Is it wise to employ a hot house help?

Last weekend I was hosting my chama members at my house for our monthly meeting. As you know, where there is chama there is juicy stuff or kuchanuana. For some reason, when a group of mamas meet, there is a lot of free flowing advice.

A wise woman is one who takes what’s important and blocks their ears to trash because such advice can make or break a home.

Now back to my tale. So there I was hosting a group of ten noisy, energetic and vibrant working mothers. At every meeting, there is always an AOB that captures the attention of the members and ends up being the main agenda. This time the issue was my hot house girl. My girl Mwende is annoyingly cute. She is so pretty some house helps are jealous of her. The attention from the women is no big deal. The real deal is from the men. The attention is so intense — the fundi wa viatu, the caretaker, the watchman, the plumber — all want a piece of Mwende.

“Your husband is also on that list,” I was rudely reminded as the chama meeting went on and after Miss Pretty left for the supermarket.

“You are so foolish. How can you keep such a beautiful house help? You have brought meat to a hyena,” The chair lady said with no apologies.

“But her work is super good and she is respectful. Plus baby girl adores her,” I defended myself. All the women in the group were in agreement that keeping a hot house help is a recipe for a troubled marriage. According to my exposed and learned friends, men are visual creatures and my husband is no exception.  To them, I was being naïve and stupid by assuming that my husband is a faithful man and he would never dare stray, especially with a house girl. Their argument was that even David in the Bible was a man after God’s own heart, yet when he saw, the beautiful Bathsheba, lust took the best of him and the next thing he knew he was in her beautiful arms. My friend’s arguments were so compelling, I have been asking myself, is it wise to keep a hot house help, however good her work is?