Mary Poppins to the Rescue

Have you ever wanted to become the master at singing Supercallifragilisticexpialidocious and felt the need to call for Mary Poppins? Well, if you lived in Saudi Arabia, you very well may be able to find that special pearl. The majority of families with young (and not so young) children have a nanny, or several of them. We probably are among the minority here, living without a nanny or even a maid!


We see nannies daily, dropping and picking up students, shopping at the mall and the supermarket, at the doctor’s office, anywhere you may go as a family, nannies follow. I had been wondering how much those nannies are paid as they are living with their Saudi employer and are at their beck and call. Well, I finally mustered the courage and asked a Lebanese nanny…and I was shocked!

She broke it down for me into two categories of nannies: the Filipinos, who oftentimes have minimum qualifications beside a high school degree; the second group being the educated nannies heralding from Lebanon, Tunisia, Algeria and Western countries, who usually have college degrees and may be multilingual.

According to my source, a Filipino nanny can pull about 1250 SR a month (or about 333 USD). Her job has her on call 24/7 for duty, living in a Royal Palace, all meals included and sometimes even includes exotic travel with the children and the family. Now, Mary Poppins would probably not approve of many of their appointments and their salaries, but for many of these Filipino ladies, that salary is way more than they could make back home in the Philippines and enables them to send a huge portion of their wages to their families/children back home.

In the case of this particular Lebanese nanny, her salary is 2000 USD a month and she has the same working conditions as the Filipinos. Because of her previous experiences as a nanny and her qualifications, she was able to negotiate her salary up. Now the way she was describing her job includes being on call all the time, having to be the best hairdresser and fashion consultant for the little girl she takes care of. She also mentioned offering services as a shrink and a nurse. Most of what she earns she saves, although she recognizes that taking a shower and washing her hair feels like she’s stealing time from her employer. Several times she told me that this job in Saudi was better than no job in Lebanon and the current state of the economy did not look promising for a job in Lebanon.

Now, without a doubt, such discrepancies in salary do not make her popular among the other nannies. At the function I met her she sat alone, did not speak with any other nanny, except one from Algeria. According to her, the maids and nannies don’t like her and will try to make life difficult for her, by telling the child in her care bad things and criticism of her work. She also appears to degrade the Filipino nannies and consider them lower than herself. The money may be good for her, but it seems to me like living in a viper’s nest! Mary Poppins would probably not be able to pull herself out of this one with a song!