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ASSIST News Service (ANS) - PO Box 609, Lake Forest, CA 92609-0609 USA
Visit our web site at: www.assistnews.net -- E-mail: assistnews@aol.com Saturday, December 29, 2012 London Calling The confusion of moving to the British capital to eventually help asylum seekers By Adrian Hawkes Special to ASSIST News Service
LONDON,
UK (ANS) -- First of all, may I wish you a
happy New Year! Secondly I would like to set the scene for second my column by
telling you a few facts about London and its boroughs; there are 33 boroughs
that make up London, though some don't use the name borough in the title for
example, Westminster is called the City of Westminster and Kingston is
Kingston upon Thames.
What
was very confusing for a newbie like me, as I was in 1974 is the fact that
most of the boroughs take their names from one of the districts in the
borough, coming from outside of London that really confused me.
I came
to London to with my wife Pauline and our family, to take charge of some
local church communities, one of which I was told was in Islington, so I went
to Islington and couldn't find anything that resembled the address, and that
was before Sat Navs.
When a
local looked at the address on my little bit of paper, I was told, "Oh,
that's in Finsbury Park." I then explained that I had been told that it
was in Islington. "Yes, it is," he replied. "Finsbury Park is
in Islington." I then exclaimed, "But I am in Islington!" The
patient local then explained that although I was in the district call
Islington, Finsbury Park is actually in the borough of Islington actually
quite a distance from the district of Islington. Very confusing! Now I live
in Wood Green in the borough of Haringey, but just down the road is Haringey,
also in the borough of Haringey.
I am
telling you all this so you will get a picture of how complicated it can be
for someone in London for the first time, and this affects my story.
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As I explained in my last column, like many big
western cities, London has lots of refugees and asylum seekers coming to the
city. I work in a company that seeks to help these strangers in our midst. I
get frustrated lots of times at the bad press that some of these hurting people
get, they are often referred to as "scroungers" and also as people
who are coming to "steal housing, jobs, and take advantage of our state
system." I have taken the trouble to listen to some of their stories, so
today I thought I would tell you Sue's story, not her real name you understand,
but the story is real nonetheless.
Sue spoke excellent English, so unlike many
refugees it was easy to listen to her story. I started by asking her how she
had travelled to London and she explained that she has come on an airplane.
"Which airport did you come to?" I asked because London has 5 major
airports. "I don't know," she said. "So did it have a train
station attached to it?" I asked, knowing which airports do and don't. I
thought that would help me narrow it down. She then told me all that had
happened; a man brought her through passport control and she had indeed gone
straight onto the underground train told me that she had come into Heathrow
airport.
She said the man put her onto the train, saying
that he just needed to quickly go and get a special ticket. As soon as he left,
the train pulled out and 16-year-old Sue was left alone. "What did you
then do?" I asked, to which replied, "I began to cry. In fact I cried
so much that I felt embarrassed so I decided I would get off the train, which I
did and went upstairs on the moving staircase, but I could not get out into the
street because I had no ticket. I began to cry again and a man in a uniform
asked me what was wrong. I explained I had lost my friend who had put me on the
train, and he said, 'Stand there and I will get you some help.' Very quickly a
lot of men arrived they had guns, big helmets and things over their faces and
they took me and put me in a big black van, where I cried even louder as they
locked the doors."
Why they needed a bunch of riot police to put this
slim built teenage girl into a police van I don't know. She said that when they
unloaded her into a police station she was still crying, but she said that the
policemen were "very nice" to her and kept trying to give her cups of
tea, and buy food for her to try stop her crying.
She continued, "In the end, after I had told
them my story, they said to me, 'We need to find you a bed for the night,"
and so they paid for me to stay in a hostel with lots of other girls, and they
said that tomorrow I was to wait there and a 'Mrs. Social Services' would come
and see me and help me. I waited all day but no one came. It became night and I
was going to go to bed again, but the hostel people said you were only paid
for, for one night so you cannot stay here. So I had to leave.
"I recognized it was not far from the police
station so I went back there. They said they could not help me any further so I
sat on the step of the station and cried and cried. In the end the police got
fed up and said they would pay for me to stay in the hostel another night and
they would make sure that 'Mrs. Social Services' came to see me the next day.
"The next day a lady came. I don't know what
her name was, and she told me her borough could not take any more people who
were like me, asylum seekers, but she said Haringey council probably would, and
then she gave me some money which she said was for bus fare and told me to go
to Haringey and they would help me. I think I was in the Hounslow area as
that's where I got off the train. The lady left me to find a bus, and it took
me all of the day to find my way to Haringey Social Services, and there they
said they would help me and phoned you up to come and get me."
I then asked Sue why she had come to the UK and how
come that she spoke such good English. "Well," she said, "my
mother died when I was born, but my father was very important, but I don't
really know what he did, but he sent me to the best school in Kigali [the
largest city in Rwanda].
"Then, one day, a group of men came to our
house and started shouting at my father and pushing him around. I was very
cross, but the servant came and told me that my father could look after himself
and that I needed to go to bed, which I did. When I got up my father was not
there and I have not seen him since that day. The servants said that I needed
to run away because, as one of them told me, 'Bad people have done bad things
to your father and they will come back for you.' I knew that I had an uncle in
the jungle so I went to his house. He and his wife took me in, but my uncle
then raped me and I did a silly thing -- I told my aunt. In my culture you
don't tell people things like that and my aunt was so angry with my uncle that
she hit him on the back of the head with a machete and they had to put him on a
motor bike and take him to hospital because he was so badly injured.
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"I
went to the hospital to see him, but when I got there I was told that my
uncle had died.
People started to say to me I must run away because, as one
of them said, 'It is your fault
that he has died and now the villagers will
kill you." I went back to the city to my house, but
it had been knocked
down and was just rubble. I wandered around all day until I met an old
school
friend who said I could sleep at her house where she was living with her
boyfriend.
So, for a few weeks, I stayed there, but one day, when my friend
was out, her boyfriend also raped me. This time I did not tell anyone I just
left. I remembered that in the next town my
father used to have a friend, so
I thought, 'Let me see if I can find him, maybe he can help
me."
It was
hard to listen to Sue's story, but she continued. "Fortunately, I found
my father's friend though when he saw me he was very afraid and he said, 'You
will cause me much danger, because I knew your father." He paid for me
to stay in a hotel and brought me food every day. He said he was making some
arraignments to get me out of danger and him also. After a couple
of weeks he
said I was to go to the next country and I would fly to another country where
I would be safe. That's when he introduced me to this man, who he said I
should call uncle,
he was the man that brought me to the UK and I lost him
when the train left. It was horrible; however, I am glad I found Haringey and
Phoenix Community Care."
Sue's
heartbreaking story is typical of many we hear almost daily as we seek to
help asylum seekers in one of London's boroughs.
Adrian
Hawkes is married to Pauline -- Dan Wooding was best man at their
wedding -- with three children, 10 grandchildren and two great grandchildren.
He is still part of the Rainbow Church North London which he used to lead and
he also works with Sri Lankan churches in France, Switzerland, Norway, Canada
and Sri Lanka, as well as a church in Norway. He helped to form Phoenix
Community Care Ltd, which looks after some 30+ unaccompanied minors, and
vulnerable adults in housing in North London; alongside his wife Pauline, he
established PCC Foster Care agency and recently launched London Training
Consortium Ltd., which trains refugees and asylum seekers with ESOL, IT, and
Literacy. He has also written various books including: "Leadership
and.," "Attracting Training: Releasing Youth," "The Jacob
Generation," "HELLO is that you God?", "Culture Clash,"
and his latest, but first, fiction book, "ICEJACKED."He can be
contacted by e-mail at: adrianhawkes@phoenixcommunity.co.uk&nb sp;
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The Houses of Parliament --
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