A life after kafala

Makeni, Sierra Leone: Emma Mansaray is sitting with her brother Foday on the land they rent to cultivate vegetables to provide for themselves.
Mansaray was trafficked and subjected to forced labor in Kuwait. She ran away from her first employer. “The other people I worked for, some gave me a salary and others don?t. I suffered a lot. I later got sick and was hospitalized. I went in a coma for 2 weeks and stayed in the hospital for 4 months and later returned home” she says.
When she returned from Kuwait after 4 years of labor she was physically and mentally broken. She says she faced rejection from her parents who did not believe her words, thought she was lying, and kept the money to herself. They could not believe she had worked abroad for so long and came back with no money, so they decided to kick her out of the home.
Her little brother Foday, with whom she had kept in touch throughout her years in Kuwait, stood up against the parents and left the family home with her. Foday is a tailor in Makeni and he provided for his sister so she could heal. He also volunteers and teaches at Turay’s Domestic Workers Advocacy Network so women like her sister could learn tailoring skills and gain some professional reintegration.
They both live in a house nearby this field, which has little electricity and no running water. But Mansaray now manages to stand strong, she cultivates the land and started working as an activist against human trafficking.

12/03/23 – Makeni, Sierra Leone: Zainab Turay and Munatu Bah, returnees from the Middle East and survivors of the kafala system, hold each other. They both try to attend as much as possible to the activities of the DoWAN organization, a grassroots organization made by former domestic workers, for returned migrant domestic workers in Sierra Leone. “I always love to work with the group as we normally make fun and shared our stories with each other,” Turay says. The group of women undertakes several activities: from working on their mental health and listening to each other experiences, raising awareness about human trafficking, to supporting each other in their professional reintegration by making tailoring workshops and leading agricultural projects together. Former migrant domestic workers can be seen by their community as liars or selfish persons who did not send remittances to their families. Local people find it difficult to understand that these women went abroad and were not paid the salary they had worked for and that most of them were mentally, physically, and sexually abused. Not only do they come back with empty pockets, but they also return heavily indebted which put their families under financial stress.
25/02/23 – Makeni, Sierra Leone: Lucy Turay, 29, is a survivor of human trafficking and of the kafala system. Witnessing the lack of organized support for human trafficking survivors in her country, she decided to create an organization for her peers called the Domestic Workers Advocacy Network (DoWAN). Turay traveled to Lebanon in 2019 with the promise of working there as a teacher, which was her profession in Sierra Leone. But once she set foot in Lebanon she found herself under domestic servitude, abused by her employers and her agent until she had to run away. She was repatriated to Sierra Leone with the support of private donors and activists on the 27th of September 2020 with “frustration and depression and with no hope to be a successful person in life again.” she says. After a few difficult weeks, she reunited with her family and managed to set up her organization to support victims of the kafala system, just like her.
5/03/22 – Makeni, Sierra Leone: Houses in Makeni, in a neighborhood where some of the former migrant domestic workers live with their families.
19/02/22 Makeni, Sierra Leone: Emma Mansaray, was trafficked and subjected to forced labor in Kuwait. She ran away from her first employer. “The other people I worked for, some gave me a salary and others don?t. I suffered a lot. I later got sick and was hospitalized. I went in a coma for 2 weeks and stayed in the hospital for 4 months and later returned home” she says. When she returned from Kuwait after 4 years of labor she was physically and mentally broken.
09/03/22 Makeni, Sierra Leone: Emma Mansaray, was trafficked and subjected to forced labor in Kuwait. She ran away from her first employer. “The other people I worked for, some gave me a salary and others don?t. I suffered a lot. I later got sick and was hospitalized. I went in a coma for 2 weeks and stayed in the hospital for 4 months and later returned home” she says. When she returned from Kuwait after 4 years of labor she was physically and mentally broken.
06/03/22 – Makeni, Sierra Leone: Emma Mansaray is sitting with her brother Foday on the land they rent to cultivate vegetables to provide for themselves. Mansaray was trafficked and subjected to forced labor in Kuwait. She ran away from her first employer. “The other people I worked for, some gave me a salary and others don?t. I suffered a lot. I later got sick and was hospitalized. I went in a coma for 2 weeks and stayed in the hospital for 4 months and later returned home” she says. When she returned from Kuwait after 4 years of labor she was physically and mentally broken. She says she faced rejection from her parents who did not believe her words, thought she was lying, and kept the money to herself. They could not believe she had worked abroad for so long and come back with no money, so they decided to kick her out of the home. Her little brother Foday, with whom she had kept in touch throughout her years in Kuwait, stood up against the parents and left the family home with her. Foday is a tailor in Makeni and he provided for his sister so she could heal. He also volunteers and teaches at Turay’s Domestic Workers Advocacy Network so women like her sister could learn tailoring skills and gain some professional reintegration. They both live in a house nearby this field, which has little electricity and no running water. But Mansaray now manages to stand strong, she cultivates the land and started working as an activist against human trafficking.
07/03/22 – Makeni, Sierra Leone: Women from a village close to the agricultural crop pose in front of a pink house.
8/03/22 – Makeni, Sierra Leone: The wall and barbed wire of the Dowan office.
26/02/22 – Makeni, Sierra Leone: Memunatu Makara is a young girl who lives across Lucy Turay’s office. The office always opens its doors for children and young girls to play, get water from the wells, and participate in tailoring workshops and mental health sessions with them. Turay says that this way, the women raise awareness among the young generation. By doing so, they prevent young girls like Memunatu from falling into the same trap of migration and human trafficking. The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that at least 67 million people are employed as domestic workers across the world. Around four in five of all domestic workers are women and girls.
06/03/22 Makeni, Sierra Leone: Former migrant domestic returning from the Middle East attend the afternoon prayers in a local mosque.
10/03/22 Makeni, Sierra Leone: Aminata Jolloh, a former migrant domestic worker in Lebanon, has returned after months of unpaid and forced labor, as well as mental and physical abuses. Back in Beirut in 2020, she and Lucy were part of a small group of stranded women like them who were supporting each other during the pandemic and the economic collapse in the country. Once they have returned to their homes in Sierra Leone, they still support one another through their challenges and accomplishments.
01/03/22 Makeni, Sierra Leone: Former migrant domestic returning from the Middle East rest alongside a river, near Makeni. The river becomes a place of leisure, escape, and cooling down away from the heat of the city.
09/03/22 – Makeni, Sierra Leone : Lucy Turay, holding her son Patou in a field. Turay, a survivor of human trafficking and modern-day slavery is a mother of two. Turay suffered from the separation from her children for almost two years, and sometimes had no means of communication with them because her phone was confiscated by her employers, She says she found resilience while being stranded in Lebanon through the bond of motherhood, which enabled the duty of survival – despite the distance. When she came back to Sierra Leone in late 2020, she went to live again with her son Patou who is 6, but her daughter Ugyatu who was only 1 when Turay had left, did not recognize her anymore. Ugyatu was too young to remember her mother before her departure to Lebanon. Since then, she has been living with Lucy’s auntie, whom she now considers her mother. This is one of the many family stories that happen to migrant domestic workers stranded in the Middle East, who sacrifice their lives for their children and let them grow up in their absence. Turay says she waits for her children to be older, “And one day, I will tell them my own story”.
2/03/22 Makeni, Sierra Leone: A fabric curtain representing any skyscrapers paradise viewed as the dream of a stable future, hanging on the door of a house in Makeni. For migrant domestic workers who have returned from the Middle East, many of them face once they reach out to their families. Some do not even dare to return to their village because of the weight of guilt, fear, and shame of showing up without income. Many are still indebted to their brokers, and their relatives have had to sell lands or belongings to pay back heavy loans. Others try to save up money to leave, to cross lands and oceans through illegal networks again. ?I would rather die in a foreign country than stay here with so much shame.? this is a sentence that is often repeated by the women who do not have reintegration support, illustrating the reality of cyclic migrations and the mindset of the ones who have nothing more to lose. In early 2019, Sierra Leone banned all recruitment of Sierra Leoneans for employment abroad. In 2021, the Ministry of Labour and Social Security stated ?The ban was instituted in 2019 as a means to curtail the uncoordinated and unregulated inflow and outflow of Migrants, which were mostly facilitated by Non-Registered Under-Ground Overseas Recruitment Agencies?. The ban?s aim was to prevent labor exploitation of Sierra Leoneans abroad. However, instead, it created a flourishing illegal recruitment business and fuelled migration through informal channels, thus increasing human trafficking.?
5/03/22 – Makeni, Sierra Leone: Clothes are hanging in Makeni.
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