Nairobi News

This week, I have been bombarded with terrible videos online of the most disgusting thing I have seen this year.

In almost every group I belong, (three mummy groups, an udaku corner and even a page for registering errant househelps), videos taken by hidden camera in a kitchen show what I believe is the house maid relieving herself in various utensils.

Yes, you read that right, she was filmed peeing and pooping in vessels meant to hold food. In the kitchen!

I first read reactions on the videos before I gained the courage to watch them myself. Before I saw the second video, which was taken at a different time and proved she was a repeat offender, I first thought that maybe she was from deep in the ‘interior’, where water closets do not exist, just holes in the ground.

At this point I blamed the employer as they obviously had not done a good job orienting her and showing her how everything works in their house.

IGNORANT

Then I saw the next video. This made me change my mind and I realised that either she was just very lazy that she would not take the few steps to the toilet or she is highly malicious. I believe the latter more than the former.

How does one take a tin that hold food and take a dump in it then put it back in the sink with the other cups and plates like nothing happened? How does one pour like half a litre of their urine in the sink that they wash fruits and vegetables that they will eat?

But I could be wrong, she could just be ignorant or scared or embarrassed to use the toilet in the house, where everyone else goes. I have noted though, that many house helps hired from deep inside the ‘bush’ have a strange relationship with water closets located inside the house.

I once had a help who had never been to Nairobi before. She was excited about using the loo, noticeably so. She flushed the thing with gusto and she, in her wisdom, realised that the handle needed help getting back in position after a flushing. She would have broken the toilet had I not noticed quickly that the handle was always facing the wrong direction every time she used the loo.

POT POOPER

On one of those many groups I am in, someone posted how her help would never get out of her bedroom to visit the washroom at night. If she needed to relieve herself she would pee in an old heavy jacket that she would bundle up and stash away in the room.

The owner of the house walked in one morning and the terrible smell led her to search the room and she found the offending jacket. She could not get through the girl, nor did she understand why she would refuse to go to the toilet at night despite it being just a few metres away from the room.

The case is not isolated, though. Others would go in buckets and some would even share the babies’ potties. It is all very strange.

Whether the pot pooper’s actions were malicious or not, we as employers need to ensure that we toilet train our helps, no matter what they say about their background.

We need to show them how everything, including the plumbing, works, lest we find ourselves in a similar predicament.

As for the poor poor household that had this terrible thing happen to them, I suggest that they just burn down everything, start afresh.