Poverty, low wages, or unemployment are common reasons forcing Kenyan women to travel to Saudi Arabia for greener pastures.
And when this is the case for many Kenyan women who travel Saudi, Kate Murugi had a well-paying job in Kenya but wanted to make more money.
She had a net salary of Ksh30,000 when she decided to take her ambition a step higher by flying to Saudi Arabia.
All she wanted was to sink her life’s foundation deeper, and nothing was as promising as going to work in Saudi at 22 years.
But, Murugi’s story has a different kind of pain, not the usual mistreatment in Saudi. If anything, she is one of the few Kenyan women lucky to work in a conducive environment.
She told Radio Jambo’s Massawe Japanni on Wednesday that it was not all rosy initially, but she still made it only for her sister to con her Ksh1 million.
Her first employer-paid her Ksh18,000, far from the promise of Ksh40,000. But this did not hold her back from pushing harder.
“I was paid Ksh18,000 for just two months,” she recalled. “Out of the four months I worked for those people, they did not pay me for two months,” she said.
Murugi moved from her first employer’s place with her contract cancelled. She landed a job at a bakery where she earned a net salary of Ksh50,000.
“I decided to start my projects back home,” she recounts, adding that she would send her elder sister money to buy two pieces of land.
She sent over Ksh1 million to buy two pieces of land, one which her sister told her cost Ksh500 and another one around Ksh600,000.
Murugi wired this money back home and constantly asked for pictures to see her land and decide on how she wanted to invest.
The photos always came through, but it was not until she returned home that she realized her sister conned her.
She bought the first piece of land at Ksh350,000 and registered under her name, while the second one, she used the money to upgrade her lifestyle.
“She told me that she invested in a company that sunk but I later discovered it was all a lie,” Murugi stated.
Murugi forgave her, but she is in pain that she laboured for five years in a foreign land to better her life only to come back to pain and anguish.
