FDW

Here in Singapore people love to use abbreviations and initials. It took me a little while to get used to it: For example, CBD stands for Central Business District (downton), PIE means Pan-Island Expressway (A highway) and MOM is Ministry of Marriage. Since today is the last day of the year, we gave our FDW today and tomorrow as days off. But what is a FDW? A FDW is a Foreign Domestic Worker. Sometimes they are also called helpers or even Aunties. When she came to our house, Sarah Beth thought she was a servant but we corrected her, she is here to help us with the cleaning and cooking.

It is very common for families to have their own FDW and for most of the ex-pats (ex-patriates, or foreigners working outside of their native country) it is almost expected to have one. Most of the helpers are women from the Philippines or Indonesia. They usually come from poor families; our own helper mentioned her family made the equivalent of USD $40 per month. Thus coming to Singapore means a much better way of life so they can help their own family. The rules for employing a FDW are quite rigorous: The employer (me) has to pay taxes, she cannot work outside of our house, she cannot work part time with anybody else, she has to live in my house and the contract is for about 2 years.

At first we did not like to idea of hiring a person to live with us, it is simply something that we are not used to, specially in the USA. But our helper turned out to be very useful and smart and the kids like her, so we are quite happy with her. When I go to the kids’ activities (soccer, etc), it is very common to see western children being attended to by their helpers, most of them Philippinas.