In the rare moments between exhaustion and sleep, Agnes Mirembe’s mind does not wander to dreams of a future, but retreats to the ghosts of a past filled with sacrificed opportunities. The journey that led her to a sprawling mansion in Saudi Arabia, where she now works 21 hours a day, began not at an airport, but in Uganda, where her mother fought a daily, losing battle against poverty.
For Mirembe, the dream of a university education was not just deferred; it was willingly offered on the altar of family duty. After completing her Senior Six, she looked at her younger siblings and her mother’s weary face and knew her own academic ambitions would have to end. Her mother, a single parent of five, was a force of nature, vending charcoal and fish in a precarious informal economy.
That lifeline was repeatedly severed by forces beyond their control.
“Our mother was once arrested for selling premature fish,” Mirembe revisits her sour past. The arrest was part of a broader, national crackdown on illegal fishing, a policy that, while ecologically motivated, devastated the livelihoods of countless small-scale vendors like her mother.
Forced to adapt, her mother pivoted to charcoal vending, only to face a new wave of arrests from the National Environment Management Authority (Nema) targeting the charcoal trade. Though she survived this round by being a vendor rather than a burner, the economic viability of the business collapsed. It was this cascade of despair that planted the seed of a desperate solution of leaving Uganda to find work in the Middle East.
The first exodus
Around 2010, her mother made the heart-wrenching decision to leave for Kuwait. This was a time when travel to Saudi Arabia for Ugandan maids was illegal, and the shadow of human trafficking loomed large over the entire migration process. Mirembe, young but acutely aware of the family’s plight, begged to go along, to share the burden. Her mother was adamant in her refusal, shielding her daughter from a fate she herself was about to endure.
‘My mother processed her travel documents, and left for Kuwait,’ Mirembe says, noting the clandestine route through Kenya. The mother’s sacrifice bore fruit. From Kuwait, her remittances became the family’s new lifeline, educating the younger siblings and even allowing Mirembe to secure a certificate in tailoring. For a fleeting moment, a path forward seemed to appear. But then, life delivered a different script.
Mirembe had her first child in 2014, and a second a year later. The news of her pregnancies shattered the fragile understanding with her mother, who saw Mirembe’s choices as a squandering of her own immense sacrifice. The promise of further education was withdrawn, and Mirembe watched her chances for a better future “go down the drain.”
The second exodus
Now a mother herself, Mirembe found herself trapped in a familiar narrative of struggle.
‘My children’s father did not take care of his children financially, and I had to work tirelessly to cater for their needs,’ she states.
Her partner’s abandonment left her with no safety net. Faced with the prospect of watching her own children grow up in the same poverty she knew, she made the same calculated decision her mother had years before. She would go to the Gulf.
The process of leaving was a gauntlet of exploitation. She registered with more than six different recruitment agencies, each one a lesson in deception.
‘Some companies closed before completing my travel documents, while others kept on postponing the dates,’ she explains. She experienced first-hand the false advertising that preys on the desperate; promises of free travel and accommodation that evaporated into demands for payment at every turn. In August 2021, amidst the Covid-19 pandemic, she finally boarded a flight to Saudi Arabia.
A harsh reality
After a week in quarantine, the moment of meeting her employers arrived. When she saw the three-storey mansion, a spark of optimism ignited.
“I thought it would be a bed of roses,” she admits, perhaps imagining a comfortable workplace with shared responsibilities.
“To my shock, I was informed that I would have to clean the three-floored mansion alone!”
The sheer scale of the task was paralysing. Coming from a three-room house in Uganda, the mansion was not a symbol of luxury, but an immense, daunting territory she was tasked to conquer single-handedly each day. The cultural and practical disconnect was immediate and profound. Her employers, she soon realised, operated under the assumption that Ugandan maids received comprehensive training in Saudi customs, language, and advanced housekeeping.
‘The training received at the labour agencies in Uganda is too parallel to what they see on ground,’ Mirembe clarifies.
While agencies in Uganda had confiscated phones to ensure focus, the reality was a chaotic introduction to high-tech appliances and chemical detergents that her skin and eyes reacted to violently. In these moments, her phone became a secret weapon; she would use Google to translate Arabic instructions or learn how to operate a strange machine, and when that failed, she would feign ignorance to elicit a demonstration from her employers.
Betrayal from home
Perhaps the most devastating blow came not from her employers, but from her homeland. In a decision she now regrets, she had left her children in the care of their father, hoping that proximity would awaken his paternal responsibility. The reality was a cruel betrayal.
‘That man called me to buy underwear for our children and exaggerated the prices for everything,’ she recalls. He provided only the most basic shelter, treating his own children ‘like squatters,’ while his calls became a relentless drain on her finances and mental peace.
He operated under the common misconception that all who work abroad are swimming in wealth. The stress became unbearable, affecting her focus at work and nearly costing her the job. Finally, she reclaimed what little control she could, moving her children to live with a relative. ‘What was the purpose of leaving my children in his care when he could not afford an ordinary pencil?’ She wonders.
This is not a life but a cycle of relentless labour punctuated by brief, insufficient periods of unconsciousness. The dream of education, of a career beyond domestic servitude, has been completely extinguished. All her mental and emotional energy is now channeled into a single, all-consuming goal; ensuring her children do not have to make the same sacrifices she did.
The unending grind
Now in her second contract, the financial pressures have only multiplied. While her salary is higher, it is instantly devoured by the rising cost of living in Uganda, the school fees for her two children, the support for her younger siblings’ education, and contributions to the family house construction.
The cost of this income is her entire being. The workload has escalated dramatically, demanding she clean three-quarters of the massive house.
‘The chores are overwhelming, but I bear everything because of my children,’ she confesses, her voice breaking. Her day is a brutal marathon.
‘My night time is the three or four hours that I use to rest, and then continue slaving off.’