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Panamanians and Spouses for Hire (Maridos de Alquiler)

The concept of leasing handymen and maids to people’s houses and market the business as “rent-a-spouses” is one that could’ve only been made up in a Latin-American country. Though the honors don’t go to Panama for coming up with such an awesome concept, one needs not go too far to find the source of this business. Operadora Internacional de Franquicias OIFMA, from Costa Rica, came up with the concept in 2005 and the business has been so good that they recently opened a franchise in Panama City after establishing themselves in El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Mexico, with plans to expand both ways from the country’s borders. There’s definitely something eye-catching about the name, which its original Spanish name of “Maridos de Alquiler” (and its female counterpart, “Esposas de Alquiler”) has definitely raised a couple thousand eyebrows in all corners of the national media. Panamanians are loved far and wide for many reasons, but surely one of the top three must be the fact that we can spin anything into a sexual context with such dashing ease that I sometimes I come to think it’s part of the Panamanian genetic code. Even me, someone who has said in many occasions in many different forms that sex is something beautiful that should be practiced often and with gusto can’t help but jump at the chance of letting my hardwired, childlike morbidity get the best of me whenever one of these instances pop up. All Panamanians do it. In fact, you’d be in the minority if you were a Panamanian and at least didn’t think about all the “special services” these spouses offer under the table for a couple of extra bucks.

But, I digress. Maridos de Alquiler, with offices located in the Clayton district of Panama City, former Canal Zone area, will do anything a diligent husband is supposed to do or at least have the basic knowledge of how to do it. These husbands for hire will do your plumbing, install electrical appliances, check your oil, build or fix furniture, change your tires and all of those wonderful things the macho man of today is supposed to know in order to fulfill his role of provider. The man responsible for bringing this peculiar franchise to Panama goes by the name of Pavel Molina, a Venezuelan entrepreneur who really believes there’s a market for this.

“Our technicians can do work from plumbing, carpentry, electricity, phone lines, and touch-up work. Wives, on the other hand, can do cleaning, decoration, cooking, and ironing. We’re prepared to also cover emergencies anywhere in the country.”

Reports say that when they officially opened for business on Monday, September 8, 2008, they received somewhere around 160 calls, 85% of these asking just what is it they did exactly. The angle here, according to Molina, is that most “professionals” that do this sort of work often take their sweet time to respond, sometimes won’t pick up their phones and there is rarely any warranty on the work done. The difference with these spouses for hire is that for $10 a visit they’ll go to your residence immediately and will not leave until the problem is fixed. They are bilingual, you’ll always be able to get someone from the company to attend you and the client has a warranty on all work done, and if triggered will have an agent from the company on your doorstep within 24 hours. How about them apples? You may or may not have heard this, but Panama’s service industry has been the crux of our tourism for years. In an informal manner, Panamanians are the warmest, most personable people this side of the blue marble but for some reason I can’t even begin to comprehend the second someone pays a Panamanian to tend to customers, more often than not the standard clerk will look at and tend to you like he would rather be listening to William Hung inside the most rat-infested karaoke bar in Cambodia while a succubus dined on his chest entrails. This is not true 100% of the time because, like everything in this world, there are people who like what they do for a living and then there are others that don’t. Nevertheless, I could tell you some stories of stuff that’s happened to me in local restaurants that could give you diarrhea.

So, Panama’s service industry sucks, no matter what Ruben Blades says. We can’t be perfect, and that’s what makes us different. Thanks to the Panama Tourism Authority (Autoridad de Turismo de Panamá) there are real efforts to get Panama’s thumb out of its ass in that regard and things are much better now than they were five years ago, but there’s still a lot of work to be done. Now, it’s private businesses such as Maridos de Alquiler that help patch these cracks, and even if this business doesn’t prove to be successful it will at least kick-start a more serious “get off your ass” campaign to treat tourists with a little more decency. The first question that popped into my head when I first heard of this whole shebang still looms over all the news reports and nods the enterprise has garnered in such little time: who’s going to take it seriously?

In the past couple of weeks, just for kicks, I talked about this with a couple of friends and loved ones, every conversation degrading into a discussion on what would the rates be for a “happy ending.” I’m not going to talk about the amount of time my mom was able to mine the hell out of this joke (answer: three days) and much less how far she went (hint: Gorilla Mask, anyone?), but it’s safe to say that everyone I talked to had a field day with the name of the company and their imaginations flew so, so far. The company has embraced the concept and take the sexual innuendo in stride, since every report I’ve seen on TV simply has to cover that aspect and they play with it, in the end daftly shooting down the hopes of every lonely spouse looking for a quick fix via home delivery by saying there’s nothing sexual about the service. There’s just a lot of love… in the job they do. Checking your plumbing really is checking your problem. As an aside, if you’re in Panama and looking for sex, don’t be lazy because we have a lot of that too and make no qualms about it.

I have yet to try the service since I like the Chinese lady that washes and irons my shirts, but I’ll make sure to write about what happens when I do. In the meantime, you can visit the Maridos/Esposas de Alquiler website where they have a full history of the company, ways to contact them be it for their service or if you want a job, as well as handy how-to guides that could get you out of a bind if you have a problem around the house.

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