Domestic workers (house-helps), play a very important role. They help alleviate the burden of the employer by doing chores that they cannot fit into their more demanding schedules.
However, one cannot help notice the cultural stigma that surrounds domestic workers. They are seen as uneducated and unskilled, and are not valued or viewed as a person with needs, feelings or desires. They are not seen as individuals with lives outside the services they are hired to perform but are servants who should be seen and not heard.
Kenyan Domestic workers, are often subjected to abuse and exploitation by their employers. This mistreatment comes in forms of emotional, financial, physical and sexual abuse and varies in severity across the country. Employer mistreatment of their domestic workers is alarmingly common.
In march 2018, we had a woman from Runda, detaining and torturing her house help for four years. Such a heinous act!
As if Kenyans don’t learn another woman- Judy Wangui who is custody for murder of Mary Wambui forced her house help to wash blood of the deceased. Buy why? What is wrong with the “bossy women”? Wangui’s house help confessed to have been forcefully made to wash the blood.
When a killer tells you to wash the blood of a victim she has killed, you better bow because you might be the next victim. Poor her! She must have been scared.
Society at large needs to reconstitute its idea of domestic work. The continuation of this negative attitude has left hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children unable to break free of the abuse, neglect, and cycle of poverty associated with working as a house help.