A volunteer with a house keeper?
on A Serendipitous Journey (Kenya), 10/Aug/2009 17:49, 34 days ago
A volunteer with a house keeper? Yep, it’s true. We have a lady who comes in one day per week to clean our house and wash all of our clothing for us. For the first 4 months of our stay in Kenya my roommate and I did all of this ourselves, but quite frankly we weren’t that good at it (and the area we live in is really dusty so our lack of talent in that department was very apparent!) When we were told we could employ someone to do it for us for the equivalent of about Cdn $7 we couldn’t pass it up.… sounds like we’re spoiled, and in that respect we absolutely are, but still keep in mind that we have no stove / microwave, no oven or other appliances, no TV, and we only just got a plug-in CD player/radio so we’re hardly living the high life.In Nairobi, from my experience, most lower-middle to middle-income earners and above have‘house help’ – many who are employed full time and live with the family. For example, even the driver at my work has a lady who lives with them full time to help take care of the children, cook and clean. Single young professionals also often employ a full time house help to prepare meals and clean their one or two bedroom flats every day.There is controversy over the low wages that live-in‘house girls’ make – often only Ksh 2,000 to 4,000 per month (Cdn$30 – 60 /month) for working 6 or 7 days per week however, that is another story for another day....