Why Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye's 'Atieno Yo' is a testament to the toll of domestic work on girls
Millicent Kerubo* in Nairobi on November 22, 2022.
What you need to know:
- The ILO recognises that domestic work continues to be undervalued and invisible and is mainly carried out by women and girls.
- According to a recent Daily Nation article, Dr Alfred Mutua, the CS for Labour, said he was preparing a Cabinet paper to push for this ratification.
In the poem A Freedom Song (Atieno Yo), Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye's main character, Atieno, is a hapless victim of child labour who lives a short, tragic life. Robbed of her childhood, she works her fingers to the bone from the time she joins her uncle’s family at eight years old until she dies at 14 from postpartum bleeding. It doesn’t end here. Upon her death, “Atieno’s soon replaced/Meat and sugar more than all/She ate in such a narrow life/Were lavished on her funeral.”
Atieno's life is not unlike most house helps' experiences at the hands of their employers in Kenya. They are on call almost 24/7, and will often be the first to wake up and the last to go to sleep, expected to work like machines but also be supermoms to the children they take care of. Atieno is the underpaid and overworked domestic worker you hardly take notice of, but who makes your life that much easier.
In 2015, I wrote a story for the Daily Nation about a family that had been with their house help for 33 years. It seemed strange that someone would choose to stay in such a position for that long. A colleague later criticised the story, arguing that it failed to answer important questions, like “Was her salary commensurate with three decades of hard labour?” and “Were there any plans for her pension, for when she became too old and frail to work?”, “Does she go and leave and is she paid overtime?” He was right. I had been caught up in romanticising the story and did not go beyond the surface.
The lives of the Atienos in our lives might soon change, if the International Labour Organisation Convention No.189 is ratified by the Kenyan government, according to a recent Daily Nation article by Moraa Obiria. The article also stated that Dr Alfred Mutua said he is preparing a Cabinet paper to push for this ratification.
The ILO recognises that domestic work continues to be undervalued and invisible and is mainly carried out by women and girls, many of whom are migrants or members of disadvantaged communities and are particularly vulnerable to discrimination in respect of conditions of employment and of work, and to other abuses of human rights.
The Convention applies to all domestic workers, and will promote freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining, the elimination of all forms of forced or compulsory labour; the effective abolition of child labour; and the elimination of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation.
They say you can tell a person’s true character by how they treat those less powerful than them. This is the first measure of humanity when it comes to domestic workers as we wait for the ratification.
The writer comments on social and gender topics (@FaithOneya; [email protected]).
