How domestic service is undermined

Maria-Stella Nkya, a resident of Dar es Salaam received a short notice from her housemaid stating that she was resigning from her work. Upon such notice, Stella, who was living with her children decided to take them to her mother who resides in another area in Dar es Salaam. 

As a result, Stella had to get a new maid, a task which proved to be lengthy. After a long search for the ideal maid, she managed to get a woman, Suzy, from the Southern highlands regions of Tanzania.

Before deciding to officially employ her as a maid at her house, Stella decided to take the maid to her (Stella’s )mother’s house so that she may be monitored and assessed on her working skills by her mother.

This was a decision made so that Stella’s mother, as an elder, may see if the maid is suitable or not.

Few days after Suzy joined Stella’s mother’s family, she started acting weird, demonstrating a demeanour of someone who had a hidden agenda. This made Stella’s children who were residing with their grandmother at that time to be uneasy.

After sensing that the family members were suspicious of her behaviour, Suzy confessed that she’s from a family that embraces witchcraft. However, she told them that she is a born again Christian.

According to one of the family members, the housemaid told them that she did not want to practise the outdated belief but her grandparents were still forcing her to engage in such practices.

“The biggest problem we face is that the individuals or agents we use to bring us the housemaids are not reliable. As a result, they bring you a stranger whom you know nothing about.

We don’t know if they have good manners or have a caring heart that loves children,” said Beatrice Rwehumbiza, a former teacher at Msasani Primary School.

Health status and background

When looking for housemaids, most families become desperate in their bid to get one.

The family background of the housemaids is something that stays in constant oblivion to the employers, their health status is not keenly looked at, and above all, we are not quite sure if they speak the truth when interviewed.

“It is very difficult to know everything about a housemaid. As a working mother, I need her to take care of my children while am at work. I remember one of my former housemaids was a thief.

But thank goodness her suspicious demeanor was noticed by me and my family before she could manage to steal anything significant. The girl hailed from a rural area,” noted Vaileth Edward, who works at NIT.

Paskalia Rueben, 57, is a mother of five. She said that during the good old days, it was not hard to get a housemaid and before taking her to your house, you had to visit her parents in order to get well acquainted with them. The maid’s parents would visit you as well. And that helped you to know each other.

“If any unfortunate event happened, it wasn’t hard to find them because we knew where they came from,” noted Paskalia, she adds, “Nowadays, the world has changed, and everything has changed too, women have to go to work in order to earn a living, leaving behind their children to strangers. Housemaids these days are connected to employers through third parties who often don’t have a complete idea of the real background of the housemaids,” said the former worker of National Bank of Commerce.

According to Paskalia, one of her neighbour’s grand-daughter was scalded to death using boiled water and after the incident, the house girl ran away, and has remained on the loose since then. “The situation shows that people are not serious about checking housemaids’ backgrounds and monitoring their character. Parents only react after something bad happens.

It is not until then that they realise they’ve been living with a snake in the house, after being bitten,” she says. For Sakina Mohammed, her stories with housemaids depict the worst ever scenario. She once received a house girl who was HIV+ without her knowledge. She lived with the housemaid under the same roof.

“She had developed some symptoms which made us suspicious and when we asked her what happened to her skin, her response was that her skin was affected by rice plants when she was farming,” narrates Sakina. She adds, “I didn’t buy her explanations so I decided to take her to a doctor.

The results showed that she was infected with HIV. I didn’t tell her about the results because I suspected she was already aware of her health status.

The following day I told her that I got an emergency that required me to travel with my whole family. I thus asked her to go back home to her family stating that I was going to call her back once I and my family returned.”

This was Sakina’s plan of getting rid of the maid altogether.

Reasons for housemaids misconduct

Women neglecting their duties

Today’s mothers have neglected their parenting and domestic responsibilities and leave everything to be done by the housemaids. For not being good mothers, they sometimes tend to abuse the housemaids, treating them badly, sometimes violently.

There have been cases taken to the courts of law as a result of housemaids being subjected to physical violence by their employers.

Discrimination by employers

Rehema Ng’ingo 23, a former housemaid in Tabata, has experienced the worst part of being a housemaid. Her former boss constantly treated her badly, sometimes denying her food.

She was not allowed to eat at the same table with other family members. At times she was made to eat inferior meals compared to those of her employer.

“I was not supposed to eat the same food I prepared for them and every day my boss asked me to taste it in front of her before they ate and I was told to make sure that cooked beans were not finished in the fridge.

So I found myself eating ugali and beans most of the time. I was prohibited from having my meal on the dining table as I was instructed to eat in the kitchen.

Thank God, now I am living with a family which treats me like I’m part of them, I feel secure and they reward me whenever I do well,” Rehema speaks.

Sexual abuse and rape

Tunukiwa Lusasi, a 20 year old woman residing in Temeke said that she hates doing domestic chores but she has to be a maid to earn a living.

“I used to work at a certain family, and within a short period of time after I joined them, my boss’s husband approached me for sexual favours, but I refused. One night while his wife was on a trip, he came to my room.

He forced himself on me but I declined his advances. After a bit of a struggle, I managed to escape. Some of us don’t know what to do if something like that happens,” she says.

Lusasi revealed that when interviewed with new bosses she never speaks the truth as some of them don’t want house girls who have already worked in several houses. “I never spoke the truth about my previous bosses, because if you do so, no one will consider hiring you as most families want a house girl who is ignorant or with little knowledge. Therefore, I pretend that I am new in the job,” she adds.

Low compensation

Despite the hefty task that housemaids are expected to execute on a daily basis, employers still pay them meagre wages which do not cater for most of their needs. Most families pay them Sh30,000 to Sh40,000 per month. Housemaids are the first ones to wake up early in the morning and they are the last people to go to bed at night.

Furaha Chaula, 25, is a housemaid who has been subjected to overloads of home chores which have left her with only 5 hours of sleep a day.

Efforts in trying to convey her dismay to her relatives have been met with accusations of being a bad housemaid who talks about family secrets to outsiders. “Now I don’t know what to do,” she says.

Zuhra Munis, a mother of four, is of the view that housemaids need to be treated like any other family member. For her part, she pays her house girl Sh30,000 and she rewards her Sh10,000 more whenever she performs well. Whenever her house girl gets sick she takes care of her treatment.

“I always make sure that I pay her on time and if I fail I always tell her to be patient for a few days,” said the owner of a boutique in Mwanza.

Way forward

According to Zakayo Ngimbudzi, a director of Ngimbudzi Investment Company, a house maid’s bureau, some of the maids behave badly because the society treats them as animals, forgetting that they are the ones who take care of the whole family, cooking for them and looking after their children.

“I have been doing this job since 1995 and the way I see it, the problem originates from both sides; employer and the employee. These girls never speak the truth because of the way they have been treated before; also some of the employers are rude. I think there must be a bit of give and take for everyone to live happily.

House-girls should do their job well, respect and treat the children well.

They should know the limits and boundaries between them and their bosses’ children.

Also, employers should treat the house maids well, give them salary at the right time, according to the agreement, they should treat them like the way they treat their children and not segregate them,” he notes.

Before hiring a maid, ensure that you have conducted a complete background check to know more about the person you are bringing home to take care of your children.

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