One of the great pleasures of living in Bahrain is the ease by which you can get major domestic appliances repaired.
If you were in a major Western country and your fridge or cooker stopped working, then it is so expensive to have them repaired that you may as well buy a new one.
Last week my fridge freezer stopped cooling and the food was going soft.
We could have gone and bought a new one but as it is installed in a purpose-built unit in the kitchen that would probably have meant remodelling the kitchen as well.
So before taking that step I called the agent and he sent an engineer to inspect it.
The unit had to go back to their workshop for repair and hey presto a few days later and only BD27 it was delivered back in perfect working order.
Now think about this, a trip to my house by an engineer, then a lorry to collect it and the same lorry to return it and also the repair itself all for BD27.
In the UK it would have been £100 (BD49) just for the engineer’s visit.
It was the same a couple of years ago with my gas cooker. Two rings and the oven were not working and the igniter had stopped on all of them.
I started looking for a new cooker which would have cost about BD350-BD500 but before doing so tracked down the agent and asked if he could send out an engineer.
The engineer took a look went away to get spare parts, came back and fitted them. For the princely sum of BD20 I virtually had a brand new cooker.
It’s the same with air conditioners. It costs BD15 to have each of the three in my house serviced every year.
That would be hundreds of euros in my flat in Cyprus.
Of course the major reason for all this cheapness is the cost of labour. It’s peanuts compared to the West.
It’s the same with your cars, always much cheaper to have them repaired here.
And how many of us could afford to have a housemaid in our home countries?
When you mention this to your friends and family back home they accuse you of being cheap and hiring slave labour, but that is not the case.
It is all about the cost of living in each country.
Yes, sure I pay my maid a pittance compared to what I earn, but when she sends that money back to her home country, it allows her to educate and medicate her family and in a lot of cases build or buy a family home.
When I first arrived in Bahrain I felt guilty about the small amount of money I was paying a housemaid until she showed us pictures of her daughter’s wedding in Sri Lanka.
It was far more lavish than any wedding I could have afforded, and she explained that in her home village because both her and her husband worked in Bahrain they were the richest family there.
So I do not feel guilty because it’s all about sharing wealth.
My small contribution each month go a long way in their economies.
Jackie@JBeedie.com