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Growing up, my father’s university had a policy of hiring faculty kids as part-timers on the janitorial staff. You had to be at least 15 and it was just weekends and summers. I did that for a few years.
One time I was assigned to the library. The chief janitor in the library could barely speak English. We managed to communicate. He was a sweet guy and working shifts with him did not seem that onerous. He was in his late 50s, I think. Very relaxed, well-meaning man. He clearly loved being around youngsters like me and was always very gracious.
Later I found out he was the former Minister of Education in Batista’s Cuba, before the revolution.
Interesting historical fact. Education was a matter of class privilege under Batista. In Fidel’s Cuba, the literacy rates sky rocketed. F’s Cuba had the single most successful literacy campaign in history. In one single year they slashed the illiteracy rate (or, as literacy studies scholars like to call it, the non-literacy rate) to less than 5 percent when before it had been around 25 percent.
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