Kenyan house manager Catherine Wambui left Kenya in 2020 for Iraq , seeking better opportunities to change her kife especially in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. What she did not know is that she would find herself in a maximum security prison in the foreign country.
Wambui was speaking to a local media house where she narrated her ordeal at the hands of her employer in Iraq after securing a two-year contract to work as a house manager.
The two years flew by and she wanted to return home in 2022 as the terms of her contract stipulated. This raised ill feelings from her employer, who forced her to extend her contract to which she refused. She tried explaining that two more years would take a toll on her mental health.
“I had packed and prepared everything and he even took me shopping but when it came time to leave, he was advised by one of his friends to make me extend the contract,” she recalled.
The employer would then tell her that to return she had to foot for her own plane ticket back to Kenya, hindering her chances as she did not have enough money and to make matters worse, her boss confiscated her passport.
She would then devise an escape plan through deportation but her employer was already a step ahead of her. He colluded with the immigration authorities to have her arrested as payback.
“I stayed in my room for two weeks then one day I took off and went to the Iraq immigration department since we do not have a Kenyan embassy there,” Wambui explained adding that she was immediately handed over to the authorities after identifying herself.
“The police took me to hospital for medical tests and told me I would go home within three days once my boss surrenders the passport,” she stated.
To her shock, she was escorted into a vehicle without being told where she was being taken.
She knew her fate was sealed after seeing the vehicle approach a building fenced in barbed wire.
“I was scared when we entered the sealed building and I saw people in cages. They then started shouting that a newcomer had arrived,” she recounted her first moment in the maximum security prison.
“The prison was traumatising as it was a common space for everyone. We were in the same room with murderers and drug dealers serving life sentences.”
She narrated how poor the state of the prison was, and how prison management was so unconcerned, with the place overflowing with inmates that they had to sleep in a sitting position.
So bad was the situation that one cube could house 100 inmates and detainees, and only had one toilet.
Having spent four brutal months locked up, Wambui was saved by a pardon issued during the month of Ramadhan when the prison released some detainees.
She immediately called her parents back home to tell them of her release, and they promptly wired money for her to secure a plane ticket and leave the country.
The domestic worker still bears mental scars from the experience, and worries for other Kenyans who she encountered serving detentions at the Basra Prison who may not be lucky to secure their freedom despite their innocence.
Iraq is among some countries flagged for holding domestic workers hostage in detention camps especially after refusing to engage in forced labour.
