For the second night in a row, a group of Kenyan women have slept on mattresses outside the Kenyan consulate in Beirut, Lebanon on concrete pavements littered with plastic bottles. As night fell, they held up a Kenyan flag and chanted, “we want to go home,” throwing trash and rocks at the locked gate protecting the building entrance.
The women are domestic workers who have lost their jobs, many of whom are now homeless. They are calling on the Kenyan government to fly them home immediately.
On Monday morning, an estimated 30 Kenyan women – at least three with children – took to the streets to protest. Many of the women say they have either been let go or have not found work since the ammonium nitrate blast devastated Beirut last week, killing scores of people and injuring thousands. They now have nowhere to live, along with some 300,000 others.
