Cleaner update

You remember the woman who I met in the street who asked if I had any cleaning work for her? Well I thought it over a lot and talked to a lot of people here about it, and I decided to meet her again to see if it was feasible to have her come in when I was in the house. Everyone I consulted thought that it was a bad idea even to consider it and many offered to put me in touch with someone they knew and could recommend. Some that I asked went so far as to give me a patronising "you've got a lot to learn", which of course made me doubly determined to give her a chance.

So I met her on Saturday and quizzed her about her situation, what work she had done in the past and so on. She told me that she used to work for a teacher and then the director of the American School, but that she'd had to stop work when she had her child. After that she was unable to find work again as the people that she had worked for had left the country. My impression again was of someone who was telling the truth - these things are quite intangible, but there was no particular forcefulness to her replies (she didn't seem to be *trying* to convince me) and there were no obvious holes in her story or hesitations trying to recollect details. She also said that she had references that I could follow up.

I invited her to come back on Sunday and she did a few hours of work. When it came to payment we talked a bit, with me trying to get her to name a price and vice versa. She told me that she would normally (if working for a foreigner) get around 40,000CFA (£45ish) for going three times a week to someone's house to clean, iron and whatever (3 full days, that is), and 50K if she was to cook too. This is what she wanted to do with me as well, but I figured I could only afford once a week for a few hours (10K each time maybe, or 15K if she cooked), and I was also reluctant to commit to more than once a week if I was going to have to be in the house every time. In the end I offered 10K for the day's work, and she gave me a strange look and a small yet high-pitched "no!" before going on to explain that the 40K that she mentioned was a monthly wage, not a weekly one, and so 10K for a day was far too much.

This, along with her reluctance to take any money on the day to avoid "spending it all straight away", helped me to trust her a bit more. In the end I decided that, provided the references came through ok, she could do 3 days a week for me for 50K a month. She was very keen to do this as at that point she was getting paid 30k a month by a Cameroonian lady to work six full days (and she came on the seventh - Sunday - to work for me... in full Sunday best straight from church).

She had two letters of recommendation (one in dodgy English supposedly written by an American - a bit suspicious) and a copy of her CV and ID for me. Her ID showed a different date of birth to one of the recommendation letters which again made me want to dig a little deeper, but actually I think many people here have false dates of birth for work purposes. In any case she showed no hesitation in getting me to ring these people, and the one person I did get through to - coincidentally someone whose house I'd been at the previous night for a social thing - said that she'd known her through the head of the American School and that she was always nice and friendly etc. She stopped short of offering a recommendation, having not employed her herself, but she backed up the story.

In any case, it's good enough for me. Of course there is still risk, as I think there always is in letting someone into your home on trust, whatever country you're in. But I think I have to back my convictions on this one as the alternative is more or less never trusting anybody, something that I'm not willing to countenance. Besides my assessment of her character, I am made hopeful by thinking that it is probably more profitable to her to stay with me for 8 months and get a good recommendation than it would be to steal my possessions. I'm keeping valuables locked away, but I basically don't see what there is to lose. If I'm right in my judgement then a lovely young woman has an opportunity to almost double her wage, have twice as much time to be with her child, and be inducted back into a network of expats that will provide her with future job opportunities. If I'm wrong then I lose a few hundred quid's worth of possessions and a bit of pride.

Sorry if this is too much detail, but I've been thinking about it a fair bit.