Clara Simiyu, a Kenyan mother of two, left for Saudi Arabia in 2022 for a job as a domestic worker in a Muslim household. A year later, she learned from a close friend back home that her husband was having an affair with a woman who visited him on weekends. Instead of spending the money Simiyu sent home on their children’s clothing and education, he spent it on his mistress.
Simiyu, 31, called her father and her pastor in December 2023, telling them she planned to separate from her husband and start Kenya’s lengthy divorce process once she returned from Saudi Arabia in late 2026. Her pastor tried to convince her to reconcile. Simiyu remained adamant.
When she returned to Kitale, Kenya, for a visit in 2024, Simiyu had no place to call home. Her estranged husband had no stable job and couldn’t provide for their children. So she took her daughters—ages four and eight—to live with her cousin. Now she sends money home from Saudi Arabia for their upkeep.
“I miss seeing my daughters grow,” Simiyu said.
Desperation from high rates of unemployment—as high as 67 percent for young adults entering the job market—drives many Christians from poor Kenyan families to accept low-paying jobs in the Persian Gulf states. Most jobs are in hospitality, domestic work, or construction. Demand for female-only domestic jobs in the Middle East is high, so many Kenyan women sign up for short-term contracts—usually one to two years—in these roles. Since domestic workers often live in their employers’ homes, they can’t bring their husbands or children. An estimated 400,000 Kenyans currently work in the Gulf states.
The separations take a harsh toll on their families. Marriages break apart. Families divide over how to spend wages sent home to Kenya. Children left behind with relatives may see their mothers or fathers only on video calls.
Because of this, some church leaders discourage their congregants from working abroad. They say financial success from international work isn’t worth the cost to relationships.
Pastor Joseph Kimaleni of the Full Gospel Church in Trans-Nzoia County, western Kenya, said adultery is common when wives work abroad. He’s seen young couples divorce when wives return to find their husbands have taken mistresses or second wives.
Kimaleni works to bring these broken families back together but wants to stop the problem at its root. When church members tell him they want to work abroad, he advises them not to go, especially if they’re considering work in the Middle East, where migrant workers are treated more harshly than in Western countries. Kimaleni doesn’t even want to pray they’ll get the jobs: “Praying for them to go to those countries is like separating them, and the Bible says what God has put together, no man shall separate.”
He also worries about their children: “When parents separate, it is the children who suffer.”
Kimaleni’s church creates local jobs in hopes of preventing young people from going abroad. The church raises money to offer entrepreneurial youth the capital to start small businesses, such as making fresh juice and snacks to sell to church members on Sundays. Kimaleni encourages church members who own businesses to employ youth from the church. He also connects young men with local building companies, shopping malls, garages, and salons in need of workers.
“This has diverted many of them from going to the Gulf,” Kimaleni said.
Meanwhile, pastor Roslyne Wamalwa of the Newlife Church in Trans-Nzoia County also discourages young women and men from going to the Middle East for work. During her church’s annual youth conference, she teaches young couples what a good marriage should look like, then shares stories of marriages that failed due to spouses working abroad. Though couples often admit they know of friends who have divorced while apart, they still feel pressured to take jobs abroad.
“Poverty pushes them,” she said. Wamalwa advises them to seek God’s will and pray to avoid temptation.
Wamalwa says she prays for church members determined to go. She asks God to protect them against sexual harassment and give them good employers. According to The New York Times, many Kenyan women returning from domestic work in the Middle East report sexual advances or abuse from male household members. CT has covered similar reports from Nigerian women working in Muslim countries. Many African women do not report this abuse for fear of retaliation or loss of their wages. When they do report physical or sexual exploitation, law enforcement often let abusers go unpunished.
Elizabeth Wanjiku, a mother of four from Kilimani village near Eldoret in North Rift, Kenya, counsels young Christians to think carefully before going abroad. Many unemployed young Kenyans come to her church for prayer or job-skills seminars, where she begins discipling them. Wanjiku has seen work-abroad separations cause many divorces. She has also seen rifts start when family members in Kenya misuse money sent home.
In 2019, Wanjiku stopped her niece Joyce Wangare from taking poison to kill herself after Wangare returned to Kenya to discover her mother had squandered the meager earnings she had sent home over two years working as a domestic worker in Saudi Arabia.
Hoping to lift her family out of poverty, Wangare had asked her mother to buy a small plot of land near Eldoret to construct rental shops that would earn the family a monthly income. Instead, her mother spent the money on luxuries, food, and help for relatives.
“I asked God to give me wisdom to solve the fight, because the daughter was angry, while the mother thought it was her right to use the money,” Wanjiku said. Although Wanjiku helped them reconcile, her niece left home again, going first to Oman then Dubai, never returning home to Kenya again.
Wanjiku advises those who work outside the country to first open bank accounts and save any money they want to invest in the future, sharing only the remainder with family.
“When it’s time for you to come back, you can do the investment you want,” Wanjiku tells them.
In addition to being at risk for divorce and family disputes, Kenyan workers risk coming home with injuries. Others don’t come back at all—316 Kenyans reportedly died working in the Gulf states from 2022 to mid-2024. Christian workers may face especially harsh penalties for violating Muslim law. Women may be punished for being in the company of men they’re not married to, fleeing their employers, having sex with Muslim men (even when they’re raped, or reading the Bible openly.
Clara Simiyu, who is still working in Saudi Arabia, faces pressure to practice her faith quietly. Because she can’t attend church openly, Simiyu depends on her church back in Kenya for emotional and spiritual support. She sends prayer requests to her pastor over WhatsApp or Facebook, knowing he will ask the rest of the church to pray. It helps with the isolation, she said.
Simiyu said she regrets the dissolution of her marriage, believing that if she had stayed in Kitale, her husband would likely have remained faithful. Now he’s living with his mistress, unofficially remarried.
Sometimes, late at night after work, she uses WhatsApp to video-call her daughters: “My phone is my only companion because it is what [allows] me [to] talk to my children.”
When her contract is up, Simiyu plans to return to Kenya and open a hair salon to support her daughters.
“I don’t think I will travel again,” she said. “I need my children closer to me.”
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