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Do you know your house girl?

Parenting

An incident happened a few days ago that triggered my thoughts. A friend’s house help disappeared. The couple has kids in boarding school, so the house girl is always left in the house alone. Now on the material day, the lady of the house came back from work in the evening as usual only to find the girl missing. Also missing was some money that was in her bedroom closet.

Realising what had happened, she called me frantically asking for advice on how she should handle the case. Now the first thing I asked her was the girl’s name.

This is how our conversation went:

"What’s her name?" I asked.

"She’s called Philomena? Philomena who?’ I don’t know." This is a girl this woman had kept in her house for several months and she only knows her by one name.

As I prodded further, I realised my friend is totally clueless about her nanny. I advised her to report the matter to the nearest police station but not before giving her a serious lecture about the importance of knowing your house girl in and out.

I thought such things are basic and obvious among women who employ house helps but I am so wrong.

Apparently, it is not just my friend who is lax in this area, many women take such things for granted. Let’s go back to the basics.

I mean before you bring a stranger in the name of a nanny to your house to take care of your precious earthly possessions and your God-given treasures (children), you ought to do a serious background check on them.

Wherever you got her from, before you allow her in, first, you need to establish their true identity.

Get her two names and confirm this from her identity card. Speaking of identity card, you need to always keep a photocopy of this in case of anything. With her ID, you can verify her age and whether she is a minor.

Dig... dig... dig... as much information as you can. Find out if her parents are alive, know her siblings and whether they are in your county. Ask her to give you a number of one of her folks so that you can verify the facts she gave you. Call and ask that relative some random questions, you will discover a lot.

Find out about her educational background and what led her to become a house girl. If you have such a clear picture, you are in a better position to think long-term when employing her. To add on, at least when something happens, you have a good place to start.

Photo: www.thegeminiweb.com

 

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