Always Another Country. Sisonke Msimang

      IN THE MIDDLE of 1981, just before my family left Lusaka to go to Nairobi, I experienced an unexpected violence on the quiet edge of a big yard.

      The scene of the crime is 10 Kalungu Road and on the morning of the violence I am dropped off at the Sangweni house, as I am on most days. Mummy greets Aunty Angela with a wide smile and they discuss the pick-up plan. Aunty nods at Lindi and Dumi who are wolfing down their breakfasts and says, ‘These guys have sports after school today so I’ll go out and fetch them at about four-thirty but Praisegod will be here to look after Sonke.’

      Mummy says it’s fine and tells Aunty that she will come by at five, five-thirty. She waves goodbye and I dig in for a second breakfast. Ten minutes later, as Lindi and Dumi pile into the back of Aunt Angela’s car, I hop onto Praisegod’s bike and he rides me to school. Praisegod is a dutiful servant. Compared to others, his life at Kalungu Road is easy. There is little need for protocol with the Sangwenis. Uncle Stan works for the United Nations as a fairly senior official, which means a lot in terms of stability and comfort. Mummy often says that, despite the perks and benefits that come with a UN job, Uncle Stan is completely without Airs and Graces. To which Baba always says, ‘That’s good because Aunt Angela would not know what to do with him if he suddenly developed them, given what a humble soul she is.’

      ◆ ◆ ◆

      On the day in question, Praisegod whistles a joyful tune. As he works, clipping the hedges and sweeping the ground underneath the mulberry tree, he hums and chirps as though there is an assortment of birds in his voice box. He sounds like he is hiding an exotic and dying species in his throat. Maybe he is mimicking birds he kept in his youth.

      This is not unusual. He is the best whistler I have ever heard – even to this day I have never met another person who had the gift Praisegod had. When he whistles is he imagining that he is flying? Is he imitating a bird that he heard in his youth? Is he even conscious of it or does the sound merely come out?

      I never ask him these questions, which is a pity but not strange. It isn’t that I am not inquisitive. I have plenty of questions about worms and moths and neighbours and cars and the shape of the clouds. It simply doesn’t occur to me that he might have another life. In my mind, Praisegod exists for the sole purpose of tending to the garden. He would not breathe if there weren’t packages to be carried to and from the car. If it weren’t for me to take to school and keep company maybe Praisegod would turn into an overgrown statue standing in the middle of the garden.

      Like all middle-class African children, I am accustomed to living with domestic workers. I know that they are always to be spoken to politely and respectfully. In our house we call women servants Aunty and, later, when we move to Kenya and there is an askari planted in front of our gate, we call him Brother Patrick because he is only a few years older than me.

      Although Mummy and Baba tell us all the time that we should be respectful to servants – both in our home and in the homes of our friends – we understand that there are alternative ways of treating The Help and that, in other households, The Help are treated very badly indeed.

      Sometimes when the grown-ups are talking in the sitting room we overhear things that are not meant for little ears. This usually happens when we are deliberately still, crouched in the flowerbeds underneath the big living room window. We hear things we should know nothing about: madams beating The Help until the vessels in their eyes burst; The Help that has to be carried out of the house by The Boy who has stood as a silent witness to the crimes of the madam. Our eyes widen as we hear about village girls sent home abruptly when the swelling of their tummies can no longer be ignored.

      The Help are whispered about when children are around.

      ‘That child was only fifteen when she started working there, but you know how Malawian men are. They will marry a twelve-yearold if their mother tells them to.’

      We giggle and make sick eyes when Aunty Pulane – one of Mummy’s closest friends, who has a sharp tongue and even sharper eyes – says, ‘No wonder that man has never spent a single night in his own bed. She caught him fondling the helper’s son.’ They invoke God’s name and somehow it is insufficient to say it in English.

      ‘Thixo!’ says Aunty Angela, invoking the deity herself. The rest shake their heads in knowing disbelief.

      When certain visitors come over, it is hard to forget the things that have been said about them from the safety of the Kalungu Road settee.

      The women’s responses – their rejection of the acts, but their tacit acceptance of the inevitability of this behaviour – make the abuses seem like a natural extension of men’s bodies. They never ask why men do the things they do. What some men will do is taken as a given. Instead, they are interested in why the child was not better protected. They want to know how the mother could not have foreseen that this would happen. They have unflinching common sense, so they are not concerned with the politics of blaming women. Instead, they want to know how to keep their girls safe. They are the kinds of mothers who don’t let their guards down for long enough to let their daughters get close to fire.

      Though there is never any significant drama with our servants, the general rules of engagement for maids and madams are very clear. Middle-class men are allowed to do what they like to maids. They can lurch for breasts. They can get home early and lock all the doors so that no one knows what they are up to. Boys can bed the neighbours’ housegirls and learn how sex works, and they can deny the children that swell bellies after those liaisons. Servant women are given no such leeway. The most minor infraction – a slowness in standing up when the wife of the house comes in, or a long face when a request to borrow money is declined – can signal the beginning of suspicion, or worse, the end of patience.

      This possibility of brutality, no matter how remote (and often it isn’t remote at all), keeps the domestic labour system in Africa running smoothly. Because of this, African servants are trustworthy and hard-working and generally mute on matters that do not concern them. There are those who pilfer and, yes, there are some who beat the children in their care. But these are relatively rare exceptions.

      By and large, servants are loving and kind and reliable. This is not because the poor – who have no choice but to clean our homes and care for our babies – are better or humbler than the middle classes.