Al Jazeera long reads
Description
Vocal Characteristics
Language
EnglishVoice Age
Young Adult (18-35)Accents
African (General)Transcript
Note: Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors.
Welcome to AJ Long reads, where we bring you the best of Al Jazeera's long form journalism to listen to in your own time. This week we'll be hearing about how, for decades Ethiopians have flocked to Lebanon in search of work. But many find a cycle of abuse that's hard to escape. Around 250,000 migrants, usually women, workers, housekeepers, nannies and carers in Lebanese homes, but none are protected by the labour law. This is vanished the plight of three Ethiopian domestic workers in Lebanon written by the Correas slalom and read by me, Lapindo Mentally Addis Ababa, Ethiopia asked to go shoe squints as she speaks quietly into the phone's camera. They locked me in the home when they leave, she says in Arabic, speaking in a frantic tone. I spend my days crying, she adds, pointing to the dark circles under her swollen eyes. I've cried so much that I have trouble seeing things from a distance. It was late 2019, and the then 24 year old Ethiopian woman had waited for her employers to leave their home for work in Beirut, Lebanon, before hitting record. I went four years without hearing from my parents, Astor says into the camera. My employers say you Ethiopians will always be poor. What difference would it make? She adds, explaining that she's only received a salary for three months of the four years she is old. I beg you to help me escape this home. Six years earlier, as to left Ethiopia in search of work, But after a Lebanese family hired her as a live in housekeeper in 2014, she found herself cut off from the outside world and labouring without pay, asked his family and able to contact her. Feared she was dead. Ethiopian women like Asta have flocked to the Middle East to work as nannies, caregivers and housekeepers for decades, driven by Ethiopia's rising living costs and unemployment, hundreds of thousands have gone to Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Kuwait. But what many find activists and domestic workers say is a cycle of exploitation and modern day slavery that is hard to escape.