The manager of the Motel we stayed at in Williams, told us that she had lived in the USA for 20 years; in Baltimore, Oklahoma, Flagstaff & now here, in Williams, Arizona. Handing in our keys on leaving, our conversation continued. Her name was Shanon, a very American name, which sat oddly with an Asian woman in her mid 50s. Her birthname was Darshan, meaning ‘veneration of the Lord’ in Hindi, but she had become ‘Shanon’ when she & her husband had moved to the States. We were told a tale of hard work & disappointment as Darshan recalled working as a cleaner in motels. Gradually she had begun managing, but would never earn much because she had no American qualifications, had been too busy working & looking after her family to convert her Indian qualifications by attending college here.
When we mentioned the number of Gujaratis we’d met at motels on our journey, Darshan explained that she wasn’t Gujarati although from Bombay, but that motel work was easy to come by; you don’t need to speak the language to clean floors. ‘New Migrants’ from the Indian subcontinent now owned several of the big Motel chains in the USA because they were the easiest route into work, & there was an abundance of motels across the country that needed cleaners, managers & new owners.
17th September
Needles
California
a good foot in the door for a country that needs it, how many americans go on about the indians taking over there motel chains i wonder?
We briefly met Denis and Teresa (authors of this web page) along the ‘An Imagined Country’ route; briefly on The Big Sur, CA on a lovely sunny day. A place of great beauty where you look down on the cliff face through the fog and clouds to the mighty ocean below. We met and struck up a conversation after the casualness of Ragged Point and before the spoilt retiree enclave of Carmel. They told us of their work and reasons for travel. Now to the point of my post – patience is its own reward readers.
We noticed very clearly the class system involved in working in hotels (not just motels) in the U.S. We treated ourselves to fancy overnighters along the way and let me tell you that the beautiful, young, blonde folk take your food order or book you in in the 4-5 star places; the urbane and so-called hip males deliver the meal, and the poor unfortunate Mexicans are the ‘Bus Boys’ or Housekeeping. It is all laid out to perfection and in order to under-employ and keep them ‘in their place’. We went above and beyond to tip them (i.e. the Mexicans) and ignored the weekenders i.e. California blonde and beautiful actors doing their bit Fri to Sun.
America has never more been (than it is now) a country in decline. I am sorry and upset to say it has totally forgotten its immigrant past and holds no store by their contribution. Mr Obama, with all his good intentions, his wit, his intelligence, and his empathy, is unable to solve the problem of a country going down, down, down into the depths of mediocrity and despair as currently suffered by the poor, unfortunate, under-educated and lonely. The working poor.
Angela Kevin Melbourne, Nov 2011