Thread by @awatiibadan

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The man mentioned a Muslim name as the person who had used the phone to call and that he wasn’t at home but that when he got back home he'd let the caller call back.

I didn’t know anyone in Dubai by that name. It was when the man allowed her to call me back that I

found out that it was my friend!

What I didn’t know was that she had told her boss that she had an elder sister in Dubai. My friend is Christian but in the Arab world, it is not advisable that you provide a name that is not Islamic and so she had adopted the Muslim name

which the man had mentioned over the phone.

We began to talk but she couldn’t talk freely, her boss was right next to her – anything she said that sounded suspicious could get her into more trouble.

Luckily the man walked away and we could talk freely.

I asked her for the address of the house, she said she didn’t know the address. I asked for the name of her boss for whom she worked, she said she didn’t know because everyone called him Baaba.

Baaba is like a title – father; that wasn’t a traceable name. She burst into tears

and began to recount how I had warned her from coming.

She however mentioned that her boss’ children had smartphones and so I told her that once she was alone with the children, she should use style to collect the phone and turn on Google Location.

She did that and sent the address to me, it turned out that where she was 20mins away from where I was.

I raised an SOS through the same WhatsApp channel and a Nigerian representative in Dubai reached out.

Action was taking very swiftly and they went to the house where she

worked. They found her there but her boss’ wife refused to allow her leave. She lied against her that the girl stole her jewelry and then handed her over to the police – there was no proof to show that she took a thing.

Through it all, the Nigerian representative stayed and

intervened.

It was obvious the boss’ wife just wanted her to stay in the house because that was all she kept hammering on. My friend put her feet down that she was tired and was not staying anymore.

A solution was worked out, she’d be freed but she wouldn’t be paid for

all the months that she had worked with them. My friend was lucky; some get framed like that and they end up spending years in jail.

Just like me, she had signed a two-year contract and so she had to complete the years. My friend was taken away from the home and

placed in the hostel, till she got a new boss.

The beautiful ending to her story is that the family she ended up working for was a lovely family – they let her use her smartphone, they gave her a measure of freedom and at one point when she needed help, she was paid her

salary in advance. This kind of boss is hard to come by in the Arab world.

Not only Africans are being treated this way - they do it to Philipinos, Syrians etc. So long you’re not one of their own, they treat you like you’re a lesser human being.

They know when people like us come into their country, we have come to work and so when they employ you, they use you and suck you dry – to them you’re just a slave, you have come to slave for money.

One last thing I’d say, if you work in the Arab world and you’re set to leave,

don’t tell your boss you’re not coming back – even when you have completed your two-year stay. Once they bring you in, they’d want to own you forever so they hate to hear that you’re not coming back. Especially when they're used to you already.

The dastardly ones may set you up

and rope you into a crime that you didn’t commit and that could be the start of your undoing.

I had to tell my last boss, when my contract expired, that I wanted to take a little holiday to see my ailing father considering that I had been away for years.

I assured him I’d return. That was how I left Dubai and came back home.

Back in Nigeria, I look back on years I stayed in the Arab world and I can say that it wasn’t worth it. If things in our country were okay why would anyone want to go through this kind of hell?

I was working on a job that paid less than ten thousand naira per month and I had a child to take care of. How can I take care of myself and a child with less than N10,000?

I was under so much pressure with so much happening around me so that when someone informed me of

the opportunity of going there, I considered it and got on board. Like I said earlier, agents will tell you about how glamourous things are there and how you’d earn fat salaries. You don’t get to know the reality until you land in there.

I am grateful that I left Nigeria and

returned in one piece. Some have traveled and are stuck there now – they are fugitives and are on the run, some have been killed, some have committed suicide and their families probably have no clue; they are still hoping that they’d come back home.

❤