Ms Trizer Kimani, the managing director of Nani Employee Leasing Company, has a checklist of the details to look out for.
Among things to ask, she said, is the future plans of the nanny and what tasks she can and cannot perform.
Ms Kimani said it is important to use referral to get a domestic worker, though it might be easy to vet them properly through a bureau.
Evans Otieno’s two feet became too feeble when he needed them most. They were shaking and he had to be literally shoved into his bedroom where the bodies of his beloved wife and their three-month-old son lay side by side in a pool of blood. Blood-stained clothes and bags were scattered all over the bedroom in what indicated a major struggle between the two before Ms Elizabeth Achieng', a community worker, met her death alongside her son Leone Okoth. The odious crime is suspected to have been committed by Jackline Auma, a once trusted nanny accused of turning into a knife-wielding monster. She has since been arrested in Uganda. She had lived at the family’s home in Kisumu county’s Muhoroni area at Shauri Yako estate for barely a month. The only identity they had of her was a photo they had taken during a birthday party a month ago.
HIGH-HANDED The shocking incident shone the limelight on the price some parents pay for having nannies. It is a gamble mothers have to make because of work obligations and while some families have had a pleasant relationship with their housemaids, living with them for many years until they are part of the family, some cases go terribly wrong. Hundreds of parents have experienced unbearable circumstances, their children have been hurt, abused or even killed through high-handed acts of the same people who are expected to protect and take care of them. Actress and radio presenter Jackline Nyaminde alias Wilbroda had an experience a few years ago that she hopes she will forget soonest. She had traveled to Mombasa on a work trip, only to receive a call from a neighbour, who refused to reveal her identity, informing her that her house help was breastfeeding her child. Alarmed, she then took the first flight back to Nairobi and took her child to hospital very late in the night.
