Weird Work - Part 1

I read on MSN this week about strange jobs that people had tried...I don't remember many on the list, but the person who worked as a "jam doughnut filler" caught my attention.

High on my list of weird work would be getting paid to visit an elderly man through a home care agency. All of his physical needs (cooking, cleaning, hygiene etc.) were provided for by other people. So his adult children were footing the bill for me to visit for six hours per week and do something fun. I could go whenever I was free. I could stop in several times during a week or plan a full day activity. Any costs incurred were fully imbursed. So, as an 18 year old woman I got paid to take a 80-something year old man:

for a ferry ride across the harbour on a sunny morning
to watch a movie and eat popcorn on a rainy afternoon
to go for a walk in the park
to play board games and drink beer
to take fold-up chairs to a National Park and sit for an hour reading the newspaper...

While I thought it was a pretty good deal I didn't exactly realise his version of what he thought was going. One day driving home, he turned to me and said gently, "I am grateful for your kind attentions but I feel I ought to make it clear that I have no intentions of proposing marriage!" Jolly good. Glad we made that clear...

I read a report this week about another kind of weird work right here in Phnom Penh. For those who are willing to put in 60-hour weeks they earn US$70 per month. (That's about 30 cents an hour.) Or, for those who prefer a more relaxed 8 hours a day, 6 days a week, they bring home $45 per month. (That is roughly 23 cents an hour.) Who are "they"? They are some 230 000 garment factory workers.

They are so keen for the work that many pay an entry fee to get the job. An October 2005 report surveyed 218 households that had members working in the garment industry. 44% had paid to get a job in their current workplace. The mean amount paid for this opportunity? US$51.98 (mean is right if you ask me...)

But the story continues...of those who paid fees 81% had to borrow money to do so. And 35% of those who borrowed money couldn't pay it back without selling assets- pigs, cows, land.

And yet there are almost a quarter of a million women in this little country who affirm that the privilege of this work has brought them more confidence, greater self-esteem, more respect from siblings and a greater place of importance in their family. For 23-30 cents an hour they reckon it is worth it. And this to me is stranger than a non-marriage proposal by an 80-something year old man whose family paid me to be kind.