The Househelp and the Rat Poison

The Househelp and the Rat Poison

By: Deji Yesufu

I saw a video online that is again reporting a house-help poisoning the meal that a family was supposed to eat. This would be the third or fourth video of such an incident I have seen, and I am becoming wary of it all. There are so many things wrong with those videos that begs the question of how the people making them have the audacity to put them in the public space. In every one of these incidents, the person involved is a minor. I thought there was a law in Nigeria against employing children as house help. Who are the persons meant to enforce these laws? Oh, I forgot. We are a nation that love to make laws but have little ability to enforce them. Perhaps if we remind ourselves that it is enslavement and abduction to have an underage child as your house help, these videos will stop surfacing. And, you know, nature is real: whatever men sow, they will reap. If you have been evil to those children, they will return and poison you. There is simply no way you will love a child and they will do such a thing to your family. And proof of the fact that you have no love in your heart is your continual harbouring of a child as house-help in your home. Would you like to be killed and God ensures that your children become house-helps to other people?

In the biblical book of Second Kings, chapter five, Naaman is said to be a mighty man of war. The only trouble with him, however, was that he was a leper. One day, a girl who had been captured by Syria from Israel, and was now working as a slave girl in Naaman’s house, informed the master’s wife that there was a prophet in Israel who could heal Naaman of his disease. That prophet was Elisha. Long story short, Naaman visits Elisha and finds healing. The trust of that story is this: if Naaman’s family had not been kind to that child, she would never have told her bosses a possible place to find help for their problem. Now, I understand that there are some demonic individuals in this life. You do them good, they pay you back with evil. That is a fact. The problem here, however, is that a minor poisoning of a whole family’s meal should never have happened in the first place. Children are called children because their thinking is still not sufficiently developed. They do not know the implications of certain actions. If you take such a child, and you put them in charge of the source of the meal of a whole house, and then you add to it your evil of maltreating them, whatever you get out of it – live with it. For adults, who choose to pay good with evil, they will reap their reward in the days to come.

I have observed children being maltreated so much in homes that when I got married, I committed not to have a child house-help in my house. What we did was to get Iya Ranti – who would come to the house every weekend and clean, and then return to her business. That woman has worked with us since my first child was born. I do not know how I would handle another person’s child. I fear I would maltreat her, and then God would cause my children to be abused by someone else. That is the reason I never kept house-helps. Then I tell people who need such help in their house, and cannot afford to hire older people – ensure that you treat that child the same way you treat your child. It will mean the child help will eat the same food your children eat; they will go to the same school your children go to; wear the same clothes your children wear; etc. If you cannot do this, with every good conscience, please do not keep child house-helps. I have seen people who had such housel-helps who later became their adopted children. One, here in Ibadan, even married in her master’s home and now has her own family. The only possible reason I can deduce that a minor, who is a house-help, might wish to poison their host is if they have been maltreated in those houses. What baffles me, however, is that Nigerian law enforcement will arrest Bobrisky for spraying money at a party through a video they see online, but they will overlook househelps who are being maltreated by their bosses.

On a final note, when you watch these videos, you hear the woman of the house lamenting in the background. I have often said that women who complain of being abused by their husbands underestimate their tendencies to abuse others. Abuse is simply the ill use of power. Men who have strength will use it to oppress their wives. Similarly, women bosses are the ones that mostly abuse these servant children and then drive them to do these dastard acts. And when it happens, it is the same woman that would be screaming the most. Most human beings respond to love and kindness. Most people reciprocate whatever is given to them. Even demonic-possessed children can experience the exorcism of those demons if they enter a godly home, that loves them and cares for them. A child servant can enter your home, and leave your house as a king. It appears to me that just as the country oppresses its citizens, the men return to their homes to oppress their wives; while the wives also oppress the house-helps. And the circle continues. Perhaps the only way to break that circle is for the house help to poison their masters.

On a final note, I would like to appeal to those people making videos of house-helps seeking to poison them: please save me the headache. Or, someone should arrest somebody and relieve us of these nonsense.

Deji Yesufu is the Pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANITY.