Just like any other Kenyan striving to make ends meet, 23 year old Caren Chesang left Kenya for Saudi Arabia in search of greener pastures in 2021.
With all the heart breaking and chilling stories about how African house helps are treated in the gulf country, Chesang got the courage to go to Saudi Arabia since one of her relatives worked as a house help there and she was being treated nicely by her employer.
She decided to abandon her fruit vending business since it was not yielding much to pay for her family’s expenses and caught a flight to Saudi Arabia where she landed a job in Jeddah with the help of the relative.
She was however not as lucky as her relative because she ended up in the wrong hands. Her boss, a police officer, began mistreating her just months after she began working in his home.
It all began with sexual harassments whereby her boss would make advances through text messages. She however turned him down and that is how her life turned into a living hell.
“So, he started mistreating me, and for the first time I started seeing and experiencing things I had only heard in the news back at home, from others who had come here to find work. He would hurl insults at me and quarrel me over petty issues,” she told a local media house.
The police officer went ahead to deny her salary for three months and locked her in a room without food for three days.
Chesang could no longer persevere with that kind of life and when an opportunity presented itself she embraced it with both her arms.
“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,” she narrated.
Once out, she met an Arabian who helped her inform the police about her misfortune. Her employer however reported that she had gone missing. He also convinced the authorities that he would take her back to collect her belongings so that she would eventually leave.
“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. 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,” Chesang recalled.
She again found an opportunity to escape and joined other Kenyans in a safe house. She appealed on social media and Kenyans were able to raise some money for her flight so that she could come back home.
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