Please avoid a dangeous nanny in Uganda!

I would like to share the horrible experience we had with a Ugandan nanny called Mary.

In late January, we started looking for a nanny to take care of our two daughters, one 2 years old and the other 2 months old. We saw her job ads at the Surgery, and decided to hire her on probation.

Mary is a tall and strong woman in her 40s. Within the first week, we had realized that Mary lacks patience and doesn't like kids. After several weeks, my older daughter began refusing Mary. I noticed that Mary was intentionally fighting with my daughter – grabbing her toys away and banging them on floor. She was always angry with my daughters. By the end of the month, my daughters became so scared of Mary that they will cry once they see Mary. My older daughter kept begging me with tears: “I don't want Mary!”

After one month, Mary kept saying to me that “your daughters are not good girls.” I still tried my best to find a position that could work for her, knowing she may have a family to support. After a communication, Mary said she preferred to switch to do house cleaning, coming 3 days a week. So we switched her job with our house cleaner Sarah, who turned out to be a great nanny. However, Mary kept fighting with Sarah and my families. She was often late and absent, refused to do things I asked her to, and was intentionally wasting and damaging things in the house.

One day after Sarah, the new nanny, bathed my daughters, I asked Mary to help clean up the water splashed on floor, since both Sarah and I were busy working on the girls. Mary became crazily angry, shouting at me: ”Why should I clean the floor? It's the nanny's work to do this! I don't do extra work, or I'm not working here anymore!” Then she walked out with anger.

The next morning she came back, asking me to pay her 3 months' salary for compensation because I “chased her away”, otherwise she will sue us for wasting her time working for us. I'm still trying to understand – I didn't “chase her away” to start with; she chose to work here which we obviously cannot force, and we pay her for the work. How did we waste her time? She refused to leave our house, and kept threatening us. We had to call the police – I guess it was her own will too since she wanted to sue us.

The police investigated into the case and told Mary it was ridiculous asking for 3 months' salary while she only worked here for 2 months on probation and was fully paid. Then Mary changed her plan, and told the police we haven't paid her anything this month. We provided evidence to show that she was paid on daily basis, but she insisted what we provided was not true, and refused to leave the house unless we pay her. She also started making up stories about how we were “mistreating people”. We had to pay her 5 days' salary to send her away eventually.

I guess Mary will soon start advertising for work again. She may change her name when advertising, but I'd like to share my horrible experience with whoever sees it so you can possibly avoid a nightmare with this dangerous woman.

P.S.: I wanted to post pictures of this nanny, but am still trying to figure out where to click to upload... please can anyone tell me? Thanks!