I survived on sugar: Kenyan woman shares painful Saudi Arabia experience

She left Kenya for Saudi Arabia in 2021. She was only 22 years old, yet optimistic that her life and that of her family would stabilize after landing in the Middle East country.

Like most Kenyans, Caren Chesang left Kenya to travel to a foreign country in search of greener pastures.

She had no idea that her journey of optimism would degenerate into an encounter with pain and torment.

She had drawn some reassurance from the fact that one of her close relatives was also in Saudi Arabia – and was doing just fine as a house help.

“The relative who helped me find the job in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, was not being mistreated by her employer, and that is what convinced me to go,” said Chesang.

Her decision to travel abroad she says was also informed by her poor family background, plus she had just cleared high school and badly needed something to do, and make money.

Chesang had tried her hand in hawking; selling fruits – but the business could hardly sustain her and the family after her father died.

“That is why I travelled to Saudi Arabia. I needed to a job, I needed to support my family,” she says.

A few months after landing in Saudi Arabia – and starting work – the mistreatments began.

“My employer who was a police officer made advances at me through text messages. I didn’t like it, and I was quite uncomfortable,” she says.

She turned him down – and this infuriated the man of the house.

“So, he started mistreating me, and for the first time I started seeing and experiencing things I had only heard in news back at home, from others who had come here to find work,” she told Wananchi Reporting.

Then he stopped her salary for three months, and locked her up in a room for three days without food.

Tired of mistreatment, she summoned courage and sneaked from the home of her employer.

“There is this day when he allowed me to go and throw garbage outside the compound, and that is how I managed to climb and jumped through two separate high walls and escaped,” says Chesang.

“Outside, I met an Arabian man who helped me call the police. This time, my boss was headed to the police station to report my disappearance,” Chesang recalled.

In an unexpected twist, Chesang says the employer got an upper hand and convinced the authorities that he was taking her back to collect my belongings and that was all.

“He went and locked me inside a store for five good days without food and water, and would not allow me to visit the washroom,” Chesang said.

 “Inside the store was sugar which I would lick, and whenever the man’s wife came to see me with food, I would request her to allow me to check into the toilet where I would drink water from the canister before flashing down the food since I didn’t trust them.”

It was not long before she made a second attempt at escape.

Only this time she was successful.

She joined other Kenyans in a safe house where she started making an appeal online after her employer handed over the exit Visa to the office, which meant she could not be allowed to seek another job.

Her plight reached many Kenyans, mostly those from her Uasin-Gishu village who raised Sh42, 000 which allowed her to jet back.

When she landed some of her relatives and online fraternity welcomed her back, at the Jomo Kenyatta Airport in Nairobi, Chesang could not hold back her tears when she saw her family and friends.

"It depends on the host family, and it requires one to be intelligent and ready to persevere to survive. Just go there knowing what took you there. You have no right there to do things your own way," she cautions.