There have been numerous cases of Indonesian domestic workers becoming victims of what is essentially modern day slavery abroad after being horribly exploited by their employers, with some, like the elderly woman in this viral post, being unable return home to see their families for years or even decades.
On Friday, an Indonesian domestic worker in Saudi Arabia named Anindia posted a story on Facebook about how she met another domestic worker named Kiptiyah Jumanah during her employer’s family gathering.
According to Anindia, Kiptiyah has been working for her employer in Riyadh for 40 years and has not gone back to see her family in Indonesia in all that time. Anindia then helped post photos of Kiptiyah to Facebook groups based in the latter’s hometown of Jember, East Java, in the hopes that someone would recognize her, because Kiptiyah said she has lost contact with her family and has even forgotten their names.
“The poor old lady has gone senile. Sometimes she cries about wanting to go home, sometimes she doesn’t want to go home. She’s old, so she can’t make up her mind,” Anindia told Kumparan yesterday.
Anindia said her meeting with Kiptiyah was brief so she doesn’t know if Kiptyah suffered any abuse at the hands of her employers or if she has been paid her salary all these years.
Thankfully, Anindia’s post may prove to be Kiptiyah’s ticket home as her photos were recognized by a Jember resident named Affrilia, who claims to be her granddaughter.
“It’s true, I’m her granddaughter. The whole family knew she went to Saudi Arabia — when she left my late grandfather saw her off,” Affrilia told Kumparan.
Affrilia said that Kiptiyah is going to be picked up by a family member who works as a university professor in Saudi Arabia, who will then bring her home for the Lebaran holiday in June.
“I would like to say a thousand thanks to Anindia for posting my grandmother’s story so that we, the family, finally heard from Grandma Kiptiyah again,” she said.
After innumerable cases of violence and abuse, the Indonesian government banned its citizens from working as domestic workers in 21 Middle Eastern countries, including Saudi Arabia, back in 2015. Despite that, there are still many Indonesians working in countries like Saudi Arabia, who were either desperate enough to go even after the ban was announced or who were working there before it was enacted.
Tales of Indonesian domestic workers being unable to return home for various reasons are sadly quite commonplace. One extreme case from last year involved a woman who was working without pay for 22 years in Saudi Arabia before she was finally rescued and flown back to Indonesia.
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