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Stuck in a foreign land with no passport or work

I support family in Ethiopia, have to pay my Lebanese sponsor who keeps my passport - and my cleaning work has stopped with lockdown. #HumansofCOVID19

By Selam Abebe*
Stuck in a foreign land with no passport or work
"My employers fear that I might infect them because I share an apartment with other people" | Selam Abebe*
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I am a domestic worker. I clean people’s houses. I am from Ethiopia but I came here to Lebanon nine years ago. I could only finish grade nine at home and then I had to start working. But I was earning a very low salary in a beauty salon back home in Ethiopia, so I came to Beirut.

I am 38 years old, and a single mum of a son who is 21 years old. I support my son, my mother and my sister back home. My son got a scholarship to study in China this year but I have to pay his expenses every month.

I work for a cleaning company and I have six-hour daily shifts but the money is not enough so I also have part-time work cleaning houses near where I live.

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Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0