A self-employed house-keeper shares her financial and emotional struggles during lockdown

English transcript | نسخة عربية

Nationality: Indian
Occupation: Cleaner
Date of interview: 30 June 2020
Language of interview: Hindi

Khala doesn’t remember when she was born, but her passport says she is 40 years old. She moved to Kuwait eight years ago to join her husband who was already working as a driver in a Kuwaiti household. His salary alone was not sufficient to cover their family’s expenses, and she wanted to help put her two young daughters through school. Her daughters, now 16 and 14, still live in India, with Khala’s mother, in their hometown close to Hyderabad. Khala misses them terribly, especially at night. She tries to go visit them every two, two and a half years. She was supposed to go visit them this Ramadan, but lost her ticket because of the airport shutdown. She also lost her work cleaning in four different houses, and her husband was not paid any salary during the entire lockdown. They had no income, and were still forced to pay the full rent for the apartment they share with another couple in Salmiya. They heard about people providing food support to those in need, but they were afraid: of catching COVID, of the police coming in and testing them. So they made do with what they had at home. Sometimes they had bread, sometimes rice. Sometimes they stayed hungry, and tried to fool their stomachs with Lipton black tea.

At one point during the lockdown Khala felt sick. She would start coughing uncontrollably every time she tried to eat or drink anything. She was afraid of going to the clinic, but when her stomach started to hurt one week later, and she was no longer able to retain any food or water, she finally decided to go get checked. The public clinic that she would be entitled to go to based on her civil ID was too far, so she ended up going to a private hospital. There they told her everything was normal – she just had to eat more regularly. They gave her an injection, an IV bottle and charged her 20KD. She didn’t have any money left to buy the medicine they prescribed her, so she went home.

Since the three-month lockdown has ended, Khala has begun working in a couple of houses again, but is still not earning what she used to. She is wondering whether she should return to India, but also knows that possibilities to find work there are very limited. If she does leave - just until the situation improves - she wonders whether she will be allowed to return later. She is distraught and concerned about the future. As Khala puts it, “never in our life did we think we would have to suffer so much”.

In the clip above, Khala shares how the pandemic has impacted her family financially

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