Broke Kenyans fly back home from diaspora to isolation

When Eunice Kalekye got news that there was a flight to repatriate Kenyans from China, it was a bittersweet moment.

She had nothing. Not even the Sh75,000 that she needed to take the chartered Kenya Airways to bring them home, yet she had been praying for the opportunity to come home.

She desperately reached out to her friends and finally got a loan to book the flight. She had gone to China to look for work, and had only stayed for a few months before the virus took hold and the country was put on lockdown. Jobless and alone, Kalekye found herself tossed among friends to get accommodation.

“I longed to come home, but there was no flight. I had used up the little savings I had. I have been living with no money since early this year,” she says.

In a few hours, the plane carrying Kenyans from China will land, and in it, will be several jobless Kenyans returning with hopelessness and uncertainty of what the future holds.

“We are happy to be coming home. We got a letter that we will have to pay for quarantine, yet I had to take a loan to get on the flight. Many Kenyans on that flight are coming with nothing but broken dreams,” she says.

There are still many more who have chosen to stay in China, saying they are still trying to raise money. Despite 183 Kenyans registering for the flight, only a few had paid for it.

The flight that was to leave India yesterday evening was booked to capacity a few hours after Kenya Airways announced that there will be a chartered flight from Mumbai. In it were several patients and relatives who had gone to India for medical care. They decried the high cost of the flights, despite Kenya’s High Commissioner in New Delhi, Willy Bett, insisting that the flight is not an evacuation or repatriation, but facilitation for Kenyans to come home.

“I took my daughter for treatment, and we had a fundraising for medical care. The extended stay meant that I spent more than anticipated. My family in Kenya had a hard time trying to fundraise for more because we mostly depended on church donations but churches are closed,” said one of the passengers who will be coming home on the Mumbai flight.

Most of the returnees say they had spent most of their savings wading through the joblessness and lockdown. They are hoping for a start over and praying for normalcy when they get out of quarantine facilities.