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BEIRUT – In a damp room with some rotting furniture and old mattresses on the floor, seven migrant women sit hugging their belongings, a Kenyan flag hanging behind them on the wall.
A Lebanese woman walks into the apartment, located in a poor area east of Beirut, and migrants excitedly rush to hug her.
“We’re finally going home,” says Nancy, a 25-year-old Kenyan. “Déa is a heavenly saint. We experience a lot here, but Déa and her friend are our saviors.”
Déa Hage-Chahine and Serge Majdalani are two young Lebanese who have partnered on a mission to repatriate migrant domestic workers stranded in Lebanon by the worst economic crisis in the country’s modern history.
In two months, they have helped bring home more than 120 women, mostly Kenyans and some Ethiopians, raising more than $ 35,000 for flights and coronavirus tests through an online campaign and working tirelessly to overcome bureaucratic hurdles and legal.
It’s a mission they both came to unexpectedly. Majdalani, 33, who works in finance in New York, was visiting his family in Beirut in the summer when he learned that thousands of migrants were queuing outside their embassies trying in vain to get help to leave.
First, he tried to use his brother’s travel agency to organize private chartered flights for them. “But that was too expensive,” he said.
A friend connected him to Hage-Chahine. Separately, she too had been inspired to act.
“I was walking my dog in Beirut and I saw so many women and children on the streets. No one was helping them,” he said. “I couldn’t see that and turn a blind eye.”
Lebanon has some 250,000 migrant workers, most of them women who work as domestic servants.
Even before the crisis, they were abused under a sponsorship system, known in Arabic as “kafala”, which links workers to their employers. Rights activists have described the system as a form of “neo-slavery.” Thousands have run away from employers and then gone to work undocumented.
“Here workers are seen as objects,” Majdalani said. Employers use the fees they pay brokers to justify banning maids from leaving, he said. “They confiscate their passports as if they had them.”
Then Lebanon’s economy plunged this year in a combination of financial collapse and the coronavirus pandemic. The Lebanese have lost jobs and have seen the value of their savings evaporate as the currency loses value.
Migrant workers were thrown into a desperate situation. Many maids have been unpaid for months. Some employers threw them onto the streets or outside their embassies.
Now, many cannot afford the exorbitant costs of repatriation flights.
Hage-Chahine worked in marketing but has recently been unemployed. In addition to the money from the fundraising, she has used some of her savings to pay for a shelter for women and provide food and medicine.
He spent his days with them on the streets, advising them, buying them. Meanwhile, she and Majdalani worked out the essential details to organize the outings. They recovered passports and workers’ belongings from former employers, spoke daily with security officers to resolve legal obstacles, and organized and paid for flights.
“We help change someone’s life,” Hage-Chahine said. “Unfortunately, the work that we do is really very small compared to the reality of the problem.”
They played the role of embassies, which they describe as corrupt and incapable of helping migrants.
On its website, the Kenyan consulate in Lebanon says it is registering legal and illegal workers seeking to return home. Telephone calls to the consulate, which has been embroiled in allegations of abuse and exploitation, received no response. The Ethiopian embassy did not respond to an Associated Press request for a comment.
Back at the shelter, the two Lebanese helped the women load their luggage onto a bus.
Nancy, the Kenyan woman who gave only her first name, fled her employers years ago because, she said, children abused her because she is black. She has worked without papers ever since. Since no one paid dollars, he couldn’t stay. What it did save is trapped in a bank account by currency controls.
She is relieved just to get out.
“I’m going to see my son and start my own business,” he said. “I will not come here again.”
The final farewells at the airport with Hage-Chahine and Majdalani were emotional for everyone.
“I don’t think anyone will forget what they have done,” said Ririan, 34, one of the migrants who left. All spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing reprisals from authorities.
“Seeing their happiness, when they can finally leave, is very gratifying,” said Majdalani, who has since returned to New York. “Especially knowing that we are freeing them from horrible living conditions. That is a moment of pride and joy.”
