Tuesday, September 4, 2007

Meet Mekedas

One of the most significant things in our lives these days is the arrival of Mekedas. She is our new housemaid. She is a sweet young lady (25 years old) from Ethiopia. When we were considering moving to Doha, we were told that many expats employ live in housemaids. I immediately thought "whoo hooo".

We talked it around with a lot of people here and there were definitely two opinions on live in housemaids. We decided that as long as we are here we should give it a try. I prayed God would send the right person for our family. It can be a problem if you hire someone and they are dishonest or get into trouble with the authorities. We essentially are sponsoring her to live in this country, so we are responsible for her.

We started asking around for a referral and even posted a sign in the clubhouse at our compound. One day at the pool I met a nice family that was moving to London in a few days. I asked them if they happened to be leaving behind a good housemaid. They were, but had already found a family to sponsor her.

Long story, short. We kept in contact with them and the guy felt like the other family was only sponsoring her as a "favor" for him and he felt like we would be the best family for her. So, the morning we left for Italy and they left to move to London, Mekdas moved into our house. She kept Ruby (our dog) for us while we were gone and cleaned the house, rearranged the furniture(?), washed the cars, and organized all the drawers and closets.

We are getting to know her better everyday. She works very hard and according to her previous employer, she is very trustworthy. She is a Christian and attends the Ethiopian Orthodox Christian church on Fridays. She has a great attitude and smiles and laughs a lot. She has already been a blessing to our family and I hope we can be a blessing to her.