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| Mary Wanjiku speaking at their Murera home in Juja |
By
Kamau Maichuhie
Sunday, October 19th 2014
Wanjiku said she was forced to strip naked in order to end her misery in Saudi
Arabia where she was being jailed When Mary Wanjiku boarded a Saudi
Arabia-bound plane at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport ( JKIA) one
afternoon, she was hopeful that working abroad would enable her take care of
her two sons and five siblings. But Wanjiku, 37, would get the shock of her
life upon landing in the Arabian Kingdom. It was not long before she would
regret leaving her homeland that sunny Sunday afternoon in January to what she
thought was the promised land. Her misery begun immediately she reported to work.
Her employer cut her salary by half from the Sh30,000 a month they had signed
up with the recruitment agent before she left Kenya. She was also overworked,
assaulted, mistreated and denied food. “I cannot put into words how badly I was
treated in Saudi Arabia.
I was forced to take a bath while my employer and her
daughters watched as they believe Africans do not know how to bathe. I was only
allowed a to sleep for two hours every day and I had to sleep with the chickens
and rabbits,” Wanjiku says. When Wanjiku could not take it any more, she ran
away to the nearest police station thinking that law enforcers would help her.
Thrown to jail But her refuge at the police station would not last long: her
boss found out where she was and demanded that she be charged with absconding
duty. “My employer told me she had paid Sh200,000 to the agent who recruited
me, and that she would not let me waste her money,” she said. Wanjiku was then
thrown to a prison called Tahrir. See also: Dubai firm loses court case, paving
way for duty free shops at JKIA In the police station, she met hundreds of
African women from Kenya, Ethiopia and Nigeria. Speaking at her home in Murera,
Juja, an emotional Wanjiku narrated to The Standard on Sunday how she thought
of committing suicide to end her misery. But before she could do that, she
overheard Ethiopian inmates telling their Nigerian counterparts that it was a
taboo for Arabian men to see a naked woman. With this information, Wanjiku
hatched a plan she hoped would end her misery and get her back home to Kenya.
“I decided to pretend to be insane,” she said. But her Kenyan friends
discouraged her, saying the plan would not work and could land her into more
trouble. Cruel employers She decided to give it a try anyway. Wanjiku says she stripped
naked one lunch hour and ran out to an area of the prison where men were
stationed. Dismayed, the male warders ran away to avoid seeing the naked woman,
forcing prison authorities to call for help from women police officers in a
nearby police station. The prison boss then ordered that she be examined in a
psychiatrist hospital, where she was found to be of sound mind. “I told the
prison and police authorities that I was not mentally ill and all I wanted was
to be allowed to go back home,” she said.
Wanjiku
told the authorities that she would not put on her clothes until she got her
passport back from her employer. Left with no choice, the authorities gave in
to her demands. “My employer was ordered to surrender my passport. I was also
handed my airline ticket and asked to leave Saudi Arabia the same day at 11
pm,” she says. Her sister Margaret Wanjiru regrets Wanjiku's ordeal. “We tried
to persuade her from going as we had heard stories of Kenyans being mistreated
and killed in that country, but she could hear none of it. Left with no choice,
we wished her well,” said Wanjiru. Wanjiku is only the latest victim to go
public about her plight in Saudi Arabia, where hundreds of Kenyan women are
suffering at the hands of cruel employers. Last month, Jane Wangari pleaded
with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to help secure the release of her daughter
Virginia Wanja who is being held in a Saudi Arabia jail. Wangari said her
daughter was charged with absconding duty after she ran away from her employer
who was mistreating and overworking her. “She told me she was required to work
in three different households daily without pay or food. She was only allowed
two hours of sleep daily,” her mother Wangari said. See also: Dubai firm loses
court case, paving way for duty free shops at JKIA Mary Nzili, another victim
of abuse by her employer, returned home from Saudi Arabia last month after a
stint at the Tahrir jail. Nzili said domestic workers in the Modlle Eastern
country are mistreated and overworked with little or no pay. Frozen recruitment
“There are many Kenyan women being mistreated and going through a hard time in
Saudi Arabia. I left 13 Kenyan women in the prison. The government should step
in and rescue them,” Nzili said. Earlier in the year, 30-year-old Kadzo Karisa
was said to be stranded in Lebanon. Kadzo was seeking Government assistance to
travel back to Kenya after she differed with her Lebanese employer. Last month,
the Government suspended the recruitment of Kenyans for work in the Middle
East. Citing numerous cases of mistreatment, the Labour Ministry also suspended
the operations of 930 recruitment agencies in the country. Cabinet Secretary
Kazungu Kambi, while announcing the freeze, said most of the agencies mislead
job seekers. Last Tuesday, Kambi appointed an 11-member task force to advise
the Government on vetting and licensing of agencies recruiting Kenyans for work
abroad. The task force has three months to complete its work.
Reports
indicate that about 20,000 Kenyans are currently employed as domestic workers
in the Middle East.
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