My very own Housework Genie - the wonderful SaberOne of the big pluses of life abroad is that you have Help In The House - or so I thought in naive innocence before embarking on my expat lifestyle.
I mean, what could be better than somebody taking all of that boring housework off your hands - and at a fraction of what it would cost back in Britain?
After arriving in Bahrain I did hear a few stories from others who'd been less than successful with their choices of housemaids or houseboys but hey! - I was the one who was going treat them better than any other employer had ever done, thereby ensuring a grateful and happy employee...right?
I made sure that the separate staff quarters in our garden had every comfort, put an ad in the local newspaper and started interviewing.
The pretty 24 year old girl I engaged borrowed my clothes while we were away on holiday - without my permission of course - and was stupid enough to be photographed wearing them while she was out with her friends, then left the pictures lying around in her room.
She also - it turned out, unbeknown to me - had a second "job" which involved numerous phone calls from men.....!
We thought we'd ensure this didn't happen again by hiring a married couple.
She was to help in the house and he as a general handyman in his spare time from his day job.
We soon discovered that she had an inordinate fondness for the contents of our drinks cupboard and to cap it all, he "borrowed" my new Suzuki jeep which had been a birthday present from my husband, drove it without a license and overturned it.
The fact that he had a can of beer in his hand at the time didn't help and we had to bail him out of prison before we sent them packing.
Eventually I was lucky enough to get a lovely lady who worked for us for many years without mishap though just before we left, her husband died and she had to return to her home country.
When we came to Egypt, I learned that here you employ local people rather than the other nationalities who had been the only ones to work as domestic help back in Bahrain.
Great, I thought....that means not having to go through all the documentation that hiring expatriate staff involves nor supplying an air ticket back to their homeland every couple of years.
Once again disillusionment set in as I discovered that in Egypt they use cleaning methods all of their own and even if you tell them that you want a job done a certain way, they nod their heads sagely - and then go back to their original method.
They know full well that eventually they'll wear you down and that you're going to get sick of telling them to change their ways.
They've got time on their side after all....they're the ancient civilisation who built the Pyramids aren't they?
My first girl was pleasant enough but she must have been a seal in a previous existence as she loved using as much water as possible when cleaning.
I came back from shopping to find that she'd used a hose to wash down the tiled walls and floor of our bathroom, leaving sodden towels and drowned toilet rolls in her wake.
I explained that this wasn't the way I wanted the job doing and she smiled and said she understood.
A couple of days later I found our new sofas standing in 10 cms of water and rugs floating like waterlily pads as she'd repeated her "water torture" method again on the living room floors - so it was time for us to part company and find someone else less inclined to turn our home into a water park.
After a few more - who metamorphosed into lazy slobs after a week or two, despite initially appearing keen and bright - we took on a mother and her daughter who seemed to be everything we wanted.
Clean and cheerful, they were hard workers who turned up on time, the house sparkled and the daughter ironed our clothes beautifully.
When a few items went missing from time to time - a pair of pretty bone china mugs for example - they always assured me that they hadn't seen them and as our home was quite large and rambling, I assumed that they'd turn up eventually.
Our ladies were extremely well paid, were treated like family and I was always giving them things so it wasn't possible that they'd steal from me.....was it?
Eventually a watch belonging to Hubby which had huge sentimental value as well as being very expensive - disappeared from a drawer. Nobody else could have been responsible for it's disappearance.
So it was with a heavy heart I had to say goodbye to them.
For the past five years we've had a young man working for us and - dare I say it - he's the best yet.
In fact I secretly believe that he's actually a genie, who appeared in a puff of smoke from one of my old glass bottles that I found in Old Cairo
Saber insists on using his own methods of cleaning (yes, I was worn down eventually) but these days I've learned to take the attitude that as long as the job is done properly without damaging anything, how he does it is his business.
For example, if he prefers to bend double and drag an old wet towel over the tiles while the excellent electric floor washer/polisher gathers dust in the cupboard, who am I to criticise as long as the floors are clean and shiny ?
He has so far - fingers and everything else crossed! - proved to be scrupulously honest and we do our part by having bought a safe and not leaving temptation in his way.
We just hope and pray to every known deity that he stays with us for a long, long time.
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