How Saudi dream job turned my daughter’s life upside down

Sunday, October 5, 2014

 Ms Salome Wairimu’s mother, Mrs Agusta Mwihaki

In Summary

• “At first, the woman told the three of us, that we were going to work in Qatar. After she took us to the agent in Nairobi and we got the passports and visas, she said the destination had changed to Saudi Arabia,” said Ms Wairimu.
• When she had had enough of it and duly informed her employers that she could not finish the two-year contract and wanted to go back home, they demanded the last salary she had been paid.
• It was probably a detention centre and she met about 10 other Kenyans there. She recalls being injected with something and ending up in hospital. It is in this facility that she probably suffered the experiences now haunting her.
• A family in the same village is still in mourning. They had gone to the airport to meet their returning daughter but were told she was pulled off the plane at the last minute and taken to hospital. She died three days later.   

By JOHN NGIRACHU

A week after she escaped the clutches of the cruel life for a black, Christian house help in Saudi Arabia last June, Ms Salome Wairimu nearly went crazy.

She would speak incomprehensibly, scream, shout, tear down the sheets of newspapers pasted on the walls of her widowed mother’s house and cause a ruckus so bad  that it drew the whole village to their home in Miumia in Githunguri, Kiambu County.

Her widowed mother had been happy when on July 14 at dusk, she heard her daughter’s distinct voice say “Hodi” and then waited to hear it a second time for confirmation her ears were not playing tricks on her.

Now, with Ms Wairimu acting bizarrely, she had a new mountain to climb.

She consulted priests and doctors and prayers and drugs were prescribed in equal measure. Her daughter is now nearly back to her normal self.

Up until the point the episode started, Ms Wairimu can explain a good part of her experiences; from the beginning in March when a neighbour told her of the opportunity to work in Qatar, to the part where she asked to leave and return home.

PULLED OUT

“At first, the woman told the three of us, that we were going to work in Qatar. After she took us to the agent in Nairobi and we got the passports and visas, she said the destination had changed to Saudi Arabia,” said Ms Wairimu.

She recalls being concerned about the change but decided to go anyway.

The agent warned that anybody who pulled out would have to refund Sh2,500.
Ms Wairimu ended up with a family in Jubail.

There was nothing unusual in how she was treated, she said, but her employers and their relatives allowed their children to chide her a lot, sometimes recording it on their tablets.

When she had had enough of it and duly informed her employers that she could not finish the two-year contract and wanted to go back home, they demanded the last salary she had been paid.

HEADING HOME

She handed over the 1,000 Riyal, and signed some forms written in Arabic, hoping she would soon be heading home. 

“That’s when they took me to this place that had many rooms, with tags showing there were people from different countries in there,” she said.

It was probably a detention centre and she met about 10 other Kenyans there. She recalls being injected with something and ending up in hospital. It is in this facility that she probably suffered the experiences now haunting her.

Hers is not the first gory tale told by Kenyans who have worked in Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries.

A family in the same village is still in mourning. They had gone to the airport to meet their returning daughter but were told she was pulled off the plane at the last minute and taken to hospital. She died three days later.

There have been stories of lucky workers who landed good employers and helped lift their families’ standard of living, but the spectre of mistreatment overshadows the entire enterprise. 

Mr Zachary Muburi-Muita, the director of the Diaspora Desk at the Foreign Affairs Ministry,  said about 10 per cent of Kenyans in the Middle East — about 10,000 — report mistreatment and poor working conditions.

“We are very concerned that there appears to be a loophole in the regulations and the law. The regulations and the law have not modernised fast enough to catch up with changing times. The recruiting agents were in a Wild West scenario,” he said.

It is this loophole that has allowed shady recruiting agents to set up shop all over the country to lure Kenyans like Ms Wairimu and others with the promise of good earnings.