Dhay, the Supermaid

In general our experience with maids has been that what they don’t steal, they break. Keep that in mind as I tell you about Dhay, the Supermaid.
Dhay, the Supermaid, came to us early this year from Bicol, which is the southernmost part of the island of Luzon, where we live. Her real name is Fe, which would be spelled Fay in the U.S. Like so many Filipinos, she has carried her nickname into adulthood. Dhay, which is pronounced as in Princess Di, is short for Inday, which means sweetheart, among other things. I would spell Dhay without the “h” but then all my western friends would be calling her “Day”, like Doris Day. Even worse, the kids call her Ate Day,(ah-te Die, Big Sister Day) which would be read as "eight day", as in "eight-day vacation." So on paper she is Dhay the Supermaid or SuperDhay.
Dhay is probably in her 50’s, maybe a little above 5 feet tall, about 160 cm, stocky but neither fat nor hard, with short grey hair and a round face. Unlike many poorer Filipinos she has good teeth, perhaps because she brushes them after every meal, just like we were told to do, but never did, when we were children. She is placid, smiling, quiet. She never ventures a comment on the ill behavior of the children, or my outbursts when they exhaust my patience, which happens regularly throughout most days. She calls me “Sir” and Junko “Madam” but she is in no way obsequious. She speaks quietly but firmly and if she can be induced to give an opinion, it is always “spot on,” as the Brits say. She does not look after the children, except in life-threatening situations, does not discipline them. She does not enter our bedroom or bathroom.
Dhay keeps the house clean, washes the constant flow of dirty dishes, cooks three meals a day, 7 days a week, for the 6 boys in the kennel and washes the clothes for the six of us, plus her own, by hand. (Our washing machine has broken for more than a year, a legacy from previous maids.) She also cleans up after the dogs, who steadfastly refuse to be house trained, and in fact seem to come in from outside specifically to deposit their body fluids. She is the one who bears the brunt of dealing with the cats’ propensity to urinate on mattresses, sheets, pillows, towels and any of the clothing that is strewn around on the floor. Now that Junko is starting to raise gamecocks, she also helps move some of them in and out of the house every evening and morning, at least until we can get more hen houses built. She starts working at about 5:45 every morning, seven days a week, and generally washes up the dishes around 8 PM before she goes to bed. In her spare time she sweeps up the yard. During the dry season she watered the plants. On occasion she makes headdresses for school projects. She is the one we go to when we can’t find something. She has made a tremendous difference in our life, not just because of all the work that she does, which as you can see is tremendous, but because of the way she manages to organize the chaos and disorder that is a natural outward reflection of Junko’s and my disordered states of mind. You can see the difference she makes by comparing the relatively ordered state of the rest of the house, despite the presence of four undisciplined children, with the clutter and disorder in our bedroom. For all this she receives the princely sum of P4,000, about $90, per month.
I am repeatedly or continually amazed by Dhay’s serenity, placidity, her seemingly unshakable calm. So a couple of months ago I was shocked to see her sobbing uncontrollably. I thought that surely someone in her family had died or been injured but Junko quickly informed me that Dhay’s carabao back in Bicol had been stolen, mother and calf. It was a huge financial loss, almost a year’s wages, and she had saved for years to get the money to buy it. Reports were that the tracks led to a road, where they might have been put on a truck and taken away. It sounded hopeless. After the crying was over, Dhay seemed to straighten her shoulders and informed us that the next day she was going back to Bicol to get her carabao back. The trip to Bicol usually involves a three-hour bus ride north to Manila and then a twelve-hour bus ride south but Dhay got her son, who works somewhere east of here, to take her on his motorcycle, a distance of several hundred kilometers. I thought it was an admirable but pointless trip. I later learned that on the way she stopped at all the markets where carabao are traded and put out the word to all the traders that she would not claim the carabao but only wanted to know who had sold it to them. This apparently was interpreted to mean that the thief was a dead man. She contacted the people at the checkpoint where any trucks would pass and gave them a description of the pair. She contacted the barangay officials, who should have been responsible for investigating the theft but they weren’t interested. It’s possible that she contacted the NPA, the communist rebels who sometimes serve as a de facto police force when officials are bought off or too intimidated to provide justice. We will probably never know about that. What ever she did it worked. Someone finally tipped her off that her carabao were in the field of a neighbor a short distance from her home. He was a shady character, without any visible means of support, and claimed that the carabao had wandered in and he did not know who it belonged to, despite the fact that Dhay had spread the word throughout the barangay. A week after she left, Dhay was back, her carabao and calf safely ensconced in their old pasture. And that is the way things have remained. No prosecution, no retribution. Still, I wouldn’t want to be that neighbor of hers.
A few days ago Dhay informed us that she would go back home on Monday, which was yesterday, to visit her family. I hope she comes back. I've done laundry by hand before and it's not my favorite chore.
And I wonder about that neighbor's life expectancy.