Yaya

When Louna’s former nanny announced that she’s pregnant, we felt real happiness for her for around a second. The seconds which followed were realizations of a long process of nanny hiring à la française.

A lot of questions were asked on what solution we would take? Will we hire an assistante maternelle (a chid-care provider who could guard 3 kids in her place) like what we did for Louna? That would mean that Louna should eat at the canteen everyday and stay at the nursery after school because that nanny would only take care of Kyla and not Louna. What if we’re both on travel and couldn’t fetch her from school before 6pm (nursery closes at 6pm)? Will we hire another person, a périscolaire to fetch her from school? Another concern is that Louna should stay from 8:30am to 5:30-6pm everyday at school. That’s pretty much for a 3 year old!

Though that solution is financially more interesting, the time constraints and the lack of flexibility are frightening us. We progressively looked at another option.

Garde d’enfants à domicile. Yaya almost-pinoy-style (not the stay-in type). Somebody who would take care of the kids in our place. In addition to being a nanny, she would take care of the different household chores like cleaning, ironing and even cooking. Another advantage is that, she could fetch Louna from school at noon and have her lunch at home. Kyla could stay in bed and won’t wake up early in the morning to go to her nanny’s place. We won’t need to hire a cleaning lady.

We long hesitated to succumb in this solution because of the economic aspect but after an analysis, the little amount of euro we would add for this option would mean comfort for the whole family.

We had been actively pursuing this solution since two weeks now. We posted an announcement at the ANPE (employment agency) which transmitted a good number of CVs and letters of motivation to us. Frenchguy and I started to study the CVs and eliminated those which didn’t reply to our criteria. With that, we were able to cut down the number of candidates to 8. A series of phone interviews followed and 4 of the candidates caught our interest. We will meet them this Thursday and Friday for a face-to-face interview (yes, we will even take a leave for that! – but hey, one of these person would probably take care of my kids.)

While studying the CVs, I had this uncomfortable feeling of responsibility knowing that the future of those candidates depended on my decision – especially in this hard moment of economic chaos. There was this African applicant who seemed to be motivated and hardworking but lacked a driver’s license. There was this woman, a former office secretary. She’s almost perfect but I don’t need a secretary! There were women who live far from Dijon but were willing to drive more than 30km to bag the job. There were those young ladies, too young to have job experiences and old enough to have kids of their own.

In this selection process, I probably practiced racism and discrimination in one sole objective – that is, to find the best nanny who would take good care of my girls. And that’s one tough job!

My Mom is quite overwhelmed of this whole process. Overwhelmed by the fact that we will pay social charges for the nanny, that the candidates are mostly diploma holders specialized in child care, that interviews are even fixed, that even a retired teacher and a secretary applied for the job.

Aba e, sa probinsya namin, wala daw lahat nyan no.