Laura’s abroad in Amman, Jordan until Dec. 19.

After listening to the call to prayer five times a day for the past three months, I decided to get back in touch with my own religion. Two weeks ago I went with an American friend and my host family’s Sri Lankan maid to St. George’s Cathedral, which is a relatively new church here in Amman. Since the Mass was only in Arabic, I didn’t recognize any of the songs and I couldn’t follow along with any of the prayers. It felt more like Arabic class than a church service to me, so last Sunday I leapt at the chance to go to an English-speaking Mass in Abdali.

I went with my host family’s 19-year-old maid and three of my American friends. The priest’s thick Boston accent and all the familiar songs and prayers made me feel like I was back in America. The churchgoers, however, were nearly all Southeast Asian girls and women. With varying degrees of fluency, the women played guitar, sang and led prayers in English. My host family’s maid smiled with delight as she looked around the church and pointed out other girls whom she recognized as Sri Lankan. As we lined up for communion, she exchanged a shy wave and hello with a Sri Lankan nun.
After the Mass, the nun approached us and explained that she worked in a non-profit agency that helped maids who have been abused or need any sort of help. Coincidentally, one of my friends who came to Mass was planning on visiting that agency the next day. For her research project, my friend has been studying the maids in Amman. It’s been heartbreaking to hear some of her stories. Last week she visited an embassy that had nearly two hundred girls and young women living in the basement and parking garage. Some of the maids had come to the embassy because of abuse or because their employers had refused to pay their salaries or renew their visas. They are living in the embassy in limbo, unable to work in Jordan or return back to their country. They wait for the intercom to call their name, the signal that they can finally go home. Some have been living in the bowels of the embassy for almost two years.

Many of my American friends here also have maids in their homestays and we’ve talked about the experience at length. My friends and I often feel uncomfortable because none of us grew up with maids in the U.S. and we don’t really know how to deal with the family dynamics here in Amman. The maids are usually around our own age or younger, but have such a different role than us in the house. We get beds and eat at the table with our families, and the maids often sleep on the floor and eat separately. The maids do our laundry and clean the house while we travel and relax at cafes. My friends and I often talk about the guilt we feel that we can go out and explore while our maids stay in the house all day, every day. Yet, many of my friends and I have friendly, often conspiratorial, relationships with the maids. My host family’s maid is a sort of ally and friend. During Ramadan while the rest of the family was fasting, we ate our daytime meals together and talked together in a mix of English and Arabic. I showed her pictures of my family and we browsed through pictures of Sri Lanka on the Internet. Since we’re both outsiders in the family, we often roll our eyes or share a giggle when the family is being especially loud or obnoxious.

I’m going home in just a few weeks, but my host family’s maid is staying until August 2010. I can’t imagine being so disconnected from my home like she is. I have the luxuries of Skype, Facebook and a cell phone to keep in touch, but my host family’s maid just waits for her weekly phone call from home. Employers generally discourage the maids from making friends and prefer to keep them isolated, but I certainly hope that my host family’s maid is able to make friends at church. After all, if I didn’t have my American friends to talk to, I don’t know how I could have survived the past few months here in Jordan with my sanity intact.

Read Laura’s previous post or next post | Meet the rest of our abroad bloggers