Lost Childhood: House-Helps Are Not Human. I Dare You To Say Otherwise
Can I just do nothing about this?
TW: Abuse
Through my bedroom window, the wretched and agonizing voice of the young girl barges in:
Please! Please! Sorry! Please! No! Help me! Oh…Oh my God! I’m sorry. Please! Please! Please!
With every plea, I hear the crack of the cane as it lands on her body and she screams again. Over and over and over again.
I am helpless. Truly, I am helpless. I cannot save this girl who I assume to be a house help because from what I make out of the voice of the woman meting out her punishment, it is about chores.
How does one become a house-help in Nigeria? It can be as simple as going to the village, visiting a poor family, and asking them to give you one of their kids to become your help. You can also ask someone to help you do this. Any child can become a house-help from six years old (not a typo). Their parents package them and send them off with the approved person. An agreement is usually that the person getting the child trains them in school.
Ideally, education should be the right of the child, not a privilege to be bought but this is Africa. This is Nigeria. Many children are not privileged to go to school so you find them hawking satchel water, oranges, groundnuts, banana, and other cheap commodity items, on the streets.
Some people will take these children, promise to put them in school, and just send them into the streets to sell things for them, keep them at home doing chores all day every day, or keep them in their shops to be sales girls.
When the parents of the Help call to ask after their daughter, her ‘owners’ put the call on speaker and coach her through what to say and how to respond to probing questions that can save them.
On whether she is doing well in school which the Help might not be attending or failing at because they rarely have any time to themself, the ‘owner’ of the child usually informs the parents that their child plays too much at school.
Know the outcome? The parents scold their children for wasting the big opportunity given to them by their kind owners. Then the parents beg the ‘owners’ of the child to discipline her very well so their child does not end up useless. If you know anything about discipline in Africa, it often involves the cane, verbal abuse, or some other form of abuse — or all of the above.
All my life as a Nigerian, I have seen house-helps treated as less than humans. It is expected. In a group of children, it is easy to identify the help — their clothes are dirtier, their hair unkempt and they are given little to nothing to eat. They are also the ones looking after the children ranging from their own age to lower.
The outlier ‘owner’ of the help, is the one who treats her like a sister or their own child.
Whenever I think of the house help situation in Nigeria, I am reminded of the ways animals and poultry for sale are treated by their owners. For instance, in a typical Nigerian marketplace where goats are sold, you will be forgiven for thinking that the tied-up animal is a stone. They are tied up in the most stringiest ways possible, making it impossible for the animal to let out a cry. Then they are fed nothing for hours on end and just shown to potential buyers. Chickens will be carried in ridiculous numbers (think 4 heavy birds on each hand) and walked upside down for hours as the owners try to sell them off. Again, they are fed nothing and given no rest. They are objects to be sold. They aren’t breathing living animals for the owners to give water or care about their comfort. That is too much stress.
That is the same way that Helps are treated in Nigeria. They aren’t human. They are objects at their master’s service. Anything else is a luxury.
Some Help taken from their parents who were promised education, are not sent to school. The people who acquire them use them to clean their houses, cook their meals, babysit and parent their children (sometimes of the same age), do the family shopping — every single thing, and yet, the barest minimum is a struggle to be given to the House Help.
House-help. Maid. They are called.
I have seen and heard of Helps locked outside all night for ‘stealing’ an orange to lick. Maybe that one orange was the only thing they had eaten all day.
About four years ago, a young relative came to stay with me while she prepared to take the Senior WAEC examination, to get into the university. One day, she was in tears and I asked why. She explained to me that her youngest sister who was taken as Help by their cousin needed extensive and very expensive surgeries on her head and arm.
Reason: Their cousin used her stiletto shoes to hit the sister on the head causing a deep dent in her head. The cousin also broke the sister’s right arm bone. The sister of this young relative was 7 years old at the time the injuries were inflicted. The cousin hid it for a year until maggots started coming out of the scalp.
This might be where you think the cousin would at least show any decency and try to help pay for the surgeries. Now, that will be funny. What was done was, that the girl was brought back home to her parents at night, a scarf tied on her head, and the cousin absconding to their village house. When the parents of the young girl saw their daughter’s head, it became a village issue. Everyone begged them not to involve the police. This was a family issue. And as a Christian, she should also forgive. Family. Religion.
Every other day, House-helps come out on the news:
- Bathed with hot water by her madam
- Bathed with pepper paste in their anus by their oga (male boss)
- Girls sodomized by their oga (male boss)
- Impregnated by their oga (male boss), forced to get some crude abortion by their madam, and then thrown out.
And on and on, the cruelties abound.
Every time the screams of the house help permeate the peace of my home, like it would tonight, I feel trapped. I feel hopeless. I feel helpless. Above all, I feel anger. When will this stop?
If you aren’t from my climate, I will plead for your understanding as to my constraints:
- The first is that I cannot even pinpoint the house where these screams are coming from.
- The second constraint is that even if I can pinpoint where these screams are coming from, there is nothing tangible I can do. Do I give the Help transport fare back to her parents? Is her home any better than where she is now? Do I ask her ‘owner’ to stop hitting her? They will throw me out. Do I go to the police? Except that child has hot water burns on their body or a stiletto dent in their head, flogging a child is the norm and very much accepted.
I feel like my constraints are cop-outs. I feel like I am calling myself out. I feel like turning the streets upside down and bringing wealth and education to every child. But today though, I do nothing. And that makes me part of the problem.
But maybe you have some suggestions for change? If you do, please share them with me. I would love to be a change agent for these children.
