We don’t want to die here, Sierra Leoneans trapped in Lebanon cry

When an Israeli air strike killed her employer and destroyed nearly everything she owned in southern Lebanon, it also crushed Fatima Samuella Tholley’s hopes of returning home to Sierra Leone to escape the spiralling violence.

With a change of clothes stuffed into a plastic bag, the 27-year-old housekeeper told AFP that she and her cousin made their way to the capital Beirut in an ambulance.

Bewildered and terrified, the pair were thrust into the chaos of the bombarded city — unfamiliar to them apart from the airport where they had arrived months before.

“We don’t know today if we will live or not, only God knows,” Fatima told AFP via video call, breaking down in tears.

“I have nothing… no passport, no documents,” she said.

The cousins have spent days sheltering in the cramped storage room of an empty apartment, which they said was offered to them by a man they had met on their journey.

With no access to TV news and unable to communicate in French or Arabic, they could only watch from their window as the city was pounded by strikes.

The spike in violence in Lebanon since mid-September has killed more than 1,000 people and forced hundreds of thousands more to flee their homes, as Israel bombards Hezbollah strongholds around the country.

The situation for the country’s migrant workers is particularly precarious, as their legal status is often tied to their employer under the “kafala” sponsorship system governing foreign labour.

Rights groups say the system allows for numerous abuses including the withholding of wages and the confiscation of official documents — which provide workers their only lifeline out of the country.

“When we came here, our madams received our passports, they seized everything until we finished our contract” said 29-year-old Mariatu Musa
Tholley, who also works as a housekeeper.

“Now [the bombing] burned everything, even our madams… only we survived”.

– ‘They left me’ –

Sierra Leone is working to establish how many of its citizens are currently in Lebanon, with the aim of providing emergency travel certificates to those without passports, Kai S. Brima from the foreign affairs ministry told AFP.

The poor west African country has a significant Lebanese community dating back over a century, which is heavily involved in business and trade.

Scores of migrants travel to Lebanon every year, with the aim of paying remittances to support families back home.

“We don’t know anything, any information”, Mariatu said.

“[Our neighbours] don’t open the door for us because they know we are black”, she wept.

“We don’t want to die here”.