Nannies

We have just hired a part-time nanny to do our housework. My housemates and I aren’t at home all that often, so it will make life a bit easier.

 

Here in South
Africa, most white families hire what they
call “nannies” to do all of their housework. They are domestic workers, at first I equated them with black slaves.
These black ladies have no education, and generally no other opportunities for
employment. They work Monday through Friday earning 20 Rand each day. That’s about $2.00-$3.00 a day. Nannies are not child care providers, as the name
suggests, but they do everything around the house. They wash all the dishes, do
the laundry, iron and fold the laundry after it’s been hung dried, and clean
the house top to bottom. The hours of the nanny vary by family. Our nanny will only come once every other week as she has other households all the other days of the week. Nannies of larger families come everyday, and by the time they are back each morning, the
housework has piled up once again.

The employment, or unemployment, circle is never ending. The
blacks have the least education in the country of South Africa. They live in the
townships and they go to a school where they receive peanuts for an education.
The township schools really are terrible. A few girls I spent time with at the
Children’s Home were 13 and 14 and didn’t know 3×5, or any other simple math. Because
of their education, they can’t get a good job, and because they can’t get a
good job, they can’t earn enough to move out of the township, and because they
raise their children in the township, the cycle continues.

 

So what do we do with it? I am trying to treat our nanny as a real person. Humanizing someone is one of the best things you can do for them.  They don’t have any opportunities for change or for a better life, so respecting them and believing in them is all I can do at this point.

 

Love because God’s Spirit is in you.