, but I feel bad firing the lazier one. So here I am with 2 maids.

The maids make a good deal more than the minimum wage and earn more than professionals here working in low-rung, white collar jobs for international companies. But, like over half the population here, they're employed in the informal economy. So basically it's just up to luck whether they're employed by someone who tries to follow national standards for vacation pay, sick leave etc.

I'm constantly wondering, what's fair and what's exploitative? Unlike those blissful college days when I immersed myself in Third World studies and heady discussions of economic justice and equality, comfortably distanced from anything remotely real, I'm now the one signing checks for an army of brown people who are expressly employed to do work I don't want to do. I'm the 30-year old "Senora" to women far older and experienced than myself.

The work they do not only includes the household chores I mentioned above, but also caring for my children in the afternoons, while I send out oft-ignored requests for interviews, queries for freelance work, blog etc.

One of the maids, the less-bustling one, is constantly asking for "loans" the equivalent of her monthly check, or for about $500. From experience, I only know that these loans are loans because I make it clear I will deduct from her check an amount that she is comfortable paying each check until its paid off. Otherwise, they wouldn't be loans, they would be fairly regular gifts of cash that I'm just not prepared to make. Is that wrong? I often wonder is it fair?

When my weekly grocery bill equals her 2-week pay, is it unjust of me to expect her to pay us back. Is it patronizing to expect anything else? With such a skewed balance of power is there really any way to be "fair"?