Female migrant labourers face discrimination and marginalisation all over the world. Sophie was looking tired when I met her in Kampala in January We had last met the summer before in Turkey when she told me her employer had refused to pay her wages. I offered to help her make an official complaint but she just shrugged and said "Forget about it - nothing will come of it except for trouble.
In Uganda, she told me how she had finally made it home but as we talked I realised that her trouble in Turkey was only one stage of a journey of exploitation that had also taken her to Dubai and Saudi Arabia. At 17 she married a man who promised to support her to study but after three children and still no education, Sophie had enough.
She left her children and funded herself to College level where she qualified as a masseuse. But things were still hard and when a client in Kampala offered her a job in Dubai, she took the chance:. The client paid for my visa, ticket everything I understood then that she was a prostitute.
She picked me from the airport to one of the rooms she rented to a group of prostitutes. I asked how much I would have to pay back to her because I had to send money to my children.
She told me that I'd work for her for 2 months I was a housemaid. I was always waiting for them, cooking nice African food and ready to open the door if the Police were chasing them. We started selling food and then, I started doing massage in the house. I was doing everything So after three months she left Dubai having earned just enough to cover the fine for overstaying her visa. So she decided to migrate again. Everything costs money and work is scarce.
