Translations and additional reporting from Bileh Jelan.
“She loved life and she loved her family,” Tigist Tafesse says while fighting back tears when asked to describe her late sister Desta. “All she wanted to do was earn enough money to cover her younger brother’s schooling expenses. She didn’t deserve this. Nobody deserves this.”
Tigist’s younger sister Desta, 26, had left her native Ethiopia in search of employment as a domestic worker in Lebanon. It’s a route that many young Ethiopian women take in search of income that could potentially revamp the livelihoods of impoverished families back home. Hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians have flocked to the Middle East over the past decade, with choice destinations being Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. And while some do manage to earn a living and send valuable remittances to loved ones in Ethiopia, an increasing number of them are instead entrapped in a cycle of isolation, endless unpaid toiling, food deprivation, horrific abuse and all too often, death.
