Beirut. Photo: WikicommonsRubka* is an Ethiopian migrant worker in Lebanon who is a live-in domestic worker for Tete Mona, an elderly Lebanese woman. Rubka also manages a ‘garderie’ for Tete Mona – an unregistered daycare where around 7 Ethiopian migrant women pay Tete Mona USD100 a month for daycare for their children aged between 1 and 6 years. The mothers all live and work locally, and drop their children off in the morning and pick them up as soon as they have finished work. The children are fed their lunch, and spend most of the day watching children’s TV and/or playing with each other in the small space.
It is primarily Rubka who looks after all the children – so she does domestic work and childcare; but this arrangement works for her too, as it allows her to also look after her three-year old son, Yafit (which she would not have been able to do in a ‘regular’ contract job as a domestic worker). Recent changes to laws affecting migrant workers in Lebanon combine racial and gender biases to put women like Rubka and their children in extremely precarious positions.
Yafit’s father is a Syrian man with whom Rubka had a relationship. Although this man is named as the father on the birth certificate, he was married with other children and soon after Yafit’s birth, he left the country. Yafit is a lively boy whose light-skin and long curly hair make him look Arab, rather than Ethiopian. This resulted in a harrowing encounter with the police. Yafit explains, ‘Once when I was with him on the street, when he was very young, the police stopped me and asked ‘Whose baby is this?’. “He’s mine.” “No, he’s not.” We started to argue. “Where is the paper to prove that you’re the mother?” “What is this paper that you want me to bring?” “So you’re roaming around without papers with someone else’s child? How do we know that you’ve not stolen him?”’
