Rose has been away for over two weeks on leave in
Kenya. First it was Easter and then her daughter was on break from
boarding school. It was good for her to go and also good for us that she
came back last night. While she was away, we were really busy keeping up
with everything she does on top of everything we do, and during all that I had
some time to think about our general situation with her (there was time for
thinking, but not so much time for blogging!).
If you've been reading this blog since we started
our African adventure you might remember that we were not initially comfortable
having staff work for us in Kenya. We started off thinking we could do it
all ourselves and tried to fight the pressure to employ Kenyans. That is, until reality turned out to be
more difficult than we expected.
Because first of all, expats do provide
a huge percentage of jobs in developing countries (at least in Kenyan and
Tanzania...I am assuming other African countries as well), the absence of which
would likely lead to a rise in a whole host of other social and economic problems. Second of all, the expectation that
expats will employ local staff is actually fair, when you think about how much
most expats benefit professionally and economically from working in a place
like Nairobi or Dar AND how little employing domestic help costs. And
third of all, it is harder to live in Africa than to live in the US and Europe.
It just IS! Not bad or worse (necessarily)…definitely
different…definitely harder in many ways (easier in other ways too). I have to boil water before I can
hand-wash all of my dishes. Hanging up laundry to dry and taking it down
again takes a long time for a family with kids (I know lots of people do this at
home too). Cleaning the dirt and grime and African dust...not to mention
the gecko poop!...is more labor intensive here than at home. I have to go
to 3-5 different stores to get all of the ingredients I need to cook one basic
dinner almost every day (because things go bad really quickly even in the
working refrigerator). And of course we are also running around paying
CASH for all of our bills and trying to acquire diesel and luku (electricity)
and all of that. Plus, in Dar at least, it is bloody hot...and I have never met a teenage girl to recruit as a babysitter!
So having domestic staff of any kind definitely feels like a luxury
sometimes, but it also definitely feels NECESSARY and PRACTICAL. And, as I think I’ve written about
before, when you find the right help – a person, or people, who just fit well
with your family and your needs – then it is golden.
The other side to having help is a little bit of guilt that I sometimes
feel. Guilt that I should be the
one scrubbing my floors and hanging up my laundry, since I am not working at
any other paying job. Guilt that I
would ever think it is “hard” to have staff (but I am in a management position
over here!), which sometimes it is (although mucd less so with only one
employee now), when I know most stay-at-home-moms where I come from don’t have
additional help and do everything themselves. Guilt that maybe I have help because I couldn’t actually handle
everything on my own in the first place.
So Rose’s absence the last two weeks was actually a good reminder for
me. We did not wash the floors or
clean the bathrooms as often as she normally does, but our house was mostly
tidy and our laundry was washed and our dinner was made and we never ran out of
luku and Grace did not watch more TV than we normally let her watch. We were
exhausted, but we survived. Kristoffer
helped a lot in the evenings and I did the best I could during the day to do
household chores along with Noah’s nap schedule, Grace’s school schedule, and
the normal errands. (I also applied for a job and had a first-stage
interview…but that is a story for another blog altogether.) Exhausted. But we did it!
I realized that Rose doesn’t work for us because we can’t work for
ourselves. We employ her to make our life here manageable and easier and more pleasant…and we
appreciate her hard work so much for those reasons. This realization assuaged my guilt a bit. I also feel that because it is harder to live here, even though we know it is our choice, having
help is just a really nice perk that we should enjoy as long as we can (you would too if it
was as inexpensive to do so where you live!). I suspect in our future life in the US or Denmark we will
have plenty of laundry and dishes and floors to wash all on our own. Right?
So. Grace and Noah had a
very happy reunion with Rose today.
Grace missed her and we made a calendar to count down the days
until she came back. Rose brought
them sweet little Nairobi presents and there was a lot of laughter in the house
in the wee hours this morning. An
outsider might have thought that Grace was the happiest person in our family to
see Rose. But an insider will know
that is not exactly true.
LMW
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