Who do you show love to, in this wonderful season of love? Your guess is as good as mine, ‘Women’. By nature, women desire to be loved, gone are the days when all a woman needs to do is love her family and care for them. These days, they do more than just sit and relax expecting their husbands to cater for all the needs of the family. Mrs Oluwatoyin Adefila, a 47 years old cleaner in this week’s edition tells Community Life what it takes to be productive as a woman, wife and mother.
Why cleaning?
I used to sell clothes and shoes, but suddenly I couldn’t even account for the cost price talk less of profit, before I knew it everything was gone. However, not having a supportive husband took its toll on my business and I couldn’t help myself. I don’t have any qualification, I am an orphan, so I had no skill whatsoever. I made the decision to start cleaning three years ago, and I haven’t looked back since I began, it takes nothing but courage to take this up.
Every job has its downside, what are the things that make these job difficult?
You have to tell yourself the truth about your situation, and have a positive mindset that it can only get better, often times, people hardly have respect for people who do this job, most time people talk down on us, even those who are obviously younger, these are some of the things that one’s personal goal are the only thing to motivate one so one can ignore the insult and forge ahead, in my line of job, insult is normal, I don’t dwell on it, I dismiss it and move on, my children’s need will not understand that someone was rude to me and that’s why I can’t cater for their needs.
So how lucrative is this job?
I clean 15 compounds in total and I go to each of these compounds thrice in a week which are Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, depending on how big the compound is. The most I charge is five thousand naira and the least I charge is three thousand five hundred naira, so averagely in a month I make N50,000. At times some of my employers give me chores to do such as to wash their clothes or clean their houses, so as long as one is hardworking, and you don’t get easily irritated, this job is fair enough for me. I made sure that all my children learn a trade, alongside their education.
I didn’t have anyone to do that for me when I was younger so I owe them that, so this job has afforded me the opportunity to put them into various lucrative vocations.
What are your future plans, you definitely can’t do this forever?
Of course I don’t intend to do this for the rest of my life, as it is now, my body aches, my children want me to stop so I can start a trade, but I have to save towards that. So that is what I have being focused on; as a woman you need to be valuable enough to be to be considered as an asset to your family, I don’t want to stop without having a solid plan in place, so I don’t become a liability to my children.
Advice to young women who don’t have any vocation
As long as you are not lazy, you can achieve anything. In my little world I eat what I like, I wear what I want, because I am working and I can afford it. I have a neighbour who sometimes complains about her husband’s inability to provide for her, but to my surprise when I called her so we could go clean a house together she followed me the first day, the second day she didn’t show up, as women we can do better than stay idle we need to be models our children can emulate.
