After struggling first through Lebanon’s economic crisis and then the coronavirus pandemic, Ethiopian worker Tarik Kebeda said the deadly blast that ripped through her Beirut home was the final straw.
Inside the small house she shares with four friends, she pointed to the window frames covered by sheets, because the glass was smashed out by the August 4 explosion.
They had already lost their jobs — as domestic workers, or in supermarkets or restaurants — but now their home too is at risk.
“I’m scared to sleep here,” the 22-year old said, showing the deep cracks running down the bedroom’s walls, saying she feared the building “will collapse on top of us”. Thousands of foreign workers were already stranded in Lebanon, after months of dollar shortages and then the coronavirus pandemic.
Then came the blast in Beirut’s port that killed more than 181 people, wounded thousands and devastated swathes of the city.
Many say it was just one disaster too many, and now they need to leave.
“I love Lebanon, but I don’t want to live here anymore,” Kebeda said. “There’s no more work. How will I eat?”
Some foreign workers also say they feel sidelined by aid efforts.
In the poor neighbourhood of Karantina, Kebeda’s neighbour Hana claimed aid workers sometimes put fellow Lebanese first.
Next door, 31-year-old Romane Abera recounted how she hid beneath a parked car to hide from the explosion. “Once, a truck came to distribute food boxes but they said: ‘Only give them to the Lebanese’,” Hana said.
Today her damaged home is barely held up by scaffolding, with hot gusts of summer air sweeping through a huge hole in the wall.
Hammer protest
“I wish Lebanon could go back to how it was before,” said Abera, who left behind her baby boy in Ethiopia and recently lost her job.
Hundreds of thousands of migrant workers of multiple nationalities — including at least 250,000 housekeepers and carers — toil in Lebanon for cash to send home.
They enter Lebanon under a controversial sponsorship system called “kafala”, which has been repeatedly denounced by rights groups as enabling a wide range of abuses.