The maid that won’t leave.

So, when I got here, my husband had hired a maid to stay with us and help us out with daily tasks. This was in Kampala. For numerous reasons, one being that we could no longer afford a maid and two being that she assisted in disappearing a good number of things we brought from the U.S. and third that she was a teenager like teens everywhere who think that food, electricity and water come in endless free supply, we discontinued her services.

On the farm however, Stephen had hired a neighbor lady for the past 2 years to come and help with the cooking, cleaning and gardening since I was not here. Since I’ve come, Stephen has told her that her duties will be limited to the garden. He has told her several times and yesterday he told her again. Yet she has continued to show up and wash dishes and tried to cook with me but mostly she follows me around and watches me. I’m usually all about working with people and love having the company, however, maids are a huge security risk. This is what everyone has said. They steal things from you and also “sell” information about you to the armed robbers. After we were robbed the police cautioned us against having a maid.

One day after a sleepless night in Kampala, filled with footsteps outside and signs of people trying to break in, we arrived at the farmhouse in order to begin work on renovations. Suddenly, we had 3 people and their entourages all up in our house: the maid and 3 of her kids, a young man who Stephen had hired and also a third man who was beginning work on the concrete. They were in and out of every room. My purse with cash was there. I was bone tired. The kids were dragging off hammers and other implements which are extremely hard to buy in good quality here. I was ready to explode, so I took a walk to cool off. When I came back the situation had gotten even more out of control. The maid was painting the wall with her 3 yr old and also my 3 yr old twins. Each one had a brush full of paint. The paint was everywhere--all over the kids’ bodies and hair. And the kids who were trying to access their potty in the back of the car got the paint all over the car. My husband was running back and forth with a wild look in his eyes, trying to manage the situation. I exploded. “You need to get these people out of here,” I cried, tears of fatigue and frustration running down my face. "Get them out or I'm going to beat them away with a stick!"

And that is sort of how I have felt about the situation since. I do not want to have this maid around. She has a reputation in the neighborhood for theft. She has been caught a number of times. She has harvested and sold our matoke and told us that it was stolen. Once we were looking for a knife to use to cut up vegetables for lunch. We knew it was in the kitchen but we could not find it. At the time one of her kids was hanging out in the yard, so my husband told the kid to get his mom. She comes he asks her what has happened to this only knife we had to chop up food. She doesn’t respond. She pretends to look through the kitchen in search of it. After she thinks we are no longer looking, she walks back to her house and returns with it. This is an every week story—whether it is food that is missing or dishes or harvest, your hairbrush or your computer. And it is pretty “normal”. People tell me that this is how maids behave.

Yet here we have a maid, because we must have a maid. That is our lot in life. Even though she will not get paid—but likely she will collect her payment—she keeps coming back to sweep the porch and do anything householdish that she can get her hands on. It’s such an awkward situation.