A Kenyan man has revealed how he saved a 21-year-old Kenyan woman who was unknowingly traveling to Iraq for work.
Speaking to Nairobi News through WhatsApp, the man said he met Shantel Nyaboke in a Turkish Airlines flight.
The man said the woman believed she was traveling to Qatar for greener pastures via Turkey.
However, the man, who was headed to the United States via Istanbul realized that her destination was different from where she thought she was traveling.
“I’m traveling to the United States via Istanbul, Turkey. I struck up a conversation with a girl carrying an East Africa passport. She looked lost so I asked whether she needed help,” the man, who concealed his identity, told Nairobi News.
The man noted that Nyaboke’s contract and boarding pass indicated that her final destination was Iraq.
Upon looking at her contract, he said he noticed a few things that did not add up. The contract did not state her salary, working hours or whether she would have off days.
He advised Nyaboke, who hails from Kisii County, against continuing with the journey that would probably turn her into a slave in the war tone Gulf nation.
“I took her to the Turkish Airlines help desk and they promised to get her a ticket back tonight (Monday). I gave her some Dollars for food and all the Kenyan Shillings I had on me for her to use when she gets back home,” the man said.
In an interview with Nairobi News after landing in Nairobi, Nyaboke said an agent told her that she was going to Qatar to work as a house help and only learned that she was traveling to Iraq after meeting a stranger in an Istanbul-bound flight.
“I did not know that I was heading to Iraq. I have been hearing about Iraq in the news and I never imagined that I would end up there,” she told Nairobi News.
He [the Good Samaritan] really assisted me and only God can reward him. I don’t know what would have happened to me,” she said.
Nyaboke has appealed to well-wishers to help her get a job.