Atieno Yo!

The Good Life

The pages of Drum or True Love offer a peek into the dreams and aspirations of the Kenyan woman. With stunning shots of exquisitely furnished homes, interspersed with mouth-watering food, and articles on how to attain a beautiful (read, fit) body at home with equipment easily bought at Nakumatt, the magazines both create and curate Kenyan aspirations and hip Kenyan aesthetic. 

This lifestyle with its parquet wood floors, beautifully wrought burglar proofing, high thread-count cotton sheets, and faux-aged sculptures from Maasai markets by necessity require high maintenance. Someone needs to dust and polish the wooden floors, dust the ornaments- something that is inimical to also working out, maintaining that high-octane career, entertaining friends with tastefully prepared in-season & sustainably produced food. A calculation of the person hours required to maintain this lifestyles underscores a central truth: Kenyan domestic prosperity is contingent on the use of lower-income persons’ labour. This is a life that requires a steady supply of cheap and low maintenance labour. The domestic worker is a necessary input into what’s needed to maintain and preserve the employer’s valuables including children, expensive furniture, and ultimately peace of mind from the time consuming work of running a household.

Feminisation of Domestic Labour  

Women make up the vast majority of domestic workers. The female domestic is called on to perform and enact the ‘feminine’ role in the household due to the feminisation of reproductive labour in this sector. This life, a part relic of colonial master-servant relations perpetuates notions of what it means to be a successful employer couple. The idleness of a colonial wife was the mark of a successful colonial husband. He was expected to produce enough money to allow the employment of a coterie of servants. The wife would ensure that the household ran smoothly- without the back-breaking labour required for this of course. In contemporary Kenya, the nanny-cleaning lady-gardener-guard are also deemed as requirements to ensure that the two-income family is possible, without sacrificing the comforts owed the successful man (cooked & hot food, clean house, changed diapers etc).

Consumption/ Work Dualism

The dualism inherent in paid domestic labour is seen in the conception of the house/ home as both public/ private places and spaces for either production/ consumption. For the employer, the home is a sanctuary from the job and state. It’s a space where the employer consumes the fruit of their labour- the flat screen TV, a good book and clean children. It’s the rewarding space where one can purchase both the time and activities for relaxation. For the domestic worker, this is a productive space where labour is traded for a pay check. It’s also a place where the domestic worker also trades in their identity as part of the procurement of their labour. It’s often expected, especially for the live-in domestic worker, that she shall trade in her identity as an adult wage earning Kenyan to a kinda-sorta family member (albeit one who is never present in family photos or events). She’s expected to be asexual (no visits from husbands/ lovers) and her dietary preferences are subsumed by the employers’. While expected to cherish the employer’s children as her own, she is however expected to eschew her familial ties - e.g. the domestic workers’ children are only noticed when they are the underlying cause of a labour interruption “Her child got malaria so now I don’t have a nanny”.  

Workplace Violence:

In Kenya, and elsewhere, this sector is characterised by being very competitive, little regulated and attempts to unionise workers have had little to no traction. Domestic work is characterised by low pay, long hours, job insecurity and high vulnerability which translates to high incidents of workplace violence. The issue of sexual violence against domestic workers presents one of the more egregious cases of victim blaming- even in a country where victim blaming is rife. At bridal showers, wisdom on how to manage house and husband is dispensed with the proper and wifely management of the domestic worker taking centre stage in this curriculum. The bride to be is usually given life hacks on how to ensure that the domestic worker ‘stays in her lane’. “These women will eat you out of house and home if you’re not careful” the bride to be is told (“Lock the store and only remove the tea bags/ sugar you need for a few days”). These Jezebels are also out to entrap your husband and future sons. Care must be taken it’s emphasised, to ensure that she doesn’t sway those hips as bent over, she washes the floor (General advice: “Buy a mop”). If you ever unexpectedly walk into a furtive and quickly interrupted embrace between spouse and domestic worker in the kitchen, fire her immediately.

While there have been gains in labour law favouring domestic workers, power relations are still skewed very much in favour of the employer. While the statistics on this are notoriously hard to come by, anecdotally one assumes it’s prevalent in the sector. It’s quite usual to hear that many men’s first sexual experience was with a domestic worker. It would be highly unusual that these sexual interactions were always consensual from the perspective of the domestic worker.  Domestic workers however have little room for redress or relief, and a study by Oxfam on the working conditions of women drawn from the Mukuru informal settlement seems to validate this. The study showed that attempts by domestic workers to get redress faced obstacles where employers corrupted officials (e.g. chiefs & police) and/or the workers were asked for payment by the police to initiate an investigation.  

While the courts have started logging some impressive victories for domestic workers, a central truth (paraphrasing Audre Lorde) is that the personal and the political should illuminate all our lives. Just societies invariably emanate from just workplaces and just homes. A fair & prosperous Kenya, where citizens aren’t deprived of the rights due them, is dependent on the majority of Kenyans abiding by the spirit and letter of the law. In this case, this entails paying their domestic workers minimum wage, NHIF & NSSF, a valid contract, sick leave and time off. Anything less is not only illegal, but also guarantees the continued existence of slums and unjust society.

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