She, along with 654 others, paid a hefty sum of $680 (Dh2497) to fly back to Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, from Beirut after camping out at the Ethiopian embassy. The cost is more than four times her monthly salary.
Many Ethiopian migrant workers, mostly young women, cannot cover the expense to fly home and now face the prospect of unemployment in a country beset by economic and political turmoil. But she was one of the lucky ones.
“I was in Lebanon for two years. I worked day in and day out and, on what was supposed to have been my off days, my employers would transport me to their friends and have me work with little break,” she told The National.