Laika, Tanzanian Wondergirl

I dedicate this entry to my paternal grandmother Nana, who, each time I leave the good old East Coast USA, expresses her deepest concern that someone in a faraway land will sweep me off my feet and keep me so enamoured by foeign charm that I will never again return home to my dear family. Now, Nana, I must apologize, because after all of my reassurances that this is a total, utter impossibility, I have gone and fallen in love with a Tanzanian.

Her name is Laika. She is 15-years-old and lives with a married couple of my teacher-colleagues. She does not go to school now, but she finished the primary education that is compulsory for all Tanzanian children.

What is so appealing about Laika, you must be asking, since if you know me at all, you have already used your no-doubt superior and refined deductive reasoning skills to surmise that I have no romantic interest in her.

Well, she cleans my house.
And my clothes.
And my dishes.

Laika is my new housegirl, who visits each Tuesday and Saturday morning. She is the live-in housegirl of the teachers who live on the exact opposite end of my row of houses, and full-time nanny to these teachers' (incredibly) beautiful almost-one-year-old daughter Nancy. Mere hours after Laika and I finalized our arrangement (twice weekly visits at 2,000 Tanzanian shillings a pop), I found out that in exchange for her (maybe) six hours per week (so, let's say 24 hours and 16,000 Tanzanian shillings per month), I am paying her double the salary of her full-time job up the road. Probably, I should go into some sort of money-handling business when I'm done lining the pockets of out-of-school Tanzanian teenagers.

Really, though, she is worth every penny. I have clean clothes for the first time since arriving in Tanzania (it's not that I didn't try to bucket-wash my clothes by hand, just that I was bungling and inept at it). I don't have to rudely instruct all of my well-intentioned guests to remove their shoes upon entering my house because cleaning my floor with a handle-less rag instead of a Swiffer is a foreign and intimidating concept to which I cannot adjust. And, the dishes...I really don't have an excuse for that. In fact, I didn't even ask her to wash them - she just does.

Laika the Tanzanian Wondergirl usually comes while I am at school. She is like a phantom that glides unnoticed through my house, leaving everything scrubbed to a shine. I come home and everywhere I had left a mess is astonishingly clean; all of my once-dirty clothes are hung systematically on the line. If I happen to be home when she comes on a Saturday, she is a pleasure; if I am home on a Tuesday when she comes, I get to sit on the floor and play with Nancy while Laika does my chores.

Like I said, she is worth every penny. And every little piece of my heart.