"Labor agency?" Dong Qiangqiang has heard of this kind of thing in China. It is actually a kind of labor export. "It shouldn't be cheap, right?"
Wang Shunan nodded: "Actually, it doesn't matter if the fee is high. As long as we can earn it back later, I will accept it. The problem is that we only found out after we arrived that it was not what they said at all."
"Being cheated?" Dong Qiangqiang couldn't help but ask. He had also heard some bad rumors about labor agencies, and he himself had encountered such people.
"The agency did introduce us to German hospitals as stipulated in the contract. The first private hospital we went to let us work as nurses and cleaners, and we were paid 2,000 marks per month before tax."
"This is already a lot of money. If converted into RMB, it would be almost a few thousand dollars a month." Dong Qiangqiang has just come out of China and has some understanding of the salary of young people. "Even undergraduate graduates from big cities in China may not be able to make it." Did you get your number?"
"But the agency originally guaranteed us 60,000 marks per year," Wang Shunan said with a wry smile. "If you look at the monthly figures, I do earn a lot. But this figure is only before tax. If you exclude the monthly rent , living expenses, insurance premiums and other expenses, and if you send some to your family, you won’t have much money left.”
"It's definitely hard to make money in capitalism." Dong Qiangqiang felt that the topic was gradually becoming serious and tried to make the atmosphere of the chat more relaxed.
"It's really like this. Not only me, but also several fellow villagers with us. We all rent a house with poor conditions. There is no air conditioning in summer and no heating in winter. The windows in the room are big and the air leaks from the floor. Every month They are all tight. Do you know? I haven’t used skin care products since I came to Germany, just to save more money and relieve my family’s worries.”
"Does it mean that after a few years of hard work, there will be a chance for a salary increase?"
"I thought so at first, but after working for a while, I got to know some Germans in the hospital. They are all native Germans, not the kind who came here as skilled immigrants, but they also get acquainted with them every month. She doesn’t earn more than us. There is a German aunt who is about to retire and has been working for almost 30 years. She only earns 3,000 marks a month, which is unimaginable. But she is German after all, so she doesn’t have to worry about housing and insurance. They are much happier than we are."
"Didn't you know this before you came?"
"We come from a small place, and there are probably only one or two such agencies in the city. Everyone says the same thing: Germany is a working paradise. You can easily earn hundreds of thousands of yuan a year, and you can work for many years. There is also a chance to become a German citizen, but now I know that all this is just a beautiful dream. You can listen to it, but you can't take it seriously."
"Then the agent who brought you here is telling lies?" Dong Qiangqiang sympathized.
"That's not true." Wang Shunan thought for a while, "The agency actually said it in terms of workload and did not fool us. The work is really, really tiring. For example, the first hospital I worked in when I first came here was I was asked to be responsible for cleaning different places in the hospital, such as washing dishes and dishes, sweeping and mopping the floors and wiping the windows, tidying up the trash cans in the wards and corridors, cleaning the bathrooms and scrubbing the toilets. These are all routine tasks. I do them every time. It was fast and good, and I just thought I would have a chance to be promoted by the Germans, but later I realized how ridiculous and childish this idea was."
Dong Qiangqiang thought of the mountain of dishes he had yesterday, and sighed in his heart that it was indeed harder for girls to do this.
"I used to think that cleaning work was hard and tiring, but later I learned that compared with nursing work, cleaning work is definitely easy." Wang Shunan's eyes were dazed and melancholy when recalling, "I still remember that after I came to Germany, I started nursing The first elderly person was an 80-year-old grandmother. When I took care of her, her memory declined so badly that she couldn't remember anyone at all. I helped her bathe, change diapers, and go to the toilet. She couldn't speak and was helpless. She looks at you lovingly, and sometimes when she wants to express her gratitude, she will tap your fingers lightly with her skinny fingers. Do you know what I think about the most at that time? "
Dong Qiangqiang shook his head.
"When I was a child, I thought it was a blessing to live to be 80 years old. But after working as a caregiver, I discovered that in fact, after a person reaches a certain age, life is a process of fighting against various diseases and aging. The quality of life is very low, and the quality of life is very low. It becomes a kind of torture for a long time.”
Wang Shunan stopped recalling and took two sips of soup. Dong Qiangqiang just looked at her quietly, neither asking questions nor comforting her. For the first time, he felt that in front of people with rich life experience, many comforting words seemed false and empty.
"Later, we communicated with the hospital several times about salary issues, but all ended in vain. In the end, everyone left that hospital and found other suitable places to continue working. But this is Germany after all, and there are very few things that can be improved by changing to another hospital. , not to mention the increasing cost of living, the pressure of visa extension, etc.”
Wang Shunan drank a few more mouthfuls of soup.
"Taking care of the elderly who can't take care of themselves is actually a blessing if you meet those who can't speak. What I'm most afraid of is meeting the elderly who are tall and tall and weigh more than 100 kilograms. If they do anything inappropriate, they will He would scold you with very vicious words. You know? At that time, I often thought that being able to understand a foreign language was actually a form of torture."
As he spoke, two tears flowed down from the corners of Wang Shunan's eyes like two streams, gurgling slowly and silently.
Dong Qiangqiang handed her a tissue in good faith. Wang Shunan sheepishly took the tissue and gently wiped the corners of his eyes.
"You only need to work for a week as a volunteer, but I worked 6 days a day and had one day off. But that day I didn't even want to eat, I just wanted to sleep, because during those six days, I would get up early and work late every day. , like a firefighter, go wherever needed. Sometimes he will stand for a whole day, sometimes he will kneel for a whole day, and sometimes he will run dozens of times upstairs and downstairs, just to help the patient find his lost things. Like Masrilla this morning In bed, I would encounter more than a dozen of them in a day at most. God knows how I got through it at that time."
"What about your fellow countrymen? How are they doing?"
"Some of them are not as good as me, but whether they are good or bad, they all left at the beginning of the year. Many of them even paid the hospital money because they did not complete the labor contract they signed with the hospital."
"Then why don't you leave?"
"I was lucky. I met Barbara by chance when I was working in the hospital. She was the dean of Green Castle. She saw that I was talented, hardworking, spoke fluently, and knew how to take care of the elderly, so she asked me if I would like to I didn’t want to come to work in Green Castle. At that time, I really wanted to leave the hospital, so I jumped here. The income here is more than that in the hospital, and it’s not as tiring as the hospital. I want to try again. If I can still do it in two years If I don't make any money, I have no choice but to go back." Wang Shunan's face showed reluctance, "My family asked me to marry me, and the man said he would wait for me for up to two years."
"So yesterday you advised me not to call the police because you were afraid of harming Green Castle and Barbara?" Dong Qiangqiang asked, tilting his head.
p1: Special thanks for this chapter: Confucian A Shengbai and Fengyun Houye for their recommendation votes.
p2: Continue to ask for recommendation votes, monthly votes, and rewards.
