Kenyan woman narrates how she escaped death in Saudi Arabia

In search of greener pastures, Susan Macharia traveled to work in Saudi Arabia, where she got a job as a domestic worker.

She ended up working for different employers, and today she uses her experience to educate Kenyans with the desire to travel.

“I was a single mother and life was hard, so I decided to make plans to travel abroad, the first country I travelled to was Saudi Arabia.  I told my parents that I was in Qatar because Saudi Arabia was notoriously known for torturing their domestic workers,” she recalled.

On landing in Saudi Arabia, she stayed at the airport’s accommodation with people from different countries who had not been claimed by their agents and employers.

“I experienced a few challenges like language barrier with my first employer and I requested transfer. Luckily my agent was understanding, and I was attached to another family that spoke English. We did not have language barrier and had other Kenyans working in the same house, so I did not feel alone,” she said.

According to her, a domestic worker in charge of them would overwork her and deny her meals.

She remembered occasions where she had to work for over sixteen hours. Her health deteriorated because of too much pepper and spice and doctors advised her to completely take the two out of her diet.

“This lady made my life difficult; she overworked me and would even deny me food, even after working the whole day. I got sick because of eating food with too many spices and my health had been affected to much by the spice that I survived on milk and bread,” she said.

Macharia says things got worse for her when her supervisor, who was set out to frustrate her until she quits her job nearly stabbed her forcing her to defend herself by getting into a fight.

“I knew that if I did not defend myself, I was going to die far away from my people, I broke her index finger and I was ready to go to jail or get deported back to Kenya. Although our employer did not take any action on me, things did not get better and eventually I informed my boss I wanted to go,” she said.

 She quit her job and her employer, through the agent, agreed to cater for her transport back to Kenya. Unfortunately, the employer dumped her in the deportation camp never to be seen again.

“Deportation is no different from prison, movement is limited, one month later I was still there. Our representatives will come to deal with the many cases once a week, so you had to be patient and wait for your turn no matter how long it took,” she said.

It is at the detention center where she started helping people like her get the right information and through that she found her way out of the detention camp.

“I eventually got ticket exit and travelled back home, I went to Qatar and Bahrain,” she said.

Today, she advises and helps Kenyans who want to travel to these countries and also those who are stuck in the Gulf.