Hilda Mwangi left Kenya expecting to build a career at sea. Four years later, she is in Bucharest, making croissants, cinnamon rolls and fruit pastries in a small bakery.
She is among an increasing number of Kenyans trooping to Romania, attracted by its relatively ease of access and high labour demand, with employers recruiting foreign workers for jobs ranging from hospitality and caregiving to logistics, and food production.
But while getting there may be less costly compared to other European countries, these Kenyans are quickly finding out that the salary on a contract can look very different from what remains in a worker’s pocket after taxes, insurance, rent and other costs.
A loan and a Sh200,000 fee
Before leaving Kenya, Hilda, 30, was in her final year studying maritime shipping and logistics at Mombasa Airways Training Institute. She imagined a career at sea, but a conversation with a friend working in Qatar opened a different door.
‘We were speaking about working abroad, and he introduced me to an agent,’ she tells the BDLife.
Her family look a loan and gave an agent Sh200,000 to facilitate her move to Romania. It was only after she arrived that Hilda realised she may not have needed to pay anything.
‘Most of these jobs are free. The employer takes care of everything,’ she says.
She landed in Bucharest in November 2022, straight into winter. Her first job was at an Asian fast-food outlet, where she sold noodles and soup, served customers and operated the till. The language barrier was difficult, while some customers reacted with surprise to her skin colour.
The job also came with a pay cut from what she had been promised in Kenya. Instead of the Sh100,000 monthly salary she had been told to expect, she earned Sh80,000.
A month later, the employer told her that it had hired too many workers and had to let some go. Hilda was among those who lost their jobs.
She was given until June 2023 to find another employer or return to Kenya.
Luckily she found one willing to take her on and work through the paperwork, even hiring a lawyer to help complete the process before her visa expired.
The new job, she says, was in hotel housekeeping. Hilda stayed for seven months but was unhappy with the pay.
‘It’s like I was getting less rather than making more,’ she says.
Career pivots
She chose to pivot into caregiving.
In August 2023, Hilda joined a nursing home run by a Tanzanian woman. The job changed how she viewed her life in Romania.
‘I found peace in caregiving,’ she says. ‘The old people, they were so warm to me. This brought a whole different change in my mind.’
She also learnt Romanian while communicating with elderly residents who spoke no English.
Her salary rose to Sh120,000 a month, giving her a better financial footing. But six months later, the nursing home closed.
A colleague from the facility helped her find another job, this time at a pastry shop. ‘I have this very good girl, very hardworking, and I think if you take her, she will give you the best,’ the friend told the shop owner.
Hilda had no formal baking experience, but she had always enjoyed cooking. She learnt quickly and, within three months, was moved to a new branch.
She now works eight-hour shifts, often starting at 5am, making croissants, pain au chocolat, cinnamon rolls and fruit pastries filled with goat cheese cream.
The job, she notes, has also given her time to study Romanian.
Her plans were interrupted when she had to stop working for six months while her employer processed her papers. She eventually resumed both work and school toward the end of October 2024.
‘I have continued since, still juggling shifts with lectures,’ she says.
She has also taken on part-time nanny work.
Hilda says while the journey has moved a long way from the career she imagined while studying maritime logistics, she is excited about her future prospects. Her biggest ambition now is to return to Nairobi and open her own pastry shop.
Starting over at 46
At 46, Gerald Wachira had spent more than two decades building a wholesale food business in Kenya. He supplied shops and households and had once considered the business his route to financial security.
But in 2024, the business collapsed. A friend later shared an advertisement for jobs in Romania, prompting Gerald to consider starting over abroad.
Unlike Hilda, he was wary of recruitment agents. Before committing himself, he privately contacted Kenyans already living in Romania to establish whether the agent was legitimate.
He began the immigration process in October 2024. The move cost him Sh450,000, largely from his savings and what remained of his business, and covered his visa and travel expenses.
Five months later, he got his work-permit appointment and eventually travelled to Romania.
His new life began on a motorbike just as winter was ending. Gerald started working as a delivery rider in Bucharest, learning the city’s roads, collection points and drop-off addresses from scratch. ‘It was so hard for me,’ he says.
Within a month or two, however, he had found his rhythm. The seasons brought new challenges. Summer heat was intense, while autumn’s wet leaves made the roads slippery. Winter brought snow that sometimes made it impossible to work.
‘I’ve never had an accident in Kenya, but here, I can count like five times,’ he says.
After an accident in November 2025, Gerald asked his employer to give him a van instead of a motorbike. The request changed the nature of his work.
He began making long-distance trips from Bucharest to Italy through Hungary and Slovenia, travelling about 2,400 kilometres each way – almost 5,000 kilometres on a round trip – carrying vegetables and other foodstuffs.
He worked the route through November, December and January, but says the pay did not match the demands. His employer expected him to make four full trips a month, targets Gerald says he struggled to meet.
‘My employer paid poorly and blamed me for missing targets that required four full trips a month. I could not even manage to help my family at home,’ he says, adding that by January, he had decided to return to ordinary delivery work.
He also joined Bolt, taking on ride-hailing work alongside deliveries. For a period, he was effectively working two jobs just to get through a difficult February.
Around April 2026, his van employer terminated his contract, saying his earnings were too low to justify keeping him. Gerald and a colleague then found a new full-time employer who helped them secure fresh work permits at a cost of about Sh28,000 each.
Gerald has remained with the employer, working on Glovo while continuing to earn through Bolt.
He now takes home about Sh42,000 a week, or roughly Sh178,000 a month. But even that figure comes with costs attached.
‘I have rented this motorbike from an agent under a commission arrangement,’ he says.
His next goal is to convert his Kenyan driving licence. If successful, he hopes to qualify for truck driving, a career he sees as more stable than the series of delivery jobs he has taken since arriving.
For Gerald, the journey to rebuilding his financial stability in Romania has not been smooth. He nevertheless believes the move was worthwhile.
‘There is a light at the end of the tunnel,’ he says.
‘Come, but don’t expect a lot’
Martha Wambui’s experience offers another reminder that the salary attached to a job abroad does not necessarily tell the whole financial story.
The 38-year-old arrived in Romania with years of caregiving experience, having previously spent four years working in Saudi Arabia.
She began with two years of housekeeping before moving into caregiving for a bedridden elderly woman. She remained there for another two years, until the woman died.
Martha returned to Kenya in early 2024 and spent the next eight months without work while hoping to travel again, perhaps to Dubai or Kuwait.
Nothing came through. Then a friend eventually recommended Romania where she travelled in December 2024, with her employer paying her Sh93,000 airfare. Martha paid Sh20,000 for her visa from her own savings.
Her first job was as a nanny. ‘I was sleeping with the baby, doing everything like the baby was mine. They were taking the baby only on Sunday,’ she says.
Household chores were added to her responsibilities, despite not being part of the original agreement.
She stayed for one year and two months, earning about Sh89,000 a month, before deciding to leave. But her departure was not straightforward after her employer resisted signing the release papers she needed to change jobs, but Martha eventually moved on.
By March 2026, she had found another job. ‘I started simply as a helper doing the basic cleaning and support work around the kitchen. I earned about Sh74,000 as a bakery cleaner.’
By July, she had moved to a sandwich company, where she works in packaging. The new job came without a fee for her fresh work permit and paid slightly more than her previous position.
Her days now are long. An eight-hour shift can stretch with overtime, with some days beginning at 6am and ending around 8pm.
Martha shares a rented studio apartment with other tenants. The base rent is Sh37,000, while utilities push the total to about Sh52,000, which is divided among the roommates.
Her company does not provide housing, despite what she says some contracts promise.
Martha says the biggest lesson has been that a European salary should not automatically be equated with easy money.
‘I would tell someone to come, but do not come expecting to get a lot of money,’ she says.
Taxes and health insurance can take a sizeable portion of a salary. She remembers receiving a payslip showing Sh121,000 but being left with roughly Sh76,000 after deductions.