We see them almost everywhere we go but it’s likely that few of us take notice of them or the efforts they put into their work, which is not as easy as it may appear. This is the life of a janitor.
At 34, Teresin Benjamin is a single mother of two who hails from Mora, Santa Rosa in the Moruca sub-district, where she works as a janitor at the Kumaka District Hospital. She has held the post for the last eight years.
Benjamin’s mother had also worked as a janitor at the hospital for 21 years. Now, five days a week, Benjamin finds herself tasked with cleaning the entire hospital, which consists of seven wards, 11 offices, 12 toilet facilities and three bathrooms. Though she has another janitor who assists her, of the two, she is the only one who is permanently employed at the hospital and so she is responsible for more of the cleaning. Benjamin said that she has always had someone to assist her but there was an 18-month period when she had no assistant cleaner and the cleaning of the entire institution was left all up to her.