What a strange and frightening build up to Christmas. Time was we’d be busy shopping, arranging to meet each other for a coffee or something stronger, office parties in full swing – happiness and joy and the anticipation of Christmas Eve perhaps a service giving thanks for the real meaning of Christmas and trying to get excited children to bed so you can prepare for family meal and fun the next day and last thing at night creep into bedrooms to leave Santa’s presents.
I remember so well waking early on Christmas morning and seeing the neck of a guitar sticking out of the pillowcase – just what I wanted more than anything else in the world. I turned over, snuggled up and waited until daylight to get up and have a go. My eleven year old self couldn’t wait, there was enough light to take out my wish and strum the strings. Can you imagine my shock to discover it was in fact a hockey stick! I could have been another Suzie Quartro – I wasn’t even very keen on hockey.
The way it was. There will still be fun and excitement, last minute shopping not only for presents but for essentials as once lock down hits on Boxing Day everything will change. The figures of covid illness are staggering, deaths so very sad and the long term ill effects frightening. Most people are sensible and follow the rules but who knows the minute it might strike. I wonder every morning will this be the day. Then I talk to someone who says, don’t be silly. But it’s not silly, at the moment it’s always there at the back of your mind, hovering.
I’m more than thankful to the supermarkets and their home delivery service and the pleasant drivers who deliver. The postman who keeps coming to the door bringing news from family and friends is invaluable, the paper man who keeps delivering, the men who empty the bins and Tom who washes out the black bin every other week. All those who keep up the good work, council workers from all over the country – thank you.
Of course thank you to all those working in shops and stores and especially within hospitality, your working lives are very unpredictable at the moment, I hope you get through the next six weeks and then life will pick up and work will be resumed and the public will support you. And what of the thousands who work in and around hospitals, ambulance workers and care home staff this coming Christmas time. It’s easy to slip into despondency or worse but be sure we know something of what you’re going through and we appreciate you and all you are doing under dreadfully stressful conditions. I hope you will get some respite before long and be properly paid very soon.
Many of those working in the health service have come here from their homes in other parts of the world. They are dedicated and must surely be missing their families back home.
I can’t use names because people are afraid to say anything that will threaten their families so I’ll refer to her as J. She lived in Iran with her husband and 14 year old son. They were a happy family but there was a problem, an unsurmountable problem. As a member of the gentle Baha’i faith she lived in grave danger of persecution. She worshiped privately but her neighbours found out and reported her. Before she could be imprisoned she was spirited out of the country and eventually, after a deeply distressing journey, she arrived in Northern Ireland. J has left behind her entire family, her friends and most importantly, husband and her son. Can you imagine the pain. Hopefully some day they will be united, until then she is absorbed into the Baha’i community in Belfast.
You’d have to be in a desperate situation to pay vast sums of money to flee through a variety of countries, risk violence, rape, rat infested, overcrowded camps, forced to watch your partner or your child being raped and murdered and then ending with the perilous journey in a small boat across the English Channel.
Briefly, an asylum seeker is someone who leaves their own country often for political reasons or because of war and who travels to another country hoping that the government will protect them and allow them to live there. Once they submit an application they have a legal right to stay in the country until the Home Office decides whether to grant them asylum.
A refugee is someone who has already proven to the Home Office that they would be at risk if they returned to their home country and is therefore granted leave to remain .
A migrant is someone who moves from one place to another in order to find work or better living conditions.
Not easy.
Being an asylum seeker involves great fear and hardship, children so frightened, women afraid, often pregnant so what happens then; men trying to keep the family together and find the money for their escape. Of those who have arrived in NI it’s been one traumatic event after another, escaping from a ife of conflict into a cauldron of confusion, vicious opposition, a new set of religious values, often settling into a housing estate a concept they are not used to but accept. Add to that the language barrier, a new climate, the precarious work situation, forms and interviews to be tackled and as one woman told me: “trying to understand people – you all speak so quickly.”
You can’t blame any of them wanting out of here and a sizeable number have left to settle in England. Others, however, remain like the family who didn’t want to live in a city and were offered a home in Letterkenny. They were welcomed. The husband opened a shop, their sons integrated well and are now at university. A success story.
International Migrants Day fell on Friday 18th December, Declan Henry’s book ‘Young Refugees and Asylum Seekers’ is a timely publication and invaluable to those who study the worldwide situation. The author is a qualified social worker of vast experience.
“I came to know and respect many young refugees and asylum seekers and to hear of their suffering and endurance is sometimes beyond our capacity to understand.”
A chapter on emotional distress includes a teenager being bombarded with news of Covid 19, the death toll constantly reminding him of the dead family and friends he’s left behind in war torn Iraq. Although Declan writes mainly about young people what he has uncovered is common to all ages no matter what country they come from. He goes into detail of what is required of the person seeking refuge and the reaction of the authorities, not always sympathetic.
In his research Declan, himself from Ireland, has found that this is a welcoming country although there are downsides, high cost of living, being used as cheap labour and forced into prostitution.
Fresh in people’s minds is the tragedy last October when 39 Vietnamese nationals were found dead in a trailer. Their families had sold the farms and borrowed money to pay smugglers to take their sons and daughters to a place of safety and a better life. Over 20,000 men, women and children are presumed drowned in the Mediterranean since 2014. For an asylum seeker the journey to safety is torturous often witnessing family members being raped or murdered.
THERE IS HELP
The Northern Ireland Community of Refugees and Asylum Seekers (NICRAS) is the only refugee led organisationthat represents the interests of the refugee community.
NICRAS Aims To:
- Support the integration process of refugees and asylum seekers into local communities throughout Northern Ireland.
- Raise awareness of the issues, problems and difficulties faced by refugees and asylum seekers.
- Inform members of relevant changes to immigration policy and legislation
- Organise social and recreational events.
- Respond to the changing needs of its members.
- Advocate for improved circumstances of asylum seekers and refugees.
Their Covid-19 Response is a partnership project with Homeplus, South Belfast Roundtable, South Belfast Foodbank, Embrace and Storehouse, organisations who have coordinated to deliver food supplies to the refugee and asylum seeker community in Belfast.
Contact: info@nicras.org.uk or telephone 028 90 246699
For Declan Henry’s book go to www.criticalpublishing.com
This time next week Christmas Day will be over and a New Year looms. Let’s hope the faith we have put in a vaccine will be fulfilled and a new dawn is close. It seems inappropriate to wish you a happy Christmas but for those few hours on Friday there will be some fun for most people and children deserve adults to make a happy time for them.
Here’s a song for the family.
A you’re adorable B you’re so beautiful C you’re a cutie full of charms.
D you’re delightful and E you’re exciting and F you’re a feather in my arms.
G you look good to me, H you’re so heavenly, I you’re the one I idolize.
J we’re like Jack and Jill, K you’re so kissable, L is the love light in your eyes.
MNOP I could go on all day, QRST alphabetically speaking you’re OK.
U made my life complete, V means you’re very sweet, WXYZ.
It’s fun to wander through the alphabet with you to tell you what you mean to me.
(Z is pronounced Zee by the way to rhyme with ‘me’.
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY!
