Servants

I have had servants at home since arriving in Venezuela in 1961, 45 years ago. I am not even sure one should admit it! Servants are wonderfully useful, and truth to tell I could not now live without someone to do my daily laundry and cooking. You could argue that it frees me to do other important and useful things in life such as writing! Servants are so cheap! You may pay a servant only US$100 per month plus food and lodging. A real bargain for a soul. It is lucky that populations continue to grow so fast, thus providing surplus labour which will eventually swell the pool of available servants!

It is not all cakes and ale! I cannot find things that only yesterday I put down in a safe place I know of. A continual tidying-up process goes on leaving me a stranger in my own house. When asked, the servant denies all knowledge of any artifact put down. Food that I buy disappears, and I am left eating 'laing' and rice when I had hope to be eating cakes and ale!

I get my own drinks from the kitchen - as Welsh ploughboy ought to - instead of calling for them on a tray. I still feel a sense of shame why I cannot do these things for myself, and no doubt a lot of people reading this essay will dislike reading my admission or even my truthfulness. Before retiring years ago, I even had a driver! Perhaps it stems from the day in 1944 when I came home for the holidays from my expensive school, and raised my cap politely to our gardener. My mother roundly ticked me off for raising my hat to an inferior. I still do not quite understand why in a world where equality and democracy are said to be important, very little effort is made by governments - and the international great and the good - to change to the status quo.

Some of us wonder why the world is not a better place, and I have slowly come to the conclusion that the elite from the ruling classes in every country of the world like it that way. However poor a country may be overall with people subsisting on US$2 per day, having surplus labour makes life so much easier for the ruling classes and elite, who may represent only 10% of the total population. Anyone who is anyone does not wish to see much change in the availability of servants. Change takes place but hopefully oh so slowly.