Public Agenda (Accra)
Asks Bright Segbefia
28 November 2008
opinion
Mini advertising boards are dotted all over city street comers, talking about agents and what they are offering the public. A message on a not-too-appealing board stuck to a tree trunk in Accra reads: 'Agent for house-helps'. I was taken aback, asking myself what exactly this so called agent was up to. Other questions darted through my mind. I tried to figure out the agent's mode of getting the 'goods', whether they go round knocking at doors asking parents if they've surplus girls between this-and-that age to be given out into labour for a handsome remuneration.
Another bother was whether complaints about the maids' misconducts will be lodged with the agent who may have been out of touch. Or parents will be made to answer for the maids' misdeeds at arbitration or before the 'I-put-it-to- your?' Not only that but also how much the agents know about these girls' character and culture to forestall unnecessary clashes. Or once it's about business such questions is much ado about nothing? What distinguishes these agents from human traffickers in other parts of the world?
Media reports are replete with announcements of missing house maids. Usually, an appeal goes to the public for information on the missing maid.
Like young boys ducking for fish in the Volta Lake from Akosombo to Yapei, and others whipping cattle in the Accra Plains, Afram Plains and elsewhere, these maids perform tedious chores. Their parents develop heaven-high hopes that they will bring wealth that'll lead to the relocation of the family from poverty territory.
On arrival at their mistresses' they see the picture of joy and hope. But like a sandcastle in the storm, it's not long when they're faced with the reality. Everything turns out to be a fluke. Their joy turns into nightmares while a day looks much longer than a year. Everyone, particularly human rights crusaders and gender activists should show concern and find out the prevailing conditions.
An SSS graduate, who returned from a foreign country where she had served as a house maid, narrated her suffering with pain and regret. Asked why she chose to go to that country to labour instead of continuing her education for future prospects, she said faced with huge financial stumbling blocks, she unenthusiastically believed her aunt that there were lucrative jobs in foreign countries.
Work without rest
According to her, she worked like a slave without rest, scrubbing the floors, watering gardens, cooking, washing, among others. Never has she worked so hard like that before. The only rest was when she went to bed, very late in the night, but yet the first to jump out of bed as though she was at loggerheads with it. She was made to understand sleeping as purely a night affair and never had a nap. Her contract spanned four years but she could count on her fingers the number of times she stepped out of the 'Berlin walls', their fence. Even that, it was on shopping in the company of her madam whose character she said passed for a witch.
She made no secrete of her ordeals to friends and, therefore, dissuaded any of them who might be nurturing the ambition to travel to that country to either baby-sit or leapfrog to 'abrokyire'.
And when you come home, conditions that some house maids face cannot be said to be any better. I have heard some disquieting accounts. Considering the frequency of 'they are missing' or 'she is missing' announcements, it's only fair to say that these revelations aren't mere embellishments.
Esi, 17, arrived back at sundown in the village as her mother was about to get relieved of a pan of heavy load, made up of cassava and other food stuffs, blanketed by firewood. Esi's yet-to-be heard story was loud and clear; she had absconded from her mistress in Accra, just weeks after she had been given a warm fare-well. Her mother was visibly disappointed because she had failed to stay there and bring the 'gold' like others.
But having listened to her third eldest daughter's tale with suspended breadth, she sighed heavily and nodded, like the red-headed lizard sprawling on the wall, in agreement with her that it was worth coming back to labour in freedom. Esi told her parents and siblings, eager to receive first remittance, that on the third day of her arrival, her Madam pulled a medium sized ice-chest out, filled it with iced water and laden her with it to go and sell elsewhere without a shred of consideration for the limp in her left leg. Her routine water business commenced from around 10a.m after household chores, which started by 4a.m. She seldom went to bed earlier than 11p.m.
Pregnant in JSS One
Esi's education was disrupted by a pregnancy in JSS One. The onus of looking after Esi and her child intensified her parents' headaches. Her madam, Esi hinted in a faint voice, did not spare her whenever she failed to meet a daily sales' target. She described her experience as hellish and vowed not to go back.
It's not a bad thing to have a domestic worker, male or female. But does it worry you that while you dress your children up neatly each morning for school with the objective of positioning them for the future and in the hope of being taken care of, your maid is stuck home to see to the general orderliness? Well, it's no fault of yours that they didn't go to school. But there's much you can offer so that they don't miss out completely in life. Think seriously of equipping them with an activity that'll be supporting in the future.
But as we cry for the chicken we must as well cry for the hawk. Similarly, a man sleeps on his bed the way he spreads it on the floor. Much as some house helps deserve my sympathy, there are others whose behaviour is nauseating and vexatious, to say the least.
AWOL
I am more interested in the ages of those maids being declared absent without official leave (AWOL). Why do their ages matter? Well, my curiosity is informed by reports that some house-helps were at the centre of the dissolution of otherwise decades of happy marriages between some prominent personalities such as religious leaders, politicians, chiefs and their spouses. Surprised?
The girls succeed in dislodging their madams from the marriage and taking full possession of the men. Unable to come to terms with this sinister behaviour, the wives quit the marriage with their children subsequently becoming innocent victims.
But on this issue, there is the question of moral decency of these personalities, who are expected, with all humilities, to serve as role models.
The wives cannot be entirely blameless. The incontrovertible fact is that sometimes too much attitude of 'madamism' of some wives is the underlying cause of their losing husbands to the maids. Some wives relax too much with the coming of the maids, who take up nearly every responsibility including, 'taflatse', laying the bed.
On this note, it's very instructive for wives not to leave everything to chance trusting their husbands so much. Trust, yes indeed, is very important relationships. However, wives will do themselves good if they'll not open their doors too wide to their maids thereby creating the unfortunate opportunity for them to put a razor-sharp knife on the golden rope that has held them together in marriage. They must be reminded that the hyena and the tiger do not embark on hunting on the same pasture. The husbands on the other hand must be honest and overcome such attractions.
The disappearance of some of the maids can be traced to elopement, or furtive ejection by wives without the knowledge of their husbands when caught in a 'hide and seek game' with the man. As natural as the fish in the river when the maids reach a certain age, the desire for sex surges and it becomes highly difficult, not impossible though, to control. Those with little resistance break camp and go into hiding with their lovers.
It may help madams who have observed this to quickly find an antidote by engaging a councilor for the maids or grant them their liberty to leave them before they cause any irreparable harm.
Mice within
Other house-helps are the 'mice' from within and which send information to 'outside mice', to wreck havoc on the family. Some house-helps are the first suspects in armed robbery attacks on their masters' residences. They form an alliance with thieves, who break into the house, sometimes killing some members of the household as the house boy feigns innocence.
This is where I find it strange when people advertise themselves as agents for house-helps. In an event of the maid absconding, whom will the 'parents' contact? How credible can we take some of these agents in the face of recurring 419 scams, which undermine genuine intentions?
For some mistress-maid relationship, no matter what efforts one party puts into it, the other will still cause troubles just like cooking a cow for the hawk in the hope that it'll not come after your chicks. These not withstanding, some house-helps and their new parents have demonstrated a wonderful relationship. The maids have become fully integrated into the families to the extent that their biological parents and the foster parents become one family.
A Ga friend invited me to their house where I met their maid of a different ethnic group. She spoke very nicely about the maid, more than 23 years old. She said she does not give preferential treatment to her two daughters. They enrolled her in hairdressing apprenticeship. Today, she's a madam having many apprentices though still staying with my friend. She has a well stocked salon, provided by her 'parents'. My friend whispered into my ear plans to provide more things for this maid.
Naturally, these two families are united by this fantastic relationship. Looked at from another lense, this will inevitably build positive perception and tolerance of each other's tribe, at least from the two families' standpoint. Maid-foster parent relationship could be a two-edged saw and will fashion the desired way if handled properly.
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