When an Israeli airstrike killed her employer and devastated her belongings in southern Lebanon, it shattered Fatima Samuella Tholley’s hopes of returning to Sierra Leone amidst escalating violence.
The 27-year-old housekeeper, along with her cousin, managed to reach Beirut in an ambulance with only a change of clothes stuffed into a plastic bag.
“We don’t know today if we will live or not, only God knows,” Fatima told AFP via video call, her voice breaking with emotion. “I have nothing… no passport, no documents,” she added. The cousins have been sheltering in a cramped storage room of an empty apartment, provided by a stranger they met during their escape.
The situation in Lebanon has deteriorated sharply since mid-September, with over 1,000 people dead and hundreds of thousands displaced due to ongoing airstrikes targeting Hezbollah strongholds.
Migrant workers, often bound by the “kafala” system, face severe vulnerabilities, including wage theft and document confiscation. “When we came here, our madams received our passports… only we survived,” lamented Mariatu Musa Tholley, another Sierra Leonean worker....Read Full Article [Click Here>]
Sierra Leone is working to ascertain the number of its citizens in Lebanon and provide emergency travel certificates to those without passports.
Many migrants came to Lebanon to support their families back home, but now find themselves in dire circumstances, with no access to shelter, food, or security amid the chaos.
As Kadij Koroma, another housekeeper, described, “You don’t know where to go; everywhere you go, bomb, everywhere you go, bomb.”
