the other side of opportunity
by betsy biggers

In the spring of 1963, an organization called the American Student Information Service (ASIS) came to my college to recruit naïve students to work for the summer at a variety of jobs in Europe.

The sales pitch was that this organization would not only line up a summer job for us, but that they would also arrange for our transportation to and from Europe, and lead us on a four-country tour originating in Luxembourg. Five of my friends and I were totally taken with the notion that not only would we get to tour four countries, but maybe we could be waitresses in an outdoor café, and wouldn’t we be so cute…flitting about in our short pleated skirts, starched chapeaus and tight-fitting blouses! I had taken French in college, so I felt confident that I would be placed in either France or Switzerland where I could use my halting French. So in the summer of 1963, off we went, wide-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready to capture Europe with all the naïveté that only a group of 21-year-old juniors from an all women’s Southern college might possess.

My instincts should have warned me that I was in for a more difficult summer experience than I bargained for when we climbed aboard the 'student ship' in New York and found our accommodations on the rickety vessel that would be our home en route to Europe. Six of us shared a 5 x 10 foot cabin where our cots were chained double decker to internal walls, and rocked back and forth with every wave. Dining was a challenge as well. We sat at long narrow tables with about ten students on each side. As the ship rocked back and forth, the plate belonging to the person four or five people down would suddenly slide right in front of us. In order to consume any food at all, we had to quickly stab a morsel before the plate slid back to the opposite end of the table. Not a bad diet really; I managed to lose weight on that trip, something I don’t think I’ve ever accomplished on vacation since!

Once we docked in Southampton, England, we flew to Luxembourg to find out where we would be working, and to begin our “four-country tour.”

I had requested a separate placement so I could immerse myself in the local culture and not be dependent on my girlfriends. My five friends were sent to Holland to work in a hotel, while I was assigned to a hotel in Wiesbaden, Germany. None of us were going to be glamorous waitresses as we had fantasized…instead we would work as a zimmermädchen (chambermaids). Hey, this sounded interesting—perhaps not as glamorous as being a waitress, but I was adventurous. I could do this. There was one major problem: I only knew one word in German, and that was…gesundheit. I was pretty sure that wouldn't get me very far.

The next morning, we were ready to embark on our “four-country tour.” We were quickly ushered onto a bus to begin our sojourn at 9am. (Note the time: 9am.) When we arrived back at our hotel in Luxembourg at 3pm, we were each given a glass of champagne and told that our “four country tour” had just ended. We sat there dumbfounded, sipping our champagne, as it dawned on us that indeed we had been to four countries in the span of six hours. (Obviously we were not too quick on the uptake.) Only then did we put it together that Luxembourg was a very small country surrounded by Belgium, Germany and France: in six hours we had been driven to the eastern border of Luxembourg where crossed over the line to a clearing in Germany. We looked out across the beautiful countryside for five minutes and then we were herded back onto the bus. Off we went to the western side of Luxembourg where crossed the border to a vegetable stand in France. After a quick bite of fruit, they loaded us back on the bus and we headed North to a cheese shop in Belgium. Our forth country on the tour was of course Luxembourg, through which we had darted back and forth over the course of the previous six hours. And that, sadly, was the extent of our four country tour.

The next day we headed off to begin our summer jobs. I boarded a train to Germany where I had envisioned a warm and friendly welcome. My experience with cross cultural student exchanges had been positive thus far. My family had hosted an American Field Service student from France when I was a senior in high school. That was a wonderful experience for both “my French sister” and my family, so I rather expected a similar open-armed welcome when I arrived at my summer job. Fantasy and reality quickly collided as I walked in the front entrance to one of Germany’s grandest hotels.

I walked through the beautiful front entrance of this luxury hotel, and was never allowed to go back through those doors again, except on my hands and knees as I scrubbed the front steps. It was quickly pointed out that my entrance was at the back of the hotel by the garbage cans. I noticed the elegantly red-carpeted steps and brass railings in the entrance not thinking that they would soon be my daily chore to vacuum and polish. My warm welcome was a bucket of water and a mop. My status in the hotel was so low that even the bellboys would not speak to me. In a moment, my very green American college student mindset collided with the harsh reality of my placement as a servant in a foreign country. The only person who communicated with me was a very stern Frau who followed me around wearing white gloves, brushing her hand across every surface I had cleaned, constantly reprimanding, “Elizabet, is dirt heir.”

As part of my “orientation” in this position, my passport was confiscated, so that I would not be tempted quit. Then I was given the three utensils I was to use for the next two months. These were to be kept on my person at all times and used to eat the meals provided by the hotel. Mealtime was stew ladled from a garbage pail accompanied by a piece of brown bread. If a utensil was lost, we had to pay to replace it from our earnings, which were less than a dollar a day. (The white-gloved Frau usually stole my tips.)

For this brief period, I experienced how it feels to be trapped—at the mercy of someone else’s will. Over the course of those days and weeks, I felt myself experiencing an internal shift as Americans on luxury tours passed by me in my uniform, and didn’t notice or acknowledge me. I remember that I wanted to stop them and tell them that I was somebody too. But I didn’t dare. Until one day, while on my hands and knees polishing the hardwood floor of the third floor hallway, a group of American college girls came giggling down the hall; but this time, I noticed not only were these American voices, but Southern American voices…a sound so familiar that I suddenly had to speak up, though meekly at first…I whispered to the closest blonde as she bounced by my bent over back…”I’m an AMERICAN too!!” The blonde signaled to me, and I followed her and two of her friends back into one of the rooms. As I began to explain to them who I was and where I was from, they were shocked. When they invited me to sit down on their bed I said that I couldn’t. After all, I was the chambermaid. I had made up that bed that very morning, and I didn’t feel that I had the right to mess it up. They immediately said “Don’t be ridiculous, you’re one of us.” As my story unfolded, they were shocked to learn we (the servants) had neither bath nor shower, but a cold-water hose in the attic in a room with no privacy at all. They shooed me into their bathroom for the first bath I'd had since Luxembourg.

Within a minute or two, it was clear that we had everything in common except the way we were spending our summer. These girls were from Alabama; I was from North Carolina. We were all on our summer vacation. Had we met a few months before, we likely would have been discussing boys, or maybe studies. But now, it was as if we were from different planets.

The longer I stayed in this subservient position, the more I became aware of the inequities of life. Why had my life up to this point been so privileged, while others scramble for the bare necessities in life and are treated with such indignity? I glimpsed how it must feel to so many whose destiny it is to serve those who have more. I was humbled, and my perspective as a comfortable American was quickly stripped away.
As I cleaned the hotel manager’s office and dusted his family photographs, I felt alone, on the other side of an invisible line of distinction. My mind wandered to my own father’s office at home in Asheville. I imagined that perhaps at that same moment someone was cleaning his office and dusting off my picture, feeling similar solitude and separation.

This temporary position had a tremendous impact on my awareness, and became a life altering-experience for me. Even in this very brief period of time, I had taken on the role of servanthood, and had actually experienced an internal shift in perspective. As I was being bossed around, criticized, controlled and looked down upon, I slowly began to take on the posture of a humiliated human being who had no rights. In a relatively short period of time I shifted from being a college girl wearing a maid's uniform, to total identification with the uniform and my sub-level status. For the first time in my life, though only for two short months, I felt what it was like to be on the opposite side of opportunity.

When I returned for my senior year in college, I found a new direction for my life. I decided that I wanted to work in some capacity to serve humanity. This summer job had changed me forever, and I entered theological seminary after graduation. Never again would I view life through the same eyes or from the same perspective.

 

Dr. Betsy Biggers has been in private practice in Asheville, NC since 1995. At the age of 50, after having raised three daughters with her husband Dr. Buddy Biggers, she entered graduate school in clinical psychology, and received her Ph.D. in 2003.