Maid-Fatima

So a little history on the maid. They really like us to hire one so that we can support the local people. We were supposed to have the one that the family that lived here before us had but they could never get in contact with her. Our driver, Batista, had told us on the first day here that he knew of someone  if we needed them. Come to find out it is a relative of his. I am really not sure how she is related to him...I think it is maybe his niece. He says that she does not live with him but is his family. He said she is the daughter of his parents wife. A side note....He said she has done this work in the past. The day she started I showed her were all the cleaning supplies were and she got busy by sweeping and mopping the floors and dusting the entire house. I thought this is going to be so nice but it was hard to just watch TV with the boys when she is cleaning all around me. She was then ready to start laundry and asked me how to use the washing machine. I showed her how and showed her what the dryer was and what clothes to iron and she went to work on laundry. I noticed she kept stopping and starting the washer and so I showed her again how to use it and showed her not to touch it until it got to OFF. It has been a week now and she still is restarting the washer when it gets to the first spin cycle so I called our driver in so I could tell him how it works and then he could tell her. It took me about 15 mins to explain to him how a washer and dryer works and then he told her how to work it. So she did good with the laundry after that. I ended up bringing my computer in the laundry room and telling her on a translator that speaks what I type, because she can not read, that she is to only wash clothes if there is enough for a load and not to just wash one towel like she did last week. It still amazes me that people do not know what a washer and dryer are. We wouldn't know what do to without one and they don't know how to run one. If you could only have seen the face from our driver when the maid explained to him what the dryer was for...it was like he couldn't believe something like that existed. She was telling him that is was so you didn't have to hang your clothes outside to dry. Then she started washing all the dishes by hand and I showed her we had a dishwasher and she wanted to put dish soap in it to wash them so I showed her how to work it. Should would let it wash for awhile and then she would open it and say they are not clean or there is still water in it. Once I got her to understand it will beep when it is done she let them wash but then she would only take half of the dishes out and add some more dirty ones and restart it. I ended up telling her that she should only run one load a day and just add to it all day and then before she left she could start it then put them up the next day. One reason I only want her to do one load a day is because the dishwashers soap cost about $30 for only 28 tablets. I am slowly starting to believe that she really hasn't done this type of work before. I am willing to train her if she will catch on and so she will have a trade when we move. The other day I showed her the cleaners for the bathroom and how to squirt it in the toilet and she did good cleaning them. Later during the day I was making my lunch and I heard a noise and turned around and she had the stove pulled out and said she was cleaning the walls behind it and she had squirted the toilet bowl cleaner all over the walls to scrub them with. I couldn't say anything afraid that I might start laughing so I just continued making my lunch and let her clean away. Today I showed her the cleaner that is like 409 and that she can use it to clean anything in the kitchen with it. She has been looking for an outfit like the other maids here wear and can not find one and so I showed her some scrubs on the Internet and she said those will be good so I ordered some to have mom mail to me. Then she told me that she wanted a camera when I go back to the states in December. The last little funny thing she does and I will have to show her tomorrow how to do it is making our bed. We have a top sheet on our bed and she always has it on the bed in a different way. One day it was folded up in the middle of our bed under the comforter and one day it was made into a bow on top of the comforter and today it was a triangle on the end of our bed.