From: Biniam Tekle (biniamt@dehai.org)
Date: Fri Oct 23 2009 - 09:55:17 EDT
The Southern Times
Friday 23 October 2009
A housemaid, or a co-wife?
Imagine you are too busy, because you come back home completely exhausted.
The maid rushes to welcome him with a nice hot cup of tea, in her
see-through nightdress as you dream in the sweet world of gender equality.
While you're snoring, she is the only flesh of a woman his senses can come
closer to intimacy. She's available.
In a voice that evokes longing, she asks what your husband wants to eat. He
responds with an open heart. Lowering his emotional defenses, he reveals
fundamental vulnerability.
I trusted her and would leave her with my family for two weeks when I
traveled. Whenever I returned, I found the children clean and well attended.
Everything was in place- my husband was all-smiles and no longer complaining
about my frequent trips- I thanked God that all was well. You were wrong,
no, foolish.
This is the story of housemaids, my-oh-my.
A group of men interviewed strongly believe that a housemaid is like any
other woman, and many women live under the illusion that because they are
educated and working class, they are better than housemaids. A woman is a
woman, as long as she can deliver the goods.
A group of women interviewed say it is disgusting to share a husband with a
maid. Maids are servants. Why should a servant share the table with their
masters? Why didn't they marry a maid in the first place?
Some women believe that men who marry maids have an inferiority complex.
"They cannot handle women with strong personalities, so they opt for maids
to compensate for their inadequacies. They need serious counselling."
But some maids believe it is a competitive world out there, and since women
are more than men, there is nothing wrong sharing a husband with your female
employer, especially if the man wants service. Arousal comes easily in the
knowledge of the secrets they harbour about the unmet needs of husbands.
After all we are all women. We can cook, wash, iron and give birth. Which
woman does not want to marry upwards and experience social mobility?
And some maids are smart too. Some have even done psychology and can read
the minds of husbands like open books.
Come to think of it, due to the economic desperation in some countries, some
female teachers have left to become maids in Botswana, Namibia, South
Africa, England and New Zealand. They may come with a motive. And who can
blame them if they privatize your husband?
All said and done the working class married woman is facing a serious
challenge in her own territory- her home. Will the maid become a co-wife?
For the men, watch-out for the garden-boy turned Mandingo. He too can frolic
with your madam.
HIV and housemaids
Housemaids may be silent cogs in the long chain of HIV transmission. While
some maids are already infected, many are infected by their employers.
Because of their vulnerability and fear to lose a livelihood, they are
coerced into offering sexual services to the boss. In Mali, the BBC reported
that girls as young as eight years who go to work as housemaids are
contracting HIV because they are obliged to have unprotected sex with their
employers. In Eritrea, housemaids are among the high risk group for HIV
infection, similar to soldiers.
In Kenya, there are reports that boys in the home lose their virginity to
housemaids. Fathers and sons could be sharing the same maid. One writer in
Nairobi wrote: "And I do not exaggerate when I point to the high frequency
of maid rape in many households.
If you ask your typical Nairobi 'babi' or middle class boy what his first
sexual encounter was, he will spin a tall tale about the older girl who
lived just up the road. Wrong.
The first encounter, and the second and the third, is more often than not
with the maid. She is shared among the boys in the house, their friends in
the neighbourhood, and very often the man of the house who after dropping
off the kids and wife to school in the mornings, will sneak back for a quick
one.
This sexual access is usually procured forcefully with the implicit threat
that for the maid to resist will result in instant dismissal.
Here's a little clue for HIV/AIDS health workers who decry the transmission
of the disease from philandering husband to wife: it is the maid who is at
the centre of a domestic sexual web that runs through the sons and their
father, not to mention any other lovers she may take."
l Kazhila Chinsembu is a lecturer at the University of Namibia in Windhoek.