Far From Home, in the Kitchen

Housemates Linto Duarte, 32, and Francisco Santo, 47, fold their laundry at the Wishy Wash in Silver Spring. They share shopping and cooking chores. (By Marvin Joseph -- The Washington Post)
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The alternative, Sota said, is equally common: apartments crowded with men in which no one cleans, meals that come exclusively from convenience stores or pupusa trucks and a social life defined by little more than long hours working, or waiting for work, and alcohol.

"We see a very high rate of alcoholism," Sota said. "That has destroyed many of them. What we hear about a lot is the loneliness of having their wives and children back home. Every human person needs a human relationship. If no one is cleaning and no one is doing the cooking, it isn't like a household."

Beth McNairn of Takoma Park remembers a glimpse her family got into that often-barren male world when an intoxicated man rang her doorbell by mistake on a recent Christmas Eve. McNairn's husband escorted the man to the address he was looking for, a neighboring house where numerous Latino laborers lived. Inside was a living room devoid of furniture and filled with men sitting on the floor, talking into cellphones that were plugged into wall sockets.

"They were all calling home on Christmas Eve," McNairn said. "It was so sad."

Making these all-male homes homier can ease the stress of working alone in a strange country, some workers said. Francisco Santo, 47, and Linto Duarte, 32, had not met before arriving in the Washington area from Guatemala.

But the two, who were folding laundry on a recent evening at the Wishy Wash on University Boulevard in Silver Spring, have formed what they describe as a brotherly relationship. They clean their house together each Sunday, share shopping and cooking chores, and eat together most evenings.

"It's more social," Santo said, "more like family."

Jose Campos suffered in packed, chaotic apartments for several years after coming from El Salvador in 2004. The 57-year-old laborer rented a sliver of floor space among an ever-changing crowd of roommates who were, he said, more likely to steal his modest possessions than neaten up the kitchen or bathroom.

"It was very bad," he said. "When they were home, they were drunk."

Life has been much better, Campos said, since he found a tidy, three-bedroom basement apartment in Langley Park to share with two workers. A modest collection of dishes and pans is stacked in the cupboards, trash cans are neatly lined with garbage bags, and the bathroom smells of soap and scouring powder. A weekly schedule of cleaning duties hangs prominently on a cabinet door.

But domestic skills didn't come easily, Campos said. His early efforts at the stove set off the smoke detector several times before the owner of the house showed him how to use the exhaust fan. And his first two loads at the laundromat ended with ruined clothes.

"The woman told me I put too much Clorox in," said Campos, who grew up with six brothers in a poor household in central El Salvador. "All of this is so complicated. Everything here is different."

Now, Campos has a dorm refrigerator filled with eggs, chilies, tomatoes and other groceries that he buys in the small Latino shops that abound in Langley Park. He cooks every evening and lately has even gotten daywork as a house-and-office cleaner.

"I have learned all these things," Campos said. "When I go home, I will be like a foreigner."

Sota wonders whether the domestic responsibilities Latino workers face here might contribute to greater balance between the sexes when they go home.

"I hope they realize the work it takes to maintain a home," Sota said. "I hope this experience will get them to collaborate in the house."

But Rosales said he has no desire to do laundry when he returns to Guatemala, where most families still wash clothes by hand. And as for his newfound kitchen skills?

"When I get home, my wife will cook," he said. "Her food is better."