New Help, Old Issues

I got a new helper.  In as much as I resisted, largely for practical reasons than middle class guilt, which is that my place is small and truth be told, I don't really need the help.   My laziness notwithstanding, helper got hired.  Besides, she kind of came to me.

There's a caretaker who comes in twice a week to clean the common areas and the garden in my complex.  I needed his help to move some furniture.  We got to talking.  He's got a wife you see, fresh from Malawi.  She needs a job.  My running friend and I have been talking about sharing a helper anyway.  Who the hell wants to deal with the tedium of house chores?  Not me. So enter the new helper.  Let's call her Chastity.  After her first day it became clear that language difficulties aside, the fee was to be negotiated with her husband, the caretaker, which as a feminist, offended me to no end.  But, it's the card I had been dealt, so I went on with it.  We haggled over a fee, and I told him the fee my friend and I had agreed to.  What he doesn't need to know (and her for now), is that we're actually paying her a little extra. 

Presumptuous, isn't it, assuming that we're helping her by negotiating an entry level fee, but in reality paying her a fee for someone with much more experience?  I don't know what Chastity's situation is with her man.  He seems nice enough, but I can imagine the burden of living as a migrant in a hostile South Africa can test even the patience of the nicest of husband, and who the hell knows what goes on between two people when the world is not watching?

For one, language is a problem.  A big problem.  Gestures and getting back to the real basics is what keeps us going, but when the going gets tough, the husband has to come translate.  I asked Chastity if she speaks Zulu and she readily agreed.  Asked her a question which required some language skill, and got a resounding "yes" instead.  Yes.  In English.  But there's only so many ways you can use a vacuum cleaner, so it all gets figured out in the end.   There's a lot of girlish giggling in between as I try to break the monotony of work with personal questions, which I'm sure she resents for the snooping that it is. 

Chastity calls me "Madame" - in that French way.  I haven't corrected her yet.  Small small.  She's so shy and dependent on me that I fear I'm throwing too much her way.  "Don't run the water unless you're using the tap, please eat whatever is in the fridge, fold the shirts sideways first and then by width, and THEN separate them by colour."  When I think about it, I must be a serious pain in the ass of a helpee.  But we'll find our feet in time.  Chastity isn't going anywhere fast.  In fact she strikes me as a woman firmly determined to build roots in this country, and it will be interesting to see how she changes in the next year.  But I could be wrong.

Being in position to hire a helper is complicated for many of us, who have parents and grandparents who themselves were domestic workers in white people's houses.  We still see it as demeaning work, and by inference as if the people doing the work are presumably, therefore less human.  We oscillate between wanting to genuinely help to improve the lot of the people who work in our homes, to feeling outright hostile at their perceived entitled attitude.  Stereotypes are abound; Malawaians are great, Sotho's from Lesotho are unreliable and prone to absconding from work without notice, Xhosas from the Transkei are unreliable and most likely to be afflicted with kleptomania.  The list is endless.  Everybody has a story.  My friends with kids have the most interesting stories to tell. 


I've also been embarrassed to witness how some friends treat their helpers, so don't assume that just because the helpers look like us, we're better bosses.  There is a shortage of quality jobs out there, and that means for too many, cleaning up after somebody is an unfortunately necessary option. 

Like everything, it's a relationship. 

You don't really get to a place of safety until you've had a serious fight (or fights) with your helper, where she decided to tolerated you, and you kept her in your employ, and both are richer for the relationship.