OK, I know, difficulties about having “domestic staff”
really doesn’t sound like something that anyone should be complaining about,
but hear me out first!
We had a wonderful part-time maid in Paraguay that started
at our house the first Monday after we moved into it. There were a few moments of difficulty
(mostly medically related), but there were very few and she did a great
job. I was very grateful for her help
and housekeeping skills (which I am somewhat lacking), especially with the
dusty living conditions, the need to carefully clean the fruits and veggies,
the lack of convenience foods and no dishwasher.
We had heard that there would be separate domestic staff
housing on our property here in Zim and we were thinking that for security
reasons we might want to have someone full time who lived on the property. What we didn’t think about was the fact that
usually this means that there is a whole family (or two if the housekeeper and
gardener both have families) sharing the property. The other thing that we didn’t realize was
that we would be responsible for letting a night guard in and out at a set time
every day (a time set by the Embassy, not by us). So, until we do have someone living on the
property, we (ok, so really, John) are basically stuck with an early morning
every day and we are tied to the house every evening.
Therefore, the idea of a housekeeper and gardener who live
on the property (ideally without too many kids) became more appealing and we
began our search. Most Americans with
school-aged children try to arrive at post before the beginning of school and
so by the time we arrived, the household staff of the people who left post had
been scrambling to find work since May or June.
As you can imagine, the good ones get snatched quickly. Since the urgent issue is to have someone
here to let the guard in and out, I thought that getting a gardener was most
important, since it is often his job.
So, here is our tale of trying to find household help:
We interviewed two gardeners and decided to proceed with the
second as we liked him better and I was able to speak with his former employer
and confirm his reference. We’ll call
him Jim. We had originally found him
when we interviewed his nephew’s wife (let’s call her Susie, married to Craig,
a gardener) to be a housekeeper. Susie
and Craig had a job at a house together (good for them since they were married
with a daughter) but the family they had found only needed a part-time
housekeeper so Susie was looking for part-time work to complete her hours. I thought this might be fine, if we could
find a gardener to live here since we had only had part-time housekeeping in
Paraguay and I thought it was plenty.
Craig came with Susie to her interview and at the end of the
interview Craig said his uncle (Jim) was looking for work as a gardener (we had
told him we were looking for one) and gave us his credentials. They looked good and Jim’s family didn’t live
with him in Harare, so we thought we’d interview him. We liked him and a few days later decided to
offer him the job and asked him to come back to go over the contract. He did, and at the end of the discussion
started with the “I have a little problem” (typical red flag!). The story was that he had some high blood
pressure due to the fact that his former employer hadn’t helped him line up
work before leaving the country. He
wanted to rest in his village for a few days and if all went well he would
still move in the next Sunday and start to work the next day. But he also told us that Susie and Craig had
decided that they wanted to both work for us full time. Earlier, I had followed up on Susie’s former
employers and found out that there were some issues, so I was sure that I did
not want to hire her on a permanent full-time basis until I could get to the
bottom of the issues. So, we told Jim
that we still weren’t sure what we would do about Susie, but we still wanted to
go ahead with hiring him. Since we don’t
have a printer yet, we said we’d have the contract ready when he came back from
the village.
The next day the girls came home from school with “Guess
what?” A friend of theirs who is part of
another new family (the one whose daughter is in Arianna’s grade) had also
interviewed Jim and he had moved his things into their house last Sunday (I
think right before he came to our house to go over the contract)‼ John thought he ought to check out the story
with the mom and sure enough, that’s what had happened. Jim had also told them the whole story about
high blood pressure and not being sure about starting work next week, but in
the meantime he moved his things into their house. Earlier in the day, Susie sent us a text
saying she wanted to work for us full-time.
My guess is that Jim was trying to get us to hire Susie and Craig who
probably liked us better than their current employer since Jim had two job
offers for himself. In my opinion that
is no way to start off an employment situation, so, on to more interviews….
Meanwhile, I have managed to iron a few of John’s shirts (I
think for the first time since we’ve been married). The biggest problem with not having household
help is that the Embassy expects that we have help here to let in all the
maintenance people. This is pretty much
a daily occurrence, which for now makes me feel tied to the house, and although
it gets better after the transition, there are still weekly deliveries that
require someone to be home at random times.
There are quite a few other interesting parts to interacting with
household help, but I think this saga is long enough!
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