May12 Written by:Kayle
5/12/2008 4:29 AM
Here in Zim, it is your "cultural duty" to provide jobs for people if you can afford it, so we have a gardener and a maid. If you don't, you are viewed as selfish and are looked down upon. When it works out with your gardener and maid, things can be really great and flow smoothly, but when there are problems, it can be very hard to know how to go about dealing with them. As this whole maid/gardener thing is new to us, we often realize we need to seek the advice of locals on how to deal with issues that arise. Three weeks ago, Donna, our maid came to work on Monday very evidently sick: fever, headache, chills, dizziness, etc. I told her to go home and get better. She was out for that whole week and the next week sick. Then I called at the start of the third week and to my surprise she had gone down to South Africa to where her children live to see some doctors down there. She was to arrive back at the end of her third week out, but when calling her house last night, she's still in South Africa and won't be back until the end of this week--four weeks off of work! At first I thought she must really be sick, but I've found out that she just has the flu and so now I'm starting to wonder if she's really still sick or if she's just taking advantage of her time in South Africa and taking advantage of our generosity.
The crazy thing with workers here is that the meaner, stricter and harsher you treat them, the better they work! But when you are generous, kind, understanding, they walk all over you and take advantage of you! It is really hard because you want to treat people right, pay them fairly and be gracious as the environment here is tough, but if you do that, often you get taken advantage of! I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to move forward with this, but someone advised that I call the labor department to see how many paid sick days I'm required to give. Hopefully that will help me know how to proceed. I really like Donna as she does a great job cleaning and is great with Calvin. I don't want to lose her, but I also know she is on the verge of retirement and won't be around forever. So we'll see what transpires.
In the meanwhile, I've been borrowing other people's maids, but with terrible luck. The first week Donna was out, I did all the housework myself. But I realized I couldn't get anything done in preparation for school, so the second week I borrowed a friend's maid for 3 mornings. She cleaned well, but at the end of the week she quit being a maid as she had just gotten married and wanted to go move in with her new husband. So the third week, I borrowed another friend's maid, Agnes, for 3 mornings who is a fast and hard working woman. However, her sister is really sick with AIDS and Agnes is visiting her sister this week. So this fourth week, I've had to hire a third maid! Her name is Margaret and so far so good...but hopefully I can hold on to her longer than a week!!
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