Barbara, a 39-year-old mother of five returned home from Dubai in March 2024 after four years abroad, expecting to find progress.
Instead, she found a poorly built, unfinished house, an absent ex-husband, and no source of income.
Her story was shared by content creator Lin Zabu, who visited Barbara at her plot in Boza, documenting the situation in a video that has since moved viewers deeply.
Barbara left for Dubai in 2020 after 16 years of marriage, driven not by wanderlust but by necessity.
Barbara’s husband expresses his regret
Her husband, the father of all five children ranging in age from five to 21, had told her he regretted her being the mother of his children.
With no financial stability at home, she secured a domestic work placement through a friend, expecting to earn KSh 41,000 a month for a family of two.
She arrived to find a household of 10. The employer verbally agreed to raise her pay to KSh 51,000, but after five months, nothing changed.
Barbara stranded in Dubai without documentation or savings
When Barbara pushed back, her employer threatened deportation and later confiscated her passport, refusing to release it.
After months of navigating immigration offices, labour bureaus and civil courts without resolution, she was left stranded in Dubai without documentation or savings.
Rather than give up, she pivoted. From November 2020, she worked informal part-time domestic jobs.
Barbara starts small food business
By 2022, she had started a small food business supplying chapatis and sambusas to fellow Ugandans, saving enough to purchase land and fund construction of a home back in Uganda.
She trusted a friend who had returned to Uganda ahead of her to oversee the construction, sending approximately KSh 342,000 to cover both materials and labour.
When she finally returned in 2024, ill from years of overwork, what greeted her were cramped, poorly proportioned rooms built to measurements she had never agreed to.
Barbara’s health deteriorates
“The measurements I gave him, he never used them,” she told Lin Zabu during the visit. “I expected to find something very big, but this is what I got.”
Her health had deteriorated to the point where her brothers urged her to return before things got worse. She arrived back in Uganda with little money and no income plan.
Meanwhile, her ex-husband had remarried and effectively abandoned their children, leaving them in a rented house he later stopped paying for.
Barbara managing kids’ school fees
Barbara has since been managing their school fees, rent and upkeep with help from friends still working abroad, while also considering selling her plot to raise business capital.
Her daughter in Senior Four has spoken about dropping out after the national exams, discouraged by constant fee-related disruptions.
Barbara paid the exam registration but cannot clear the outstanding balance.
