The Sunday Mail
I was basking in the sun while reading a newspaper on an odd midweek off-day when a loud rattling sound of a self-styled suburban photographer’s motorbike disturbed me.
I took less time than it takes to blink to open the gate as I wanted the bloke gone in a jiffy so I could get back to reading my paper.
To my horror, after exchanging pleasantries with the photographer, he handed me close to 10 colourful photographs of our maid, Revai, posing in my wife’s costumes right inside our bedroom.
Boy, she looked pretty in her boss’ apparel.
“Just look at how beautiful these photos are. Your sister-in-law is looking good,” the photographer said before asking for his $20 balance.
Swept in a tide of emotion, I paid the photographer his dues, took the photos before handing them over to her boss upon her return from work later that day.
Such are the challenges people with maids and other helpers have to contend with.
She lied to the world my wife was her sister and even had the guts to lend people my novels.
When I told colleagues about this incident, they burst into fits of laughter before telling me so many tales of the adventures of housemaids.
Called “sisi”, “aunty”, “maid”, “musikana,” “tombana”, “spoon and turner”, “mop driver”, “DW” or “dhabhazi” the domestic helpers we hire to safeguard our properties and children while we are away are a mixed lot.
If you thought they were mostly on the receiving end of the equation, you may be shocked to learn that they are actually on the offensive.
Usually dismissed as timid, slow, numb skulls or lacking intellectual acuity, housemaids are not as foolish as they purport to be.
They are a clever lot.
Did you know that some housemaids are actually much more intelligent than their employers?
Some are educated and have the papers to show for it.
It is not a one-size-fits-all affair, but housemaids are a tricky lot.
Some will feign ignorance on how to use the phone, yet when you leave them alone at home, they will use this gadget to phone whichever number there is under the sun.
Most maids have in the past, however, lost their jobs after checks with service providers showed that they would have spent more time on the phone than on the job.
Some maids are part of a network of robbers.
During their stay in homes, they can be busy making duplicate keys for the whole house and even the family car.
After getting all they need, they will complain of a medical condition before asking to be relieved of their duties.
But a few days after their departure, robbers will strike and drive off with the car.
At times such maids ask for days off and the thieves strike in their absence.
Others will continue with life as usual and remain cool after the robbery knowing fully well that they would have provided robbers with the means for your destruction.
Some maids are in their jobs largely for the money. These are the kind of people who will keep your children hungry and as dirty as street kids before bathing them as you are about to return from work.
“Handijaidze. Kuita sei? Handigeze mwana wemunhu. Kuti mai vake vakafa here? (I will never bath someone’s child as though they are orphaned,” you hear maids saying to each other while their bosses are at work.
Others will tell you straight in the eye that each job comes with benefits and housemaids are not to be left out. They also have fringe benefits to enjoy just like any other worker.
This could be the reason why maids sometimes drink the boss’ whiskey, vanish with his perfume and at times make a whole bottle of cooking oil grow legs.
“Basa rega rega rine mabenefits. Do you know that some people are bought cars at their places of work? So why would such a person complain when I take a bottle of cooking oil? Akanganwa here kuti pamba pake pabasa pangu?” one maid told this writer straight in the eye.
As I commit pen to paper gentle reader, some maids are busy inviting their friends and lovers to homes where they are employed.
Some even help themselves to food and carry off some of it to their relatives.
Some maids are so crooked that money for the children’s afternoon meals is often committed to other uses like airtime and skin-lightening creams.
Not all maids are bad, but there is a good number that is fighting an undeclared war with employers out there.
Rough employers usually have their children abused in their absence or their toothbrushes are used to clean the toilet.
Some maids put mucus and spit in the dishes they will be preparing to spite their bosses.
Others put their knickers in pots. Your house can be turned into a brothel if you are not careful. In some homes the tables have turned.
Lazy women have lost their marriages to industrious maids who offer their husbands a shoulder to cry on when weary.
Spiteful maids can bed a man and his sons as a way of getting back at a nagging boss.
This may be the reason why some women make it illegal for their husbands to talk to the maid.
The world we are living in has become so dangerous that it takes the love and fear of the Lord to keep societies intact.
Inotambika mughetto.
