When Beatrice Ichia finished her KCSE exams back in 2015, she wanted to go straight to the university, but lack of school fees made her to look for another alternative.
Ichia later learnt that there was a job offer in Oman, middle east to work as a house maid, there she would be paid about Ksh.70,000.
She knew that with that kind of a salary, she will return back after a 2 year contract and finance her own studies.
However, the reality sink on her when she landed in Oman, then in 2016 aged 29 years. She discovered that she will be paid less that Ksh.20,000. To make matters serious, she was not paid for close to seven months.
She realized that she had made a wrong decision but it was too late.
“The Arab world is hell on earth for Kenyan girls working as maids. I was treated as a slave, allowed only two hours of sleep on a corridor next to the toilets,” said Ms Ichai.
Luckily, Ichia escaped back to Kenya via help of Kenyan Embassy based in the middle east.
“I had enrolled as a Human Resource Management student at Makerere University in Uganda, but deferred my studies due to lack of fees. I started hawking mangoes and cookies to raise money but it didn’t work,” she said.
While at her home in Kakamega, speaking to The Standard, she recalled how she was mistreated while in Oman.
She says that she was beaten, overworked and offered less sleeping hours. At one point she was forced to wash a dead body of a woman who had died of diabetes.
You are beaten anytime, work up to late at night and only allowed two hours of sleep,” she said.
She also said that some women seek prostitution in event of tables being turned around
“When life becomes hard for some Kenyans, they resort to prostitution. Some are even killed. It is not easy to work as a maid in a foreign country,” she said.
Today Ichia runs a Lives Skill program in a primary school in Kakamega
“I returned home worse than I left. I do not have money to continue with the programme I had started in primary schools. I am appealing to well-wishers to support the programme that imparts life skills,” she said.
