Maggie Gee - My Cleaner

I cleaned in the city for ten years or more. And so I learned many things about cleaning.

Miss Henman believes that cleaning is easy. Men like Trevor and Justin cannot do it at all, and some African men never enter the kitchen, though my friend the accountant goes where I ask him.

But all my life I have tried to be clean. African people are clean people. I knew that even as a small girl. I watched the aunty who helped my mother, crouched on the ground outside the house. She washed the dishes in a big metal bowl. She used cold water and hard blue soap. Scrubbing and rinsing till they shone in the sunlight. It was quiet in the village. She sang as she worked. You could hear small sounds of water lapping and little grunts of pleasure as she finished something, and shook it in the air, gold drops flying. She did it every day after food.

I must have learned my lesson well from the aunty, because I cleaned this house for years and years. I cleaned offices too, with heavy machines, with an army of foreigners, in the early morning. Some of them clean well, some are lazy. The Australians were not lazy. I made one friend who was Australian, a tall young woman called Leanne, from Brisbane. She had big muscles, and she helped me move furniture, and she was always singing, and very clean. This is why I did well to choose Anna to work here. The Portuguese were good, but complained too much. The Spanish were proud. They did not do the work. I liked my friend Juanita. She was very funny, but she was always waiting to be rich and famous. The Africans were grateful to be working, at first. But later some became like the Spanish. The Nigerians were very loud, always shouting. The Ugandans tried to call home on the phones. The Rumanians were racist, with many prejudices.

I myself am not prejudiced. I learned this at Makerere, where everyone teaches that racism is bad. And the Bible says we are all God’s children. But English people are too lazy to be cleaners. I never met English people cleaning. Only one man I remember who was mad, and had to take medicine every morning. When he did not take his medicine, he was always laughing, so of course we knew he was really crazy, because the English do not laugh very much, and never do their own cleaning. I think they must be bad at it. All over the world people live by cleaning. I did not understand this until I was in England. In Kampala, most families do their own cleaning, except for the bazungu and the very rich. Most of the bazungu are working as ‘donors’, for organisations and countries that give money to our government, but to make up for it, they are mean in private. In my church I became friendly with two women, Grace and Martha, who were house servants in the same row of houses. All the people who lived there were embassy families. The houses were large and beautiful, but my two friends lived in dark quarters in the garden. My friends’ children were not allowed to visit them. It broke their hearts not to see their children, but if the employers caught sight of them, they docked the wages. These people were supposed to be ambassadors, but they were frightened of Ugandan children! Do they think our children are bad, or dirty? Have they never seen them dressed for church on Sunday? One family took Grace to London for the summer. She was very excited before she went. But in fact, she spent all her time here cleaning, then babysitting nearly every evening, so she did not get a chance to see London. And afterwards the woman docked her wages, because ‘it cost more to feed you in UK’! And whenever the employer’s spoiled children got ill, it was another reason for docking Grace’s wages, and when Grace complained, the woman gave three reasons: first because Grace had looked after them badly, and that was why they got the infection: second, she probably infected them: and third because, now the children were ill, it would be easier for Grace to look after them. And this is the way these bazungu stay rich. Compared to them, Miss Henman is an angel.

Yet when I start to think about Kampala, Ugandans are not angels either. For in many families there are cousins and aunties who do the cooking and the cleaning, relatives who live like beetles in the kitchen and do not have any other jobs. Of course this happened in my own village, but there most of the aunties had somewhere to live, because to build a hut is not so hard, and it is easy to grow things, or keep a chicken. It is different in the city, where families squash together. While I lived in Kampala I did not really notice. Everyone at home just says, ‘Oh, she is family’, and these people are family, but they are slaves as well, and some of them are desperate for the chance to escape these hard families where they work like ants, to get a real job that is paid with money.

I was good at cleaning, and in a way I liked it, because I knew the money helped Omar to study, and afterwards it helped me buy nice clothes for Jamie, and toys and books, so I was pleased with myself. Though there was never enough time to play with Jamie. And so his father taught him to read, which made me jealous, though he was a good father, and when Jamie read to me for the first time, I was proud and glad, and we were all happy, and hugged each other, and were a family.

I worked long hours, so I earned good money, although in the end I got tired of it. I cleaned houses and offices. Then later, hotel rooms, in Morocco and Paris, when I followed Omar on his first postings. When we were first together, he believed women were equal, and quarrelled with the imams who said we were not, and quoted the Koran, with passion. But as people age they become more fearful. Omar did not really want me to work any more, and yet he never earned enough money for us, and so he could not stop me working. And I think he was ashamed that I was only a cleaner.

(It was not my fault; when we went to Paris I applied for many jobs in schools and offices, but once they saw I was African, they would not look me in the eye, and usually they said the job was gone. Yet the French did not mind my cleaning their rooms, so long as they did not have to be in my presence, just the dirt and mess that came from their bodies.)

Also Omar was jealous, especially in Morocco, because I had to clean the rooms of men. He thought that, if I was alone with a man, I would not be able to stop him making love, although when we were students in London, and young, he knew I was often with other men, and I did not even notice them. Because I loved Omar, as I always would. Even when my marriage was ending, I loved him. Even when I hated him, I loved him. And even now, because he gave me Jamie, even if later he took him away.

But I never told Omar about the men who came when I was working and brushed against me, as I was bending over to dust or polish. They pressed themselves against me through my overalls, and I had to be polite, and beg them not to, when I wanted to punch them hard in the stomach. And I could have done, but I knew they would sack me. In my dreams, I push them away, even now. I have strong muscles. One day I shall use them.

I know everything there is to know about cleaning. Because African people are forced to be clean. In Uganda, there are many diseases that kill you if you are not clean.

But nobody likes to clean other people’s toilets. No one wants to put their head near the stains of shit and urine from other people’s bodies. The carpets smell of urine round the toilet bowl. And many people do not flush their toilets. Until you are a cleaner, you do not know this. Until you find things floating like slimy brown crocodiles. Nobody likes to clean the hairs from the bath, dark hairs from their privates, curled like worms.

Nobody likes to brush the dandruff from the dressing-tables where rich women sit and do their make·up;. It lies on the wood like dirty yellow snow, not meltiqg, and they are off dancing, or flirting with men, with stiff shiny hair, in tight-fitting dresses, smelling of vanilla or lemons or roses. Then cleaners like me, dressed in overalls or track-suits, come silently to take away their leavings. We dance with the brooms and the vacuums.