"Let the gardener do it..."

As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I knew how it sounded – but in all fairness, that wasn’t at all what I meant. There we were, the whole family, lounging by the pool in the middle of the African “bush.” One of the kids tosses the beach ball and it bounces off the deck and over the electric fence beneath us (there to protect us from ferocious wildlife). My brother-in-law grabs the pool net but soon announces that he can’t quite reach the inflatable ball. “Oh, let the gardener get it,” I say lazily from my spot on the deck chair. Laughter erupts from the entire family.

“Spoken like a true South African!” my sister-in-law says, still laughing.

I sit up, immediately defensive. “I didn’t mean – ”

“Soon you’ll be leaving all the dishes for the maid to do,” she adds.

“Next thing you know she’ll say ‘Ironing? What’s that?’” my mother-in-law teases.

“But that’s not what I meant – ” I say again, but there was no point. I was clearly providing the entertainment for the moment, and there was no use defending myself. And I suppose it was humorous, but the whole exchange upset me. My heart was pounding as they teased me, and I was forced to wonder if they were right…

Am I becoming a typical South African? Am I turning into someone who wants others to do my dirty work? And if so, is that so terribly wrong? I try not to judge others for paying a maid to wash every dish and iron every t-shirt and make the bed every morning, and yet something inside of me panicked at the thought that I might become like them. Sure, I pay Sheila to clean and iron once a week – but there’s a difference, isn’t there? I still make my own bed, wash my dishes, do most of my laundry, some of my ironing…Oh God, they’re right. I’m becoming a spoiled brat.

It’s a very different way of life here. Everyone seems to have a maid (sometimes two) and a gardener – if not full time, at least once a week. How much you ask that maid to do varies from person to person. She might make your bed, scrub your floors, get your groceries, cook your meals and bathe your children, or she might come in once a week to simply do the ironing. For most people, it’s somewhere in between. Most South Africans don’t sit around being waited on hand and foot. Surprisingly, even with a full time maid, people still manage to find chores and tasks to busy themselves. It’s human nature, I think, to want to be busy. God, if you could hear my mother-in-law talk about how much she does around the house, you’d never know she has a full time maid.

While my mother-in-law's martyrdom annoys me, I do respect the fact that she doesn’t leave the dinner dishes for the maid to wash the next morning, because a lot of people do. After a dinner party, I always jump up to help wash the dishes but I’ve slowly noticed that no one else ever offers to help. At first I thought my friends and acquaintances just didn’t have very nice manners, but I’ve finally realized that when the hostess says “Just leave the dishes,” she doesn’t mean just leave them and she will take care of it after the party; she means just leave them for the maid to do in the morning. The other guests don’t offer to help because it’s not actually helping the hostess, it’s helping the hostess’s maid.

I’m sure I’m generalizing here, and my few South African readers may feel that I’m misrepresenting them which is not my intention. I certainly don’t mean to imply that South Africans are lazy or that they don’t know how to operate a dishwasher – I can assure you that they do – but whenever possible they will pay someone else to do it. And come on, if you’re being honest…wouldn’t you do the same?

Everyone has fantasies of winning the lottery and hiring someone to do the cooking and the cleaning and all the other annoying tasks associated with day to day living. But in reality – it makes me a bit uncomfortable. I’m not sure I want to be the kind of person who never makes a bed or folds laundry. Or perhaps the real source of my uneasiness stems from the fact that I haven’t won the lottery. I can only afford to have a maid once a week because I’m taking advantage of a system that doesn’t seem quite fair. Domestic help is extremely cheap in this country.

I’m not sure what it says about me – that I exploit this unethical system on a weekly basis. Whenever I voice my concerns, people say that paying the maids more would only disrupt the “system.” It’s ridiculous, I know. The idea is that if we paid the maids much more, most people couldn’t afford them and a hell of a lot of women would be out of work. It’s kind of true, I guess. If we paid Sheila what she was worth, we certainly couldn’t afford to hire her one full day a week. I don’t know. Maybe I’m simply rationalizing. Maybe my family here is right. Maybe I’m turning into a South African.

It’s a good thing that I’m going home later this month; I clearly need a healthy dose of reality.


(As for my trip to the bush…I will post some photos later this week!)