A family in Mombasa is distressed after one of their kin who was working in Iraq went silent.
Elizabeth Nakhone Obanda, 38, left Kenya on February 16, 2019, after she was linked to the job by a recruiting agency based in the Coast region.
According to the family’s spokesperson Christopher Obanda, his sister went silent when the Taliban took over the Afghanistan government.
“My sister was recruited by one of the agents based in Mombasa. Unfortunately, we don’t know which company linked her to Iraq because she never disclosed much,” Obanda said, adding that all they knew was she was working as a house help.
He said that they were even unable to inform her 10-year-old daughter that the mother was missing. According to him, his sister is a talkative person and she always reached out to them until she went silent.
“She was actively in communication with my dad when she arrived in Iraq but all of a sudden she went silent leaving us with lots of questions,” Obanda said.
At one point she told the family that she could not communicate as often noting that they were not allowed to use phones or make frequent communication back home.
The family has constantly reached out to the phone number she was using to no avail.
The family says it reached out to the Iraq Embassy in Kenya but it was instead referred to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs however since they don’t know much about how she ended up in Iraq, it has been difficult to trace her.
“The major issue hindering us is that we did not have a clue of the recruiting agency and passport details. Currently, we are trying to reach out to some of the local-based agencies in Mombasa,” he said.
