Dahlia

All of us residents on the ground floor of my apartment building have now gone in together and have a cleaner. The cleaners like to do groups of apartments together, hence the reason why we have all gone in on this one. Dahlia is from The Philippians, like thousands upon of housemaids, nannies, shop assistants, cleaners etc. Dahlia is nanny to a NZ family who work at my schools and she wanted to earn some extra money to send to her family in the Philippians. Most of the workers send their meager earnings home. You see them every Thursday and Friday at the money exchanges transferring their money.
We pay 25 AED which is the going rate and I pay an additional 5 AED towards here cab fare over and back from the family apartments. Another reason why they like apartments together, saves all the taxi rides although cabs are really cheap here. Often if I am home while she is here, I give her a tip. Dahlia speaks very good English, is always very happy and pleasant, and a very efficient worker. She cleans my apartment in less than an hour. That either tells you how small my apartment is, how tidy I am, how good she is or a combination of the three. The standard rate for a live in nanny is 1,500 AED a month, with one or sometimes 2 days off, depending on the employee. Dahlia gets Friday off and at least one other evening when she goes out to clean for us as an example.
I do have to say that I am enjoying having a really clean apartment when school is so busy, and not having to spend my Friday mornings doing the domestics. I'll save the dissertation about minimum wages, living conditions and employment conditions for a later posting.