Adewumi: The Arabian Slavery Called Work

“When agents pitch to you about working in Saudi Arabia, they will tell you great things about the place; they’d tell you that you can work as a nurse or paint some decent jobs to you. They would also tell you about the huge amount of money that you would be paid. When you earn N10,000 per month in Nigeria and someone says you can earn N150,000 per month, the idea of traveling begins to look enticing.
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My brother, it is mostly lies.
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These agents know the truth but they would never tell people because they know people are desperate to get out of Nigeria and so they make the destination seem as glamourous as possible. My away from home story is an account of the truth of my life in Saudi Arabia.
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My first job when I got to Saudi Arabia was to be a care-giver, to take care of an aged woman in diapers. The aged woman I was to take care of was the mother of my boss. Upon my arrival, I was told that I couldn’t own a phone and so my boss seized my phone. I protested that I’d need to speak with my people back at home and so I was allowed to use the phone once a week and that was on Fridays.
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The crazy thing about it all was that I could only call one person every Friday. I wasn’t cool with the arrangement and so we dragged the matter back and forth. In the end, I was allowed to buy my own sim and keep a phone that wouldn’t run WhatsApp. With that phone, I could only check Facebook.
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Not only that, in Saudi Arabia, you’re not allowed to go out at all. On no account should you ever go out. If I needed anything, I’d write a list and my boss would get the items for me. I stepped into my boss’ compound on my first day of work and that compound became my world. I had been trapped.
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So even though when I was taking the job, the job description was to be a caregiver, I had been deceived. In reality, I was the maid that took care of everything in my boss’ house. I’d do the dishes, cook, vacuum the floor, do the laundry, and scrub the walls sparkling clean till it was spotless. Not only did I work in the apartment but it became my responsibility to keep the compound clean as well. I was also the one saddled with the task of washing the cars.
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My boss had nine children and she has about twenty-five grand children in all. The first frustrating part of the job was that one grand child could say he wants a particular food and another grand child would say he wants a different food and the way they will order you around, it was so disgusting.
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In my boss’ compound, there are three buildings. The first building is occupied by one of my boss’ sons – he is married with two kids. His younger brother also had an apartment in that first building. This younger brother was married too. They had a son already and at the time I was in the house she was pregnant.
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Whenever I was done, I’d then go to the sons’ apartments and do the same work in each apartment. Whenever I was done and I returned to my boss’ building to rest, I may get there to discover that the kids in the house have turned the whole house upside down while I was away working in the other building; that means that I’d have to start the chores all over again.
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Let me put it in perspective for you: it could take up to 4-5hours to wash the dishes, pots and to tidy up the kitchen. I would have completed the whole thing and while I am away at the other buildings working my sock off, the children in the first building where I had worked for hours would have scattered the kitchen, used plates to do all sorts and now, as I return exhausted from the other building, I have to resume back at the kitchen I had already cleaned and I’d begin to wash all over again. Sometimes I would see the mess they have made and I’d just burst into tears.
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Cleaning the sitting room was always a serious deal. I would single-handedly remove all the furniture out of the sitting room and then I’d get the hose, connect it to the water source to channel water into the sitting room. I’d get scrubbing brush and soap and begin to scrub the floor and all walls of the apartment. By the time I am done doing all these chores, I’d be so worn out. By, say 2am, when I am going to sleep, my boss may then call me to help massage her body and yet I had to be up early.
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If I am still giving massages by 2am, please how many hours do I have left to sleep?”

The worst period of work was during Ramadan. If you work within a house, just take it that you will not sleep for the whole period of the Ramadan. The thing about the Arabs is that they love to see all sorts of meals on their table even if no one would eat it – so we’d set a grand table that has all sorts of meals. On the day the fast starts, I’d begin to prepare sahur from around 11pm the previous day and I will cook all through the midnight till about 3am.

Now when sahur is over, I’d begin to wash all the plates, bowls, cutlery and pots used to serve and eat. All of that washing and cleaning up will start from when sahur is over till about 9am. Then I’d resume cleaning the compound, washing cars etc., that could last for another 2-3hours. All the sleep I get is the nap I can steal before the cleaning for sahur begins.

By 12 mid-day, I’d have to start cooking whatever meals we’d be serving for the breaking of the fast at sundown. As I am making real foods, I am also making snacks and preparing all sorts of delicacies. I’d be in the kitchen working till about 7pm when I’d serve the food. When they are done eating, I’ll commence washing all over again for hours; this could last till 10pm.

All the time I have to sleep is about 30mins-1hour because I have to resume cooking for sahur by 11am! So what time do I have to sleep?! And remember, I still had to be checking on the aged woman, changing her diapers and cleaning her up.

Remember that I told you that one of my boss’ son had a daughter-in-law that was pregnant at the time I was working there. When she delivered her baby, that was another hellish period for me. We kept receiving visitors daily for 40 whole days!

Considering how the Arabs entertain visitors, as a batch of visitors was leaving, another batch would be coming in. So if a batch of visitors came and we have laid out food for them; when a new batch of visitors came around I’d have to start cooking all over again. Visitors would start coming from morning and we may not stop receiving visitors until 2am, and as every visitor came, I’d be cooking for them.

When visitors arrive, we’d first of all serve them water. Then about 15mins after, we’d serve them coffee along with dates. After a couple of minutes, I’d serve them chocolates all round. After like 15mins, I’d prepare Lipton tea and serve them that. As I am serving the tea, I’d be packing the coffee I’d brought in earlier. A few minutes will pass and then I’d serve them pizza – mind you, we don’t order pizza, I’d have to make the pizza myself.

While I am serving all these, the main food is on the fire – I am serving, clearing and cooking all at the same time. When the main food is ready, we will scoop the food into a very large tray; the guests will gather round the that huge bowl and everyone will deep their hands and eat from the bowl.

Bear in mind that this is Saudi Arabia, men and women don’t mingle or do things together; so male guests will stay together while female guests will stay together. That means that just as I have dished all sorts of foods for the male guest, I have to rush over to the room where the female guests are and do the same.

I’d be running flights of stairs from one room to the other trying to be at hand for both the men and the women. As I am serving the men in one room, I am rushing over to serve the women in another room; as I am packing the dishes and cleaning up the room holding the men, I have to rush to do the same for the women.

In that house, they don’t allow that food cooked for a batch of visitors be served to another batch. Even if the guests did not touch the food I had dished out, the new batch of guests must not be served the same food – I have to go on and cook a new batch of foods for them. Whatever foods was untouched would be packed and put in public refrigerators for anyone interested to eat.

Every street has fridges located on the corner and so everyone puts cooked food and drinks inside the fridges so that anyone passing by who is hungry or who might want to taste the food would just open and take as much as they want to take. Even the rich stop by the fridges so it is not unusual to see a man driving an expensive car park by the street fridges and pick whatever is available in it. This eliminates the concept of beggars littering the streets.

So whenever we cook and we don’t eat it, I will go put the food in the fridge on our street. If you feel like eating a meal and you don’t have it at home, you can go to the fridge on your street and see if it is stored in it.”

“In this new family, my boss also had lots of children and I worked for all of them, including his married daughters. Once I was done working at the home, his daughters would send a car to pick me. I’d be taken from one daughter’s house to the next, working. It could be around 3am that the car will finally bring me back to my boss’ house. By that time, the amount of work stacked up waiting to be done would be staggering.

Arabs are so lazy and dirty. A couple will have sex, scatter the whole place and leave everything just like that for you the maid to clean up. You will find the wife’s underwear in one corner, the husband’s semen-stained boxers in another corner of the room. If the man uses condom, he tosses it on the floor, it is the business of the maid to dispose of the condom. Even when they shit in the toilet and all they have to do is press a button to flush, they’d leave the toilet bowl used.

What irks me all the time is that while these people use you almost to the point of death, they don’t lift a finger to do anything and yet they expect you to deliver right on time for every chore. My boss’ sons also lived in the same compound with us – their wives do not do anything; I am the one who would move from one apartment to the other doing their chores.

I could be doing laundry in the apartments of my boss’ sons simultaneously, all I have to do is load their washing machines and I’d be shuttling from apartment to apartment to turn off and unload the machines. I may load up the washing machine in Apartment A and then I move to Apartment B to tidy up the house; if the washing machine goes off, the occupants of Apartment A will not even move near the machine. They’d just carry on with their lives and wait till whenever I come back from Apartment B to unload the clothes.

When you’re done washing the clothes, the next cross you bear is ironing, I could iron their clothes for almost four days! I could spend about five hours standing while ironing every day for those four days. When I say 5-hours, I mean non-stop. Not only am I ironing the clothes of my boss, I am also ironing those of his sons and their family who live in the same compound.

You can imagine how huge the stack of clothes I’d have to iron is. My boss would demand that you iron every piece of clothing he had, including his boxers. Sometimes sef, my boss would instruct me that he didn’t want me to use the washing machine to do the laundry, he’d insist that I wash with my bare hands.

Now, I could wash, iron and arrange these clothes in the respective wardrobes and by the time I return to the room, the kids in the house would have scattered the whole thing. These kids do the same thing and scatter the sitting room while I am working on other parts of the house. As I am re-arranging the sitting room, they run off to the kitchen and by the time I return to the kitchen the whole place will be upside down and I’d just burst into tears.

When these kids say they are going to school, they are not going to learn anything, they’re just going to play and have fun. Whenever they’re going to school, we’d put a bath tube in the car and then when they get to school, they’d set the bath tube up and their teachers will fill it with water and the kids will be playing in the water. So school is 6:30am – 11:30am and when school closes a car will go pick them up.

From inside the estate, long before they get to the house, they would wind down and be flinging their things from out of the car. They would get home and you’d see that one leg of someone’s shoes is missing or that a bag is missing. It is I that would begin to go round the whole estate looking for wherever they might have flung these items. Na me go dey reason what route the car must have passed, go down the road and I’d be picking up the things they flung out all around.

As you can guess, by the time I return from picking up their things, they’d have turned upside down the house I had taken hours to arrange. In those moments I used to think to myself that someday I’d just drop dead from exhaustion.

I was never giving a proper bedroom to sleep in, my bedroom was the store of the house so I was sharing room with old items in the storage. If your boss was a really nice person, he could give you a mattress to put on the floor and sleep on. If you don’t have a compassionate boss you will end up spreading a blanket on the floor whenever you want to sleep. For me, I always spread blanket on the floor and sleep.”