Social media has been on fire the past week on the topic of house helps. In the blue corner, coming in hot with disgruntled experiences, the employers who go on TikTok to vent out their frustrations and warn others. In the red corner, unexpectedly, the house-helps coming in hot with all the secrets of their former employers.
It started with disgruntled employers or former employers sharing their experiences with the young ladies they employ as house maids. But before long, the house helps joined in the discussion by explaining their side of things and even going as far as exposing some intimate information of their former employers.
Living in the diaspora has taught me one thing: to live independently with my husband and children without needing a domestic helper of sorts. I am blessed to be a stay-at-home mother of two, with my husband being the only one of us working. I have multiple degrees and many years of work experience, but the only job I can focus on now is taking care of my children. I do every single thing in the home myself. Of course, my husband helps out. The diaspora is not kind to Kenyan-style fathers who do not participate in household chores.
However, every time I visit home, I must employ a helper even if it is for a couple of weeks. To be honest, I almost always never enjoy the process of finding someone and their work. In that case, I just settle for them doing one job properly, be it cleaning or watching the children.
Hiring a person to help take care of your home and your children in a manner that you deem fit for your family is not an easy thing. Most people want to live well with their employees just as they survive every day with their own employers.
Over the years, I’ve noticed that many domestic helpers want to live the same lifestyle as their employers without going through the same hustles. What I have come to realise is that domestic employees almost always never know the real depths of their employers' lives as employees. The man or lady of the house who works answers to a boss. He or she follows rules and protocols, and corporate jobs care very little about your personal life.
If a domestic worker were to switch roles with their employer, they would understand the extent of strictness that people have to abide by in the workplace. Lateness and sloppy work gets you written up. The company doesn’t care about your sickness and deaths of relatives. And most importantly, working in an organisation means that you never ever believe that you are part of that organisation. Which begs the question, why do most of us claim that our domestic employees are like family?
Perhaps the boundaries of professionalism and familiarity get blurred when we start treating house helps like family. I do not understand why people find it uncomfortable to maintain certain relationships as is. When these young women pay exorbitant fees to become kadamas in Saudi Arabia, they do not claim to be part of the family. They never talk back to their employers, and they almost always get mistreated.
However, there are some employers who demand too much from their house helps and house managers. As a stay-at-home mum, I have firsthand experience of how hard it is to do any housework while watching a baby. To expect an employee to get everything done while watching over children is unrealistic. To live harmoniously with employees means letting some things go. It means living in a realistic world, where you put yourself in your employees’ shoes and understand that they get tired, too.
In the 20 days I have had my nanny for my short-term stay, I have dealt with multiple off days, sick days, graduations and sleep days. Some things are not worth picking a fight over because she is good at certain things. I do not need perfection. I just need assistance and I am not asking her to do more than I could. So I take what I get and look the other way at the little things.
