Majouma and Adam

Majouma and Adam

            I have two housekeepers/cooks/helpers.  Is this real life?  Honestly. 

When I was first inquiring about this job and the compensation associated with it, they had said in an email something along the lines of, “and of course we’ll pay for your food and have someone cook and clean for you.”  Come again?  Of course?  Totally unnecessary but I wasn’t going to protest… it creates jobs, right?  Soon after I arrived I was introduced to Majouma and Adam.  Majou (her nickname) is a beautiful young woman, who actually took care of Kian and Dylan when they were babies, and the mastermind behind all of my meals.  She is always singing as she cleans and if only I understood Swahili I have a good feeling she’d have some pretty great stories to tell.

Adam (pronounced adaam), her little helper/sidekick, is a hysterical 24 year old who looks like he’s 14.  Nani kindly explained him to be some sort of midget who’s not the brightest, but when he came to Chris and Nani to ask for a job they felt too bad saying no and since they were afraid to have him work in their tented camp (they thought guests would think they were employing child-labor) he stays out of sight and instead is always around one of the houses.  The funniest thing about him is that he calls me “sister Liza” because in Swahili all women who are young are referred to as Dada “insert name here” whereas women who have children are Mama, however this concept doesn’t really translate and instead I feel like a nun.  Adam is too adorable and gets so excited to practice his English that he’ll go so far out his way just to shout hello to me from anywhere across their property, but then gets really shy when I actually talk to him. 

Funny story: Adam is a Muslim and when he heard that I was learning Arabic he got very excited and was going around camp telling all of the workers that he was going to be able to communicate with me since he had learned some Arabic at a religious school.  Evidently one day last week when Adam and Majou were cleaning my house they saw my Arabic book (yes, I realize I’m a nerd for studying alone here in my free time) and apparently Adam couldn’t read anything.  Majou called him out on it right away and within an hour all of the workers were running around laughing and making fun of Adam.  Nani thought it was hilarious and couldn’t wait to tell me the cause of all the fuss for the day.  I felt somewhat bad for Adam, but I couldn’t help but laugh thinking of him and Majou hovering over my textbook. 

Needless to say, the two of them make quite a pair and are truly amazing.  Everyday they come over in the morning and make me breakfast before the boys come for school, during which time they clean my whole house and do my laundry.  After school is over they serve me lunch on my beautiful veranda, which is both delicious and completely unnecessary.  I definitely need to work on my Kiswahili so I can better communicate with them, although they seem to find much comedy in my few words that I have picked up so far (mainly pole and asante sana, sorry and thank you very much, which I probably say every five minutes, but honestly I’m not sure what else to do when someone is making your bed and cooking for you).  All I know is that I somehow landed the best job I could have imagined out of college.  Two weeks has already seemed like a blessing.  I can’t wait to see what the next few months will unfold. 

   

Baadaye! (see you later)