Know your serf

If you have a housegirl/houseboy (a.k.a if you live in Nigeria) this one’s for you.

Think fast - What is your housegirl’s name?
An all too easy question. In fact, let me answer that one for you: Her name is either Grace, Patience, Mercy, Charity, Comfort, or Mary – just pick one of the saintly virtues and bam, you’ve covered 90% of the Nigerian housegirl population. If you have a male serf, you would forgive me for dismissing him as a weekday – If he isn’t a Monday, he’s probably a Tuesday. Or a Wednesday. Or a Thursday. Or a F… you get what I mean. Honestly, why do parents bind their Children’s destinies and cast them into bottomless calabashes from which no destiny can escape? It’s just not right. This is the reason why I have a list of names I can never give my child, such as Boniface and Cletus. You should make a list too. But I digress.

My second question - What is your househelp’s last name?
Ah, gotcha there. You don’t know, do you? (cue smug grin of smugness from me. unless you actually do know his/her last name. In which case, cue this face)




A lot of us have no idea where our househelps came from. Our parents seem to magically procure them from thin air - we get back home one day and suddenly we have a new servant being. Joy and happiness! Our household tasks have diminished! For all we know there’s a secret underground laboratory that cultivates housegirls and houseboys in test tubes. Just add water and poof! Instant serf. Serf-in-a-can! If only. (Joy and happiness are also househelp names. Just saying)

Jokes apart - unless your househelp’s name is Joke - it begs the question: How much do we care about our househelps? How much should we care? Are they just tools to be used around the household as we see fit? Or are they perhaps individuals who happened to fall afoul of chance; people who did not have the good fortune to be exposed the opportunities we had, and, had they been given those opportunities, could have turned out to be even better than we are now?

There’s an underlying belief in a lot of people that househelps are not competent in several capacities/cannot truly be trusted. You’ll let them clean your room, but they’d best not look in the cupboards. You’ll eat the food they cook for you, but somewhere in the back of your mind you’re praying that today isn’t the day she’s decided to sprinkle a healthy portion of jazz upon your edibles. As a result of this, a lot of us keep our househelps at arm’s length, if not a lot further away. All we know is their names, and that they are at our beck and call. (“Yo Sunday, go fetch me a can of Becks! -__-“)

Believe it or not, househelps have souls, and should be treated nicely. It sounds like a given, but sometimes we forget. Like many things in our homes – such as the generator, it’s diesel, and the parentals paying for both of them – we tend to take our extra hands at the house for granted. Sure, we’ve come to the conclusion that 99.999% of Nigerians are douchebags. But they could be the 0.001%. and, at the very least, even if they are enemies, it wouldn’t hurt to give them less incentive to lace your evening pounded yam with cyanide. Keep your enemies closer, no? If you haven’t been nice to the help, start now.

Apart from making them feel like fellow human beings, closing the gap between ourselves and our ‘household life facilitators’ has other implications. Perchance your househelp actually is a low down good for nothing thieving scoundrel, and perchance one day he/she makes off with your precious new blackberry Porsche. And that just happens to be the day mummy and daddy are en route to the USA - on a 14 hour direct flight. So you have no way to reach them. WHATCHU GON DO? Chances are you’re going to throw a cataclysmic fit and threaten fire and brimstone if you ever get your hands on the thieving scoundrel. But chances also are you have no way to go about finding said scoundrel. You can’t call him/her. And even if you do, I find it unlikely that he/she’ll pick up the phone and go ‘oh hey, yeah, I’ve got your blackberry Porsche. Oh, you want me to return it? Okay.’ Yeah, not likely. If at all they pick up the phone it’ll be to say “LOOK WHO’S LAUGHING NOW! YOU WANT ME TO COME BACK AND COOK YAM FOR YOU? OH HELL NO NIGGER! POUND THAT SHIT YOSELF! I’M RICH BIYOTCH! AHAHAHAHA!”

Okay, so that’s what I’d say. But I bet they’d say something along those lines. At the end of the day, you are helpless in your predicament, so all you can do is lean back in your chair, cup your head in your hands and go :’(

So show that you care. If not for the help, then for the sake of your future blackberry Porsche, or Lamborghini or whatever they think up next. Investigate your househelp. Find out where your mom hired them from (there’s often a third party that referred them). Find out where he/she lives (no, not your boys quarters. The place they go whenever they leave your abode). Do something - anything. Every little helps. Do your part. Ask your househelp’s name today.