The last time Jane Kiambi spoke to her daughter Jackline Muthoni in August last year, the 36-year-old was full of life and expressed a desire to come home this year.
The mother of two girls had gone through hardship trying to secure jobs in Saudi Arabia where she moved 10 years ago and was longing to travel back to the country and meet her children, she told her family.
Four months later, Ms Muthoni made a distress call and disclosed she had been ordered to surrender her travel documents and was being held in a deportation camp.
Speaking to journalists at her home in Kanyakine, Imenti South, Ms Kiambi said her daughter had promised to travel back this year only for the family to be hit by bad news.
“I had not spoken to her since then because she did not call and when we tried reaching her the phone was switched off. On Thursday my daughter (Caroline Kagwiria) told me she received bad news that Muthoni was no more,” said the mother of five, breaking into tears.
The family has now called on the government to help them establish whether their relative is alive or dead.
Ms Kagwiria said her cousin saw photos on Facebook and Whatsapp groups claiming Ms Muthoni was dead.
The message written in Kiswahili says Ms Muthoni’s body was reportedly in a mortuary in the Arab country although it does not specify the hospital where the body is preserved and calls on anybody receiving the message to share widely so that relatives are informed.
“I have been trying to establish the truth of the matter from her friends in Saudi Arabia but I have not succeeded because no one wants to be identified.
What I am receiving are messages that my sister is dead,” Ms Kagwiria said.
Ms Kiambi says she is the one who takes care of Ms Muthoni’s children, adding that she lost her husband in 2004 while her second and third-born sons who were working in Nairobi died in 2006 and 2017 respectively.
“I am used to these misfortunes and if Muthoni is dead it will be the will of God. There is nothing I can do because when she went there she was looking for a better life for her children,” Ms Kiambi said.
Speaking in a phone interview, Dr Shadrack Mwiti, the area MP said he had received the news and was trying to establish whether it was true.
“We have alerted the Foreign Affairs Ministry and the Embassy of Saudi Arabia officials and once we get full details we will inform the family,” Dr Mwiti told Nation .
The reports come in the wake of an outcry over the mistreatment of workers in Saudi Arabia which has seen dozens of Kenyans killed in the Arab country under mysterious circumstances.
Last month, Ms Diana Chepkemoi, a student at the Meru University of Science and Technology (MUST) who was working in Saudi Arabia was flown back home after she underwent torture in the hands of her employers.
