I changed my notebook and my pencil for what would be the work implements: cap, gloves, bags and a trash pick up cart. It was my first day of work as a sweeper on the streets of Barcelona.
I do not have a boss, I do not worry because there is no accountability to anyone: I thought so. I met my co-worker, a strong brown-skinned woman with black hair, who wore a green sweater to cover her cap and a cap. It was 7:30 in the morning of Thursday, July 14, 2011, day of living in the skin of another person. "It should not be difficult," I think, as Yuraima said to me, "Well, miss, you do not look at all to sweep streets."
The sun becomes our enemy immediately, the heat and began the desperation to put me in a shady. I wanted to know about the life of Mrs. Yuraima. "How old are you, long working this job?" With a smile on her lips, she confesses to being 49 years old and five of them sweeping her pretty Barcelona, as she says.
I counted the trash bags we picked up from Juncal Street and went 11. "Are not you tired?" He asks me, as he sees me and says, "Girl, you're pale, get those cheeks, come and sit here."
On one hand, my bad angel told me: let her pick it up. While the good angel said to me: Do not be bad, it still is not enough.
Curiosity eats me, and as we had entered into confidence I let go: Lady Yuraima, do you have children? To which he replied: Of course, daughter, I have five: 19.11, 10, seven and five years. "
She is one of those many women who give face to their children, because the one who was her husband left her for a nearby neighbor. According to her, his excuse was that they fought a lot. "Let your eyes be a camcorder and your ears an engraver," I remembered the phrase used by one of my teachers.
Exposing yourself to any illness this woman has nothing to protect her from getting an allergy. Neither gloves nor tapaboca that can remove a bacterium, as she says: "Only God, daughter."
Time to keep our implements to continue the day. Then, while holding the bag to place the last waste of the day, a saleswoman from one of the many local threw a bag on the floor right next to us. My anger was not normal. Mrs. Yuraima just smiled and went straight to pick up the bag. My quest to see how many people do not value and appreciate the work of others made me turn around and say to the "citizen": Lady you threw this? With the most ironic tone possible. Meanwhile, I beckoned to Mrs. Yuraima to leave the bag on the floor. "Yes," he replied, "I took advantage of the fact that you were out there to take out the trash."
Humans get used to others doing their dirty work, so the lesson for this saleswoman was that she put what she had thrown on the floor in the cart, finishing a sentence so difficult to pronounce for many "Sorry".
