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Common Sense: Maids are also human beings like you
Along with a nagging boss, bad roads and corrupt politicians, house-maids are firmly on the list of many as those with quite a knack for getting you wound up with the way they handle their profession. If they escaped your list of annoying species, then count yourself lucky as you are one of the few out of millions that mourn about house-maids.
If it’s not the-coming back -a -week- after, from the agreed duration of their holiday, then it’s neglecting your baby’s cries while they chat on their mobile phones with their boyfriends. If it’s not spending hours watching Bukedde TV and in the process neglecting their duties, she is trying it on with your husband with an annoying hair style and a disturbingly short mini skirt.
They are that chaotic a bunch. Then there are the dangerous kinds; the ones that sneak into your wardrobe when you are at work, making off with a few possessions of yours. The possessions can range from your loose change that didn’t make it to your wallet, to your wife’s undergarments. Yes they are that troubling.
However, despite all that agro they cause and baggage they bring to their profession, they are vital in our lifestyles. We simply can’t do without them. They have managed to make themselves so intertwined with our lives. They cook for us, look after our babies and guard our homes while we maraud around in town as human resource managers and bank tellers.
So yes they are indispensible and a bit cuckoo in their heads but could house-maid’s drama be mainly brought on by us, their bosses, or is their behaviour part of the package that comes with their profession and the earlier we accept it the better for our sanity? Personally I believe it’s the former.
Here is where many of you parents lose me when it comes to the treatment of your maid. You find a maid who looks after two children and at the same time is expected to look after the house on a daily basis earning a pitiable Shs30,000 per month. Then you wonder why the maid acts up all the time. How do you pay someone who’s worked for you for 30 day’s straight, wages that cannot buy a kabiriti phone? Not only is it insulting, it’s actually abusive.
The thing about many of us when it comes to our relationship with our maids is that we tend to enter into this zone of… “ I’m the boss, she’s a servant.” We tend to throw our weight around like some colonial masters.
We get irked when the maid doesn’t kneel when they greet us. We get irritated when the maid pulls up a stool to take a seat in the corner of the sitting room to view some television. We avoid any chat with them concerning anything that’s not to do with our homes and children they look after. And it’s taboo for them to use the same cups or plates as us, their bosses.In other words, to many of us, these people are sub-human. Okay at least we treat them that way…don’t we? And there lies the problem. The belief that we are better than the maid. Is that one of the most hilarious jokes you have heard in a long time; the idea that just because we know how to operate Windows XP and have mastered the art of pitching ideas to executives using power point, we somehow earn the right to think we are somehow “superior” to our maids? What a joke!
Someone looks after the one -year- old joy of your life, teaches them how to walk, how to hold a cup of porridge, how to use the toilet and at the same time keep your house clean and you think you are better than that person? Shouldn’t you be humbled and in awe of she who has stepped into your role as a mother and has done quite a good job at it despite them not having any training of sorts in that field?
Shouldn’t we as parents, be so ashamed that parenthood has been left to these maids? Many of us were brought up by maids, but the difference, our parents too put in some good time with our upbringing. Nowadays, the parents leave the house at 6am leaving the baby in bed and come back at 9.30pm when the baby is having his good night sleep. Who has been with that baby the whole day? The maid!
So why then pay her peanuts? Why give her unrealistic days off that consist of just one day despite them staying 30 miles away from you? Why can’t we find out about their families they left behind to come and wipe our son’s behinds when they do pupu? Why order them to stay away from the sausages in the fridge and instead tell them to feel free with the posho and beans? Where is the humanity in the way we treat them?
Don’t get me wrong; maids are close to bipolar in their mannerisms and yes they can disappoint despite you being all nice and cherry with them. But who doesn’t disappoint in their respective professions? Besides,w humanity is not conditional. I don’t have to be good to you on condition that you follow my rules and absurd regulations.
Do you know the difference between your maid and you? None! Yes….none. That’s humanly speaking.
