When Margaret Wairimu, 32, left for Saudi Arabia to take up a housekeeper job, she was in good health and had hoped to change the fortunes for her family at their home in Kiambu County.
On Friday, she returned after a 10-year stay in the Gulf country. She is mentally disturbed.
Virginia Waitherero, Margaret’s aunt who raised her after her mother died, remembers February 25, 2012, when she left the country like it happened yesterday: the hearty chat, the aspirations of her niece, the hopes. They prayed for a safe journey.
Ms Waitherero fondly refers to Margaret as “my daughter”.
Margaret was leaving behind a four-year-old baby under the custody of her aunt as she pursued greener pastures yonder. She was carrying with her the fate of her whole family.
She was going to a foreign land. A land where others never make it back home alive. And while some make it alive, others narrowly escape death, coming back with horrifying tales of cheating death. Ms Waitherero says she hoped her niece would be among the few who would utilise the opportunities in the gulf and make it back healthy and alive.
But what was meant to be a two-year contractual stay in Riyadh lasted a decade—and at a cost.
When she jetted back, Margaret was sick. All her hopes had vanished and were irretraceable. She had also lost memory of everything back home: her dreams, her relatives and her neighbourhood.
The aunt explained that Margaret had told her that the employer had confiscated her phone and travel documents. These were early red flags, but the family still hoped against hope that she was okay.
“We would call and talk,” she said, adding that at one point she appeared defiant and on bad terms with the employer, especially the moments before her phone was taken.
“She told me the phone would be placed in safe custody,” she added.
Worried that something might have gone wrong, her family, for the last eight years after the expiry of the contract, had tried getting her back to the country, efforts that had been unfruitful until she surfaced sick.
“I didn’t imagine that it would get to this. I didn’t imagine that she would be insane, only to jet back paler than she was when she left,” a teary Waitherero said.
Margaret was to land at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) on November 28.
Together with her son, now a teenager, and other family members, Ms Waitherero waited for her at the arrivals. But she didn’t show up.
“When we checked with the manifest, she was not in the list of those who had arrived,” she explained, adding that she became more worried than she had ever been.
The employer, after years of persuasion, called Margaret’s family on November 28, letting them know she was at the JKIA. The distraught aunt feared that it was the beginning of another nightmare.
“She was not in Kenya and not with her employer. This was so worrying,” Ms Waitherero said. “My daughter was now in the middle of nowhere.”
All this while, the family never imagined that something was amiss with Margaret’s health. Save for the limited communication, they hoped everything else was fine.
It was only after a long silence when she reached out to the family that seemed to be the only giveaway that she might not be well wherever she was.
“It was in 2018. When we talked with her, she had a lot of inconsistencies with her communication,” Ms Waitherero recalled.
“After sending lump sums of Sh31,000 twice, we had completely lost touch with her. At some point we got worried. We knocked on every government office’s door for help, but it was delayed. So, we left everything to God and hoped she would come home someday.”
According to travel documents seen by the Sunday Nation, Margaret was to travel from Riyadh King Khalid International Airport to Jeddah King Abdulaziz International Airport before connecting to the JKIA on November 28. But she was a no-show.
The JKIA called her family five days later, informing them of Margaret’s presence at the airport. They asked them to go pick her up.
Her son, now a Form Three student, yearned to see her. But they also wanted to understand whatever had happened to her at Riyadh and why she overstayed. They would be introduced to a Margaret so pale and hostile, bursting their bubble of excitement. They were heartbroken but remotely thankful.
Given her condition, the family hired an ambulance that ferried her to Mathari National Teaching and Referral Hospital.
While her niece returned alive, Ms Waitherero wondered why her employer detained her despite her passport having expired.
Margaret had not spoken of her life in Saudi Arabia, but the family suspect her employer might have been mistreating her.
The family hopes that she will regain her memory and tell them of the life she led in the Gulf. They would wish to know exactly at what point she lost her memory.
“I would find closure in knowing what happened to my daughter. I hope she will vividly remember the moments before she fell ill,” said Ms Waitherero. “I’m glad she came back. Even though not healthy, at least she is alive.” BY DAILY NATION