So, it wasn’t until my friend happened to mention underwear the other day, that I realized how culturally insensitive I am.
I have been handing over dirty…and rather sweaty…laundry to this lovely Burmese woman in my neighborhood for oh…the past year. And every time I collect my clothes, they come back smelling of gentle soap, neatly pressed and folded. Even my underwear comes back looking like a crisp linen napkin you might be served at a five star restaurant. Now, although I am forever grateful for this service after having done the hand washing thing for a few months and never getting anything quite clean, it was becoming a bit expensive. So, I decided to try to get a monthly rate out of her.
Now seeing that my limited Burmese of “Hot no?” and “I don’t understand” and “grandma/grandpa” wasn’t going to suffice a business negotiation of this matter, the next time I stopped at the laundry shop, I called my colleague/neighbor/and friend Sawthwee, to negotiate for me. Now to understand the awkwardness that is about to ensue, you need to understand a bit about Sawthwee.
Sawthwee is a small framed, mild-mannered Karen man who is going on 30 but looks like he’s rounding the corner of 19. He is kind and soft-spoken and softly giggles when discussing something that may embarrass him or when he has no idea how to respond, which seems to happen a lot when I talk with people…hmmm. He is one of the few people I work with who lives in my neighborhood and therefore, according to me, was a good person to talk with my laundry lady. Oh, and he’s also fluent in Burmese, being from Burma and all.
So, standing in the blazing sun with the “laundry lady”, as I suppose she has been deemed, I call Sawthwee and ask him to ask her if I can pay by the month and if so, how much would it cost. Two simple questions requiring, according to my calculations, approximately two minutes worth of conversation, or 2 Baht in phone minutes. So, I pass my phone to L Squared and let the negotiations begin. Well after 2 minutes, I begin to get fatigued standing there in the sun and take a seat on the bench beside the shop. After 10 minutes, I start to wonder what on earth they could be discussing…her family? His new motorbike? The political situation? And then I hear her laughing hysterically and I immediately discount my previous theories of their discussion. Now I’m worried. They couldn’t possibly be talking about me. I’ve been nothing but a loyal, respectful customer this past year, hardly something to laugh about no matter what type of dull sense of humor one may have. Finally after about 15 minutes, a waterfall of sweat down my back, and the point of needing to buy a new phone card, L Squared passes the phone back to me and I have the following conversation with Sawthwee:
ME: So? What was all that about?
SAWTHWEE: Yeah…she says that’s fine. You can pay by the month for 500 Baht.
ME: And? What else did you talk about.
SAWTHWEE: Uh…nothing really.
ME: Well, in that case, there’s another thing I wanted to ask you…a sort of cultural question. I was talking with my friend the other day and she said she never gives her underwear to the laundry lady because they see it as extremely unclean and disrespectful. Is that true? Because she’s been washing my underwear for a year now.
SAWTHWEE: Actually, that’s what we were talking about (nervous giggle, as he tends to do when talking about an uncomfortable subject matter).
ME: (Thinking…”oh so you weren’t going to tell me…thanks!”) Well, is it okay?
SAWTHWEE: Actually no, not really. She can’t touch it and neither can the washing machine, so she has a little girl clean it by hand.
ME: What!?!?! Not only have I offended this nice old lady, but I’m endorsing child labor! I had no idea…I’m so sorry.
SAWTHWEE: (Nervous giggle)
So, after that I decided I had to apologize profusely to this woman. And suddenly realized (again) as I was attempting to do so, that my Burmese wouldn’t cover such an apology. So I resorted to the tried and true charades method of bowing deeply with my hand over my heart and pointing to my crotch.
Guess I’m back to hand washing my knickers. I think that’s the least I can do for that little girl.
