People stories: The resilient hippie

Bianca has heard the same thing many times: when people meet her for the first time, their first impression is that she’s tough in a sort of aversive way, grumpy. She thinks it might be because she has a lot of tattoos. When she raises her right arm to tuck her hair behind her ear, a figure with large gold and blue earrings and fiery red hair peeks calmly from under her shirt sleeve. “But I’m very sweet, I’m a softie”, she says, laughing. Born in Brazil, that’s also what Bianca likes most about Brazilians in general: their warmth. “And we’re very resilient.”

She has moved a lot in her life, “hopping” from one country to another, as she puts it, each time uprooting herself from all things familiar and learning new cultures, meeting new people. That resilience eventually brought her to Sweden, where she now works for Freska as a cleaner, manager and trainer and tries to learn how to pronounce the letter h the Swedish way. Bianca thinks the craziest thing about Sweden is how not only the surroundings but also people’s moods change with the seasons. “You can see in their faces: okay, summer is coming, winter is coming. I still get impressed by that.” When asked what makes her happy, she says it’s simply waking up in the morning, knowing she has another day to do things. Then she laughs at herself for sounding so hippieish. “I think fear stops us from doing so many things. So I think my fear is to be stopped by fear.”

Bianca’s earliest childhood memory is rain. In Brazil, the weather can be very warm even during heavy rain, and she and her siblings used to play in the downpour. The first time she moved abroad it was to the USA, where she worked as an au pair. The second time it was to Ireland, where she studied English. She would always go back to Brazil and then leave again: to Sweden, England, Ireland again. It was in Dublin where Bianca ran into Freska’s ads looking for employees. She was impressed with how Freska approached people; she felt like this was a company that was going to watch out for her. She and Freska chose each other, she says.

Being from another country and coming to a totally different one is never easy. So it was comforting to know the company was going to help me in many ways.

That same support she and the rest of her training team now aim to give to new cleaners who are only just learning the job. “I just try to show them that we are on the same boat”, she says. “I still remember what was hard for me and what was easy for me and I try to pass that on, so that if they need any support, they feel we are here for them.” Also, mistakes are not the end of the world, they can even end up being quite funny. Like the time Bianca accidentally left her shoes inside a client’s home. Unfortunately she didn’t realize it until she had locked the door and dropped the key in from the mail slot as agreed. She had no option but to head to the next customer’s place with only socks on her feet. Telling the story now makes her laugh. “I heard that happens a lot, it was not only me, so I was relieved.”

Before Freska, Bianca did all sorts of work: she worked in an ice cream shop – her family produces ice cream – in a pizza place, in a franchise company. She also ran a tattoo shop for a couple of years. A general misconception about the cleaning industry is that cleaning doesn’t require any skills, that anyone can do it, she says. That’s not the case, she emphasizes, cleaning is hard work both physically and mentally. Much to her pleasure, she’s noticed in Sweden people seem to be more aware of this than in other countries she’s lived in. For Bianca, one of the most rewarding things is hearing customers say they love coming home after she’s cleaned it. That they had been waiting for her.

I do things with love. I understand the responsibility of being inside someone’s home, there needs to be mutual trust there. So I do my best, and I think they appreciate that.

In her free time she heads to the gym. It’s where she feels she can disconnect from everything else, so in a way it feels like resting. When asked what freedom means to her, she first lets out a laugh and covers her face, then quickly straightens herself and says: “Freedom comes from the inside. You need to know yourself, and then you are free.”