As Hellen Nyaboke and her family tried desperately to flee attackers on the Kenyan tea estate where she lived and worked, her husband Kenneth Mayenga was killed with a machete. One of her sons was beaten to death. Stricken by terror that she would be next, she hid among the tea bushes.

Nyaboke has spent half her life working for one of the world’s largest consumer goods groups, Unilever. But after the violence, fuelled by ethnic tensions, broke out amid a disputed election in 2007, she says the company did little to help.

Nyaboke says she received Ks12,000 (￡78) in compensation after the attacks, and with the help of the company, she and other survivors fled to Kisii County more than 40 miles away. But she believes she should have received more after losing two family members and enduring six months without pay after the violence.