Transcript: Work Abroad

MARY: We used to have hope in Zimbabwe, but every day we see things getting worse and worse and that can make us losing hope and we have suffered long enough. We need to things to change.

NARRATOR Mary is one of the many college educated Zimbabweans who are doing menial labor abroad -- instead of applying their skills back home.

MARY: I'm not satisfied to do house-maid because I'm a professional. I hold a diploma in business studies, but in my country I cannot get job. I specialized in accounting. I can manage a company. I can supervise. I can run my own business.

NARRATOR In the past few years, one in four Zimbabweans has left the country, like Mary. The money they send home amounts to an estimated 100 million dollars a year.

On her most recent trip, Mary has found a job cleaning the house of a well-to-do couple on the outskirts of Francistown.

Much of the wealth in Botswana is concentrated in a small upper class. For someone like Mary, that means plenty of domestic work is available.

MARY: When I'm working I think too much. But when I am working and when I am singing, I don't think too much. But when you are working and you are quiet, you tend to think of home. You tend not to like the job you are doing when you are cleaning the plates, but I'm not a specialist in cleaning plates and washing other people's clothes, no. So when I sing it covers all the kind of thinking, yes.