‘…why don’t you have property…at your age…’?
It incessantly rang and sounded in her ears as she made the final touches to the preparations for the Grand Day. Yes. Grand Day! This is the simplified label she settled on after a countless list of superlatives to describe the day. A day unlike any other! Was it longer than 24 hours, unlike other days? Was it a day of the sun rising from the west and set in the east? What then was it about this day…? all this raced as she moved from one corner to another, supervising her teams and coordinating with other stakeholders on phone. It was her day. It wasn’t her day. It was her day because she was literally floating in all its ‘trappings’.
The Grand Day!
It was not her day. Not her day because the fruits of her effort were never meant for her personal gain. She did it all for humanity. And at a very high personal cost to herself in all aspects…but she always convinced herself she was fulfilling a duty, an obligation. ..’ these are strange times, you can’t act and behave normal Huguette…it has to be the heterodoxy way….nobody will understand you…not even your closest friends…but this is how it has to be…soldier on’… was the daily urge from her inner voice. And she obeyed. And her obedience was on this Grand Day receiving its crown.
It all had started five years back. Saccos had been the fad and fashion of the time, and so it was that Huguette subscribed and bought shares into one, formed by friends, acquaintances, and old girls. Huguette coined its brand name: Sorority Club. Crisp and fancy. Matters ran fine.
The club operated and ran by simple inner rules, driven more by mutual support and concern for members’ emergency needs and shocks than standard commercial interests. Then luck or misfortune landed depending on whose lenses you are looking at; the arrival of new members into the Sorority Club.
In a spate of seven months, the club had expanded and grown in numbers. And with this came what Huguette calls the seeds of divergence and a mammon roller coaster. Among the new members were five women who formed an inner circle and diverted the club from its original focus and sorority culture.
Two of the five had just returned from studies abroad while one had relocated home from a kyeyo stint. Taking advantage of the simplicity of the club rules and regulations, they literally took command of the club, including influencing the recruitment of its staff. From the sorority spirit and virtues of its founders, the club went ‘commercial’, only to the benefit, monopoly, and control of the big five: borrowing wily nily, plus other strange matters.
Amidst muted grumblings and grapevine currents, Huguette decided to find out and at great risk to herself. From her intelligence among the original two staff remaining but relegated by the Big Five staff, she got details of all the malpractices, including staff harassing ‘small borrowers’ while the Big Five ran months of arrears unbothered.
With her loan running into its third month of amortisation, she took the bitter pill and decided to default on amortisation. And paying the price she did pay. But she soldiered on… and on this Grand Day, her contentment came not out of personal achievement, but out of the renewed and restored humanity into the club and what it was refocused on.
At the peak of her harassment and ostracisation, Huguette had sought out the intervention of motherly elders in the larger community of the Sorority Club members. They listened. And thanks to their clout, through a series of mediation sessions, Huguette and her small members saw the founding spirit and values of their club restored.
Thus, this Grand Day! The Grand Day is the celebration of the second anniversary of the mediation fruits. In the course of the mediation, one member of the motherly elders (who was retiring from a UN agency job) wondered whether Huguette could think of something they could embark on together. Huguette scratched her mind and, in a week, she shared her concept paper with the motherly elder.
And it worked. Huguette and Motherly Elder registered Domestique Executive, a world-class domestic management company. Sorority Club acquired a stake in the company. And it is this company that is celebrating its second anniversary on this Grand Day. And this is the genesis of Huguette’s cloud seven excitements. Her simple weird innovation not only has succeeded as a business but has literally changed the entire philosophy of domestic management in the country.
An essential service hitherto despised by employers and hated by employees in it, with attendant vices of child molestation and all, Domestique Executive has reversed all this. Today, among its staff there are young girls and boys attending university weekend courses, thanks to their meaningful earnings, a humane working environment, and a structured career development and life goals programme at Domestique Executive employees. Here is how it works: an antithesis to the traditional, poor, despised underpaid, and harassed (and retaliating) village housemaid phenomenon, Domestique Executive runs a non-resident domestic home management service. Minimum recruitment education is an O-level certificate for boys and girls.
With a curriculum tailored to the Home Economics of yore, garnished with Ethics, basics of Early and Emergent Learning for children, Security and Safety, First Aid and Fire Fighting techniques, Landscaping and Beautification;
Domestique Executive staffs are the hot cake around town. Dropped at 5.30 in the morning at places of work and picked up at 6.30 in the evening, in a structured rotational rosta of a two-day off working week, the staff are hired to homes, restaurants, hotels, hospitals, embassies, and international agencies. A recent survey by a child-focused agency revealed a reversal of child molestation and domestic violence incidents among homes, and on the global scene, reducing the numbers of Ugandan youth seeking menial jobs abroad.
As she made final touches awaiting the chief guest to arrive, Huguette hears it …’ why don’t you have property…’ it rings again and again. ‘Girl, ekyeeba juba…..’ she barks back at it. And this does the trick. The harassing voice of her old friend, a nouvelle-riche speculator she had run for a soft loan during her days of ostracization, magically disappeared and drowned by that of her CEO, the motherly elder, announcing the arrival of the chief guest.
The Grand Day…!
© Ben Kahunga Matsiko
Reach out to Ben on:
Email: isherugaba@gmail.com
Google: http://Ben Kahunga Matsiko
Blog: https://kanyonza.blogspot.com/
Photo credit: Padli Pradana (pexels-photo-772478)
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