This story is semi-fictional.
Note, especially for readers outside Africa: You may find the way some things happen in Kenya strange. Don’t be afraid to comment/ask and we can discuss. 🙂
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My alarm went off at 6:00 a.m. This time I did not linger in bed because I needed to get the car to my wife in good time then go to work. Before that, however, I needed to fire the house-help. My wife was not around to do it because we had no electricity. This meant that she would be unable to use the electric pump to express milk for our son. She had therefore gone to spend the night at a friend’s.
I was not really concerned about the firing itself. I was more concerned about telling the help that I would need to inspect her luggage lest she goes away with something of ours. My wife had told me that I could simply say that we don’t want to later be in a situation where we cannot find something and we say that the househelp left with it, when in fact she did not. I thought that was a good line.
I hand-wrote a document saying that I had paid her her dues and that I had checked her bags, and that she had returned our keys and mobile phone.
I decided that those would be the points I would tell her when firing her.
I went to the shower. I heard the house-help coming in from the room outside the house where she used to sleep. She went to the kitchen. I finished showering and went to the bedroom and dressed up. After a while, she brought tea to the sitting room.
It was time. I got out
“H–. [My wife] has said she is not satisfied with your work, and you do not do as she says. So she has said you pack your things and we leave. I will pay you for the days worked. Also, after you pack, please bring your things so that later when something is missing, we don’t accuse you of having taken it.”
“Oh. So she said I return the bag?”
“No, she said I check your bag for anything that belongs to us.”
“Oh Ok.”
She went out to her room and came back some minutes later with her clothes.
“I have decided to pack here” she said.
I stood and watched.
She gave me the mobile phone we had given her to use and asked me to remove her SIM card. I did.
She put her things in a bag that turned out to be ours.
She put aside the things that belonged to my wife.
Source: prweb.com
“This powder is mine, though it looks like hers,” she said, showing me a compact (is that what it’s called?). “Hers is in there.”
I checked my wife’s wardrobe where she kept such things. Nothing.
“I can’t see hers,” I said.
She came and checked briefly.
“This one is mine, though it looks like hers.
Hers is brown inside, mine is black.”
I opened the case. It was brown inside.
“Hers is brown inside, mine is black,” she repeated.
“She should come we settle this.”
I called my wife.
“That thing is mine,” she said. “Is it written Mars on the lid?”
“Yes”
“And it has perforation on the bottom”
“Yes”
“It’s mine”.
I told the help what my wife has said.
“No, this one is mine,” she maintained.
I let her keep it.
She finished packing, and returned the keys.
There were only two keys.
I said I was expecting three.
She said my wife had taken the other one.
I gave her the document to sign. She read through it.
“You have written here three keys,” she said.
She overwrote the 3 with a 2 on both copies.
I paid her her money.
As we walked to the car, I told her, “You know, this powder will become an issue.”
She said, “That powder is mine, but I can let her have it.”
She handed it over.
“When she finds hers, I can come for mine.”
As I drove past Nakumatt supermarket, she said she wanted to get into the supermarket to buy a phone.
I stopped the car and she got out.
My wife later said that compact was hers (my wife’s) and worth a lot of money.
Baba Amor's Thoughts 