Ruth Kerubo, a Kenyan woman employed as a nanny in Saudi Arabia, has moved thousands online after sharing the story of how four years of work in the Middle East enabled her to build a permanent home for her family back in Kenya.
Kerubo posted photos showing the stark contrast between where her family once lived and where they live now.
The old structure was a mud-walled house topped with a rusty iron-sheet roof. In its place stands a new building with a modern design, large windows and a distinctive red roof.
She congratulated herself in a Facebook post for the hard work and milestone, promising to give her fans a tour once she returns from
“Don’t you also see that Gulf money can transform your home, as long as you know how to manage it? This is the house we used to live in before I came to the Gulf, and the house behind it is the one I built with money earned from cleaning toilets. Four years in Saudi Arabia.Let me finish everything nicely. When I return to Kenya, I’ll give you a house tour so you can see that no situation is permanent; things change.Congratulations to me! It hasn’t been easy,” she said.
From Mud Walls to Modern Living
For Kerubo, the transformation did not happen by accident. She credited her ability to save and manage her earnings carefully during her years abroad, describing financial discipline as central to everything she was able to achieve for her loved ones.
A TikTok video she shared offered followers an early peek inside the new home, capturing her mother standing in the living room and marvelling at a newly installed chandelier, running her eyes across fittings she had likely never imagined living with.
Kerubo told her followers they would not be left waiting indefinitely and promised a complete walk-through of the finished home once she returns and everything is fully in place.
Her story has resonated widely because it captures something many Kenyan families understand intimately: the weight of distance, the discipline of saving on a foreign wage, and the quiet satisfaction of watching a dream take shape thousands of kilometres from where you are standing.
Many Kenyans choose to work in Gulf countries, enduring long separations from children, parents and spouses, driven by the hope that the income earned abroad will one day translate into something lasting at home.
For Kerubo, that hope became concrete in the form of brick, mortar and a red roof her mother now lives under.
