Mariama's Story

Mariama’s Story looks at a range of issues that often affect victims of human trafficking. It highlights deception and recruitment fees in Sierra Leone, and exploitation in Oman. It also sheds light on the treatment often faced by domestic workers in the recruitment offices and how “release money” plays a crucial role in keeping victims in exploitative situations. 

“You will make a lot of money in Oman as a hairdresser”, a recruiter in Sierra Leone told Mariama. Mariama had recently lost her father, the family’s main breadwinner.

“Mariama, you know how to plait hair. Don’t sit here. Here they will give you small money. Go to Oman. When you go in Oman, they will pay you plenty money.” This is the way he made me to come in this country. Now, if I message, he will not respond to me.”

 There were just a few things the 24-year-old had to do to travel: one was to get a passport that falsely stated she was three years older than she was. And another was to pay her recruiter the equivalent of US$500, money her mother paid on her behalf. 

When she arrived in Oman, Mariama began working in an employer’s home as a domestic worker. There, she was given a room to sleep and enjoyed some level of privacy as her employer never searched her belongings. But they did not give her access to Wi-Fi and would sometimes take her phone away. She was not allowed to leave the house by herself.

Mariama worked 19 hours a day, from 4 am to 11 pm every day, seven days a week. She had to work when she was tired or sick and they refused to take her to the doctor when she asked to go. She worked for a family of 12 in a compound with a large two-story house that had 10 rooms and 10 bathrooms. Her tasks included cooking, cleaning, washing clothes, ironing, washing the car, gardening, and taking care of children and elderly members of the household. They did not give her enough food, “I only eat because I cook for them”, she said. 

After 8 months, Mariama couldn’t take it anymore. They had not paid her in two months and she asked to return to the recruiting office that brought her to Oman. 

In the office, she told the agent that she was lied to -that being a domestic worker was not what she was promised. She told him she wanted to go home and refused to work. So he beat her and locked her in a room without food or drinking water for a week. 

The office agent then told Mariama that if she wanted to leave, her family needed to send money for her ticket and she needed to spend her salary on a COVID test. 

“I said…my family doesn’t have that kind of money. If I have that kind of money to buy a ticket so that I will go home, I should not come [to Oman] to find money. Because I don’t have that kind of money, that’s why I come here.”

A Sierra Leonean who worked in the office and acted as a translator between local Sierra Leonean languages and English told her it would be better for her to work than stay in the office, stating that if she stayed in the office they wouldn’t provide her with food or drinking water. 

So she went to work for another family, which was actually the home of her agent. For several months, Mariama negotiated with him whenever she could, insisting that she needed to go home. Her agent was not consistent in his communications – telling her in one conversation that the airport was closed because of COVID, then saying that she could leave if her family bought her a ticket, before announcing to her that she must stay for two years, then once again telling her ‌she could leave after Ramadan, then telling her ‌he would buy her ticket if she worked just 6 more months – always changing his story when she got close to fulfilling his requirements. 

“The last time I said I want to go, he said go and work. After airport open [he] will make me to leave. Now, airport is [open] so I want to leave. My condition is not good. I am not well. I am not used [to] this kind of job…. This job is not the kind of job I do in my country.”

In December 2020, she reached out to Do Bold for the first time, saying a friend gave her our phone number. She said she was “suffering” and “not OK”. She kept in touch periodically, reaching out when it seemed like her agent would let her leave before dashing back when he changed his mind. 

In her agent’s house, her health kept deteriorating – she had a toothache and a large abscess on her face. Mariama grew more desperate. Her brother back in Sierra Leone tried to intervene, but the office ignored his messages. Desperate to get home, she considered leaving her employer, wondering if that would make it easier for her to leave. With information from Do Bold about the legal ramifications of leaving the office – such as being charged with “absconding”, becoming vulnerable to arrest, and staying trapped without the possibility of leaving – she decided to stay and kept negotiating.

On April 1, her boss said she could leave and that we should message him to arrange her ticket. But, when we messaged him stating that we were the friends who wanted to buy her a ticket home, he became aggressive. 

“Don’t [make] problems otherwise i will take you to [police],” he wrote on WhatsApp. Then came a voice note: “Don’t talk to her again, I will take you to jail, you know. I will take you to police. Don’t talk with her again. Never. Ok? Don’t make problem.” He followed up seconds later, with a written message saying he would make a police complaint against us if she told him we talked to her again. “You lis[t]en,” he wrote. 

18 days later, he changed his mind, brought her from his house to the office and told her she could leave. After ensuring that Mariama had enough money on hand to pay for her pre-departure PCR test, we coordinated with him to ensure he took her for the test, completed the ‌departure paperwork, and brought her to the airport on time. 

He dropped her off but, while she was at the airport, her flight was cancelled. 

Coordinating late at night with Mariama, her brother, her office agent and our travel agent, we re-booked her on a flight for 28 hours later. Compounding the complexity, Mariama didn’t have phone credit, which meant she couldn’t reach out to anyone – she could only receive phone calls. 

With her agent’s home hours from the airport, Do Bold arranged for her to stay in the home of a local volunteer. But, with a COVID curfew in place, the volunteer couldn’t reach her until the next morning. Her agent wouldn’t accept this and sent her to stay with a friend of his, a situation that made everyone nervous as she was now with a stranger. 

We stayed in touch through phone calls as the next 24 hours unfolded. Eventually, Mariama was taken back to the airport and boarded the first of three flights home.

(*This report uses pseudonyms for all the domestic workers and others mentioned and withholds names for in the interest of their privacy and security)