Mariaam Bhatti: Tales of a Domestic Worker
Discrimination is a major issue that domestic workers have to deal with in their workplaces on a daily basis. Whenever it comes to mind I think of the various stories I’ve heard from the ladies in our group. One that touched me especially was a story of a lovely woman who explained that one time her employers were going away for two weeks. They didn’t leave her any money to buy food, but they left money to get food for their pet for the entire period they were away. I could not believe that someone would choose to feed a pet over a human being. They were both family members, and the budget was supposed to be enough for both; nobody had to be chosen over the other.
I also remembered a girl I once knew who worked for a friend, a senior police detective back in South Africa, almost 10 years ago. The lady was the breadwinner and one of the few remaining siblings in her family; this meant she had to take in her teenage sisters and nieces on top of her own two children, as her parents and her nieces’ parents had died. Fostering family members’ children is very common in many African cultures as the states rarely look after any orphaned children if there are remaining relatives who are able. The difference is that we never use the words ‘adoption’ or ‘fostering’ – they are family, end of story.
So, the young lady who worked for my friend’s family was only 16. She only had primary school education and had lost her parents as well. She was such a lovely, ever-smiling girl. One of the days I visited, I was shocked at how much she had to do alone; how she had to wash for three teenage girls older than her, and cook and clean after them, in addition to her employer and her two children. As I was still in shock wondering why the older girls didn’t help, that particular evening she was the only one still on her feet cleaning all the plates and pots after dinner while everyone sat in the lounge and watched the evening soapies and dramas one after the other.
I had not realised I was sitting ‘in her place’ until she came and stood beside me when she had finished her chores for the night. I was sitting in a chair that stood alone on the outside arm of one of the sofas. She asked me to sit on the available space on the sofa, but I told her I was fine where I was and gestures for her to take the free seat on the sofa. I thought she was just giving me the space out of respect, as it is common in our culture that young people offer people older than them somewhere to sit first. When she still did not move, her employer quickly said to me: “Oh no, a ‘girl’ sits in that chair, not on sofas.” I had no knowledge of domestic work issues back then, but I was hurt by that, and still am till today.
I was hurt back then the same way I was hurt in Ireland when my employer wouldn’t let me sit at the dinner table. I always had to take my meals to my room to eat there. One morning, she even turned back and went to sit in the kitchen to eat when she saw I was having my breakfast in the sitting room – just to avoid sitting and eating with me.
Mariaam Bhatti is a member of the Domestic Workers Action Group and Forced Labour Action Group of the Migrant Rights Centre Ireland.
