Georgina, a 32-year-old woman from Malawi, envisions a promising future when she accepts an offer to work as a driver in Dubai. Little does she know, she and what turns out to be over 50 other women are trafficked to Oman, where they experience grueling forced labor, sexual exploitation, and abuse. Yet, in the depths of their despair, these women find a glimmer of hope through an unexpected source: a WhatsApp group initiated by Pililani Mombe Nyoni, a Malawian social media activist.

Stories from the women

It is not until the plane lands in Oman that Georgina realizes she has been deceived and is trapped by a family that forces her work punishing hours, seven days a week.

Georgina tells the BBC:

“I reached a point where I couldn’t take it,” she says, detailing how she got as little as two hours’ sleep.

She had not been there long when her boss began forcing her to have sex with him, threatening to shoot her if she said anything.

“It wasn’t only him, she says. “He would bring friends and they would pay him after. I got badly injured. I became distraught.”

Blessings, another woman who is trafficked to Oman at 39 years old, leaves her four children with her sister Stevelia back home with the hopes of providing a better future for her family.

In the home that Blessings works in, she is severely burned, but her employer still does not let her leave.

Stevelia reports,

“The degree of the burns, trust me, I saw my sister losing her own life. I remember my sister said: ‘Sister, I came here because I needed a better life, but should I die, please take care of my kids.’ That hurt me.”

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