I am pleased to report that we may have finally put together all of the pieces of our household staff puzzle and starting next Tuesday I will be free from all of those pesky domestic responsibilities, such as washing my own dishes, cleaning my own bathrooms, or supervising my own children. Woohoo!
Once we are fully up and running we will have three members of full time staff.
One full time gardener, who is here Monday through Friday cleaning the pool, mowing the lawn, weeding my vegetable garden, digging up and replanting ornamental beds at my whim, killing snakes (I hope!), washing the truck, and bringing in fresh mangoes and lemons from our fruit trees. He is also useful for other errands, such as buying a grill, buying charcoal for the grill, and going out and pricing lawn furniture, since he is almost certain to get a better price on these types of items than we would if we went out in search of them ourselves. He quite literally showed up on our doorstep the second day after we arrived, having been fired by the previous tenants of the house over differing philosophies about the style of the yard. Since I have virtually no strong feelings about the yard, other than having one part of it clear for kids to play in, I pretty much leave him a lone to do his thing and he is working out great.
Our housekeeper/cook is still part time for the next few weeks as she transitions from her current employer, but once she is here full time she sill get to the house first thing in the morning and watch T for a couple of hours before the nanny comes to work. Then she will clean, I guess. I am not sure how much cleaning, exactly, can be done on a daily basis, but I am assuming I am going to have a very clean house. She will also do some laundry, and some shopping, and a lot of the food prep, especially all of the time consuming scrubbing and soaking of fruits and veggies. I am particularly looking forward to being able to leave my dinner dishes in the sink overnight and having them magically cleaned in the morning. And to her preparing lunch. I hate making lunch. I never have good lunch ideas and I just find it to be a really annoying meal to prepare, so I am happy to foist that responsibility onto someone else.
Of course the most important part of the cadre is our nanny who starts full time on Tuesday… but is moving in over the weekend. Yes, our nanny and her entourage will be living on our compound with us, about 50 yards from our house in our very own shanty. She will be joined by her two children, a 4-year old girl and a 1-year old boy, the woman from her village who watches her children during the day and that woman’s daughter, plus the nanny’s husband will be here on the weekends (during the week he lives at his jobsite outside of town). I have a whole village moving into my backyard! Into a two room “house” at that. I prefer to call it our shanty, but that is a bit perjorative and I have to remember that while it is unappealing to us, it is a step up for her and her family, especially since there is hot and cold running water and she is wired in to our generator so that she has a steady supply of electricity, both of which are scarce commodities in the area of town where she was living.
We have been working with her to complete a few home improvements before she moves in, including what will almost certainly be the cheapest home addition we will ever build. The quarters had an additional porch on the end enclosed just with chicken wire. For a few hundred bucks my ever-handy gardener and one of his buddies enclosed the whole thing with plywood and plastic and now everyone is apparently very happy.
Well, except me. I am happy to have a nanny, especially happy to have one who lives on as it means easy and flexible babysitting on the evenings and weekends, but it is WEIRD to have a whole family living in my backyard in what can only be described as rather African conditions. It is strange to be responsible for these people and I already have a lot of guilt about it even though I know I am paying her very well (at the top of the local nanny range) she makes less in a month than what we paid the nanny in our DC nanny-share every week!
At any rate, that is the current state of my domestic staff. Lets all hope I find a job that starts soon or else I will be feeling really silly lurking around my house while other people do everything.
Our lovely "addition" to the staff quarters. African engineering at its finest!
The staff quarters. Our gardener will be working on landscaping early next week.
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