Where’s Alice (from the “Brady Bunch”) when you need her?

Now we know how rich people feel when they say, “You just can’t find good help these days.” Well, that’s not totally our case, but something that’s totally new to us here is hiring and having house help. It’s another learning experience for us, and we’ve found that the American ways of hiring people, whether at a company or organization or as a contractor in your home (such as a plumber or a housekeeper), don’t really apply here.

The previous occupants of our house were an American couple as well. He worked for LWF in the same office as Sarah. We agreed to take over their house as well as, perhaps, their housekeeper, Jane, under the condition that we could interview her first, find out what she was capable of (including child care), and have a chance to decide for ourselves if we wanted to keep her or find somebody else.

Our first week here, we tried her out for four days. The first day - the first hour - she went around the kitchen with me, which was empty at that point, and told me what went in each cupboard. Then she saw a hat rack that we had placed near the front door and moved it to the other side of the living room, to an empty space near the bottom of the stairs. She told me – no questions asked – that it belonged in this new place, “not near the entrance.” After several days of thinking about how to handle this, we simply moved the hat rack back near the entrance, where it has since remained.

Also that first week, we had some people from Sarah’s office bringing furniture for us and helping us get it in the rooms where we wanted it. I instructed one of them, Luca, to put a crib that was brought from the apartment of the man Sarah replaced in the room that we had decided would be Lexi’s. Because the doorways up to and on the second floor of our house are quite narrow, this crib needed to be partially dismantled in order to be put there. Luca and another person were very helpful in getting everything they brought in place, including taking apart and putting back together this crib.

Later on the day the crib was brought and put in place, Sarah heard Jane instructing Luca to move the crib into our bedroom instead because she believed the baby needed to sleep closer to her mother. Luca obeyed, which meant he had to partially dismantle the crib to move it, and then reassemble it in our bedroom. Sarah asked Jane why she did this and told Jane that she would discuss it with me. Sarah and I immediately decided that the crib would not remain in our room and would go in the room originally intended for Lexi (I was not even going to consider Jane’s reasoning for this but was more determined that we show her who was really in charge in the house). The trouble was, we couldn’t move it back without – you guessed it – taking it apart first. Sarah ended up moving the crib back herself a day or two later.

Because of these things, Sarah initially described Jane as “bossy.” We told her that her primary responsibility is to look after Lexi, and in between that, she is to do cleaning. She is very good with Lexi and knows the needs of a young baby and is attentive to Lexi’s personality – the fact that she likes to be held and receive lots of attention. So for these things, it is good to have her. However, Jane still does have her own theories about how and when Lexi should be fed (breastfed and/or the bottle; Jane says one or the other, while we say both), and after a couple weeks of Sarah working, she still hadn’t caught on to Sarah’s schedule of feeding Lexi before work and coming home at lunch to do it. And in terms of remembering and following instructions, Jane had some more to learn as well.

In some ways, I’m not surprised by much of this. Hugh, the one who lived in the house before and employed Jane, told us that the more specific we can be with instructions, the better. I will always remember the story I heard from another exchange student while living in Zimbabwe: His host mother, before leaving for work in the morning, told her housekeeper to “put a chicken in the freezer for dinner” that night. When the woman came home from work, she opened the freezer to discover a chicken that had been feathered – but was still alive!

As far as compensation, that has been a learning experience for us as well. We agreed to pay her 6,000 Kenyan shillings a month (a little over US$97) for working Monday to Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., which, granted, is very cheap for this type of help (including so much child care!). Hugh employed her only three days a week with only occasional child care but paid her the same amount. We stuck to this amount for her salary because of what Sarah’s predecessor was paying his house help. In the negotiations, Jane told us that she assumed Hugh had told us about her situation (implying that we should be generous with her salary) – that in addition to her own children, she has taken in a few children who are not her own and who are AIDS orphans. I know this is more the practice here, but in the U.S. with any job, an employer would say that an employee’s compensation has nothing to do with one’s personal situation – what one chooses to spend one’s salary on is one’s personal choice and should not be used to influence one’s salary. This is what we’re used to, so it was strange to hear this sort of request.

Then the requests for additional “benefits” came. She said she expected to have tea and biscuits (cookies) for breakfast when she arrived every morning and to be able to make her native dish – ugali – in our kitchen with our dishes and with us supplying all the food for her. Sarah granted this request, although now it seems to be more trouble to shop for groceries for an extra person. I’d rather just give her a weekly food allowance and have her purchase and bring what she needs and likes, but it doesn’t seem to work this way. She also asked for a daily transportation allowance of 30 Kenyan shillings (49 cents) each way. There was some negotiation over transportation costs at various times of the day (a question of whether it’s more expensive during rush hour) and on days when it’s raining (Jane says it’s more on these days; Sarah found out this isn’t true).

It’s just so hard to get good help these days!