The phenomenon of househelps is not a strange one in Nigeria and many homes have one or two.
For the benefit of our international readers, househelps are domestic servants employed in households, usually in exchange for food, clothing and shelter. And we use those words (food, clothing and shelter) loosely because it is not uncommon to see them treated in very demeaning manners.
Though househelps can be of any gender, an overwhelming percentage of them are young girls, called housegirls, who are usually children. It is not uncommon to see housegirls as young as seven years old working in their masters’ and mistresses’ household. In fact, the phenomenon is akin to child labour because it literally interferes with the househelps’ wellbeing and development.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BxfPh45Fa9r/
Most, if not all househelps are from very poor and disadvantaged homes, and in many cases, their parents are just happy to see them employed by their mistresses and masters. This is because, from the parents’ perspective, it is one less mouth to feed. Of course, the parents of these children just hope for the best, hoping that their kids will be taken care of or maybe even be sent to school. A few housegirls get lucky but for many, not so much as they become slaves, in the literal sense, to their ‘owners’.
This phenomenon is the subject exploration by a new documentary titled, Housegirls. Produced by Salt & Truth TV, Housegirls investigates the common practice of hiring and exploiting children as domestic helps. The documentary seeks to find out where these children come from, who profits from their work and why it has become so normalised.
“When we were creating a production company we agreed to create two types of stories; stories that help people escape their reality, and stories that hold a mirror up to society,” says Jola Ayeye, creative director of Salt & Truth TV to Konbini. “Housegirls was borne from the latter.”
On how they came up with the project, Jola says:
