So San Win and Oh Mar will start work next week. The daily drudgery will earn them minimum wages with which they will buy all they want, all they can. But $7.50 an hour for 40 hours a week will not take them too far into the aisles.
They told me about their job at the laundrmart Sunday. A sewing company hired them.
Obviously they are excited.
I am happy for them too. And relieved too. Now at least they can buy shoes and some warm clothes.
In the chilly November months, they wear sandals. When I ask them, they smile. Then they tell me they will buy shoes when they get their first salary.
Sometimes, I wonder if they negotiated for this life.
The other day at my apartment, Oh Mar told me she wanted to come to America. It was a big price she paid for it. Her parents are still in Myanmar. She will visit them in 2010, she said.
Often I wonder what makes us leave our countries. Often it is war, persecution...sometimes it is the lure of a better life, free of wants, free of expectations that society heaps on us.
Why did I want to leave?
I guess I was just curious.
For Oh Mar and San Win, it is from one camp to the other till they can go back to their country. That homeland...it is always there, our hearts clutching to that faint notion with so much ferocity and tenderness lest the fragile dream breaks.
This is not their country, they said.
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