Tuesday, March 15, 2005

FICA

Forgot to write this in the last post...as we were leaving after our second visit we noticed a bunch of the baby house workers, including the director and doctor, walking from one of the outbuildings back into the baby house carrying plastic grocery sacks. The sacks seemed fairly heavy and Jim noticed that they were first weighing things on a scale on the sidewalk before carrying them inside. I thought maybe it was a load of potatoes or something and they were weighing out portions for the kitchen, although why they wouldn't just do that in the kitchen I couldn't figure out. Then this guy got out a big hatchet knife and started hacking away and we realized it was some kind of raw meat. By this time Vera arrived and we asked her what was up. She said that she heard they had bought a whole cow at the bazaar (you can buy an entire butchered cow or sheep) and were dividing it up. It is more economical that way and I guess the babyhouse pays for the cow so the workers don't have to pay for the meat at the time of purchase--the wages on their next paycheck will be garnished (no pun intended) to pay for their share.

Kind of like FICA.

No comments:

Post a Comment