End of November 2006

End of November 2006

It is a windy, rainy day. Every time the door opens it blows back and a huddled figure, hood pulled tight around the face shuffles in with a windswept look of surprise.

What is there to follow up? A pregnant woman just arrived in the country was transferred from Dungavel to Yarlswood, a detention centre in England. She has been called to give her names of lawyers to try. Did we manage to get in touch with the woman who didn’t cross her name off the list yesterday? How do we know she wasn’t detained and is out safe from signing at the Home Office?

A man comes in wearing only denems, he is soaked. I switch the heater on and turn it towards him. He huddles up close to it. The door blows open, the door is pushed shut.

One woman is more anxious than usual.

“I went to the post office to get my money and I had signed as usual but there was no money. This isn’t my signing day, I’ve come to see what’s happenning. I’m scared, I’m shaking.”

She writes her name down and goes to the Home Office.

I sit and alphabetise some of the files. People come and go. A family who are early to sign come and sit on the sofa to wait. They have received a letter saying they must report to the consulate of another country. Probably to force them to get travel documents, but the wording is vague. There is no appointment time stated, only the opening hours and strong wording and a threatening tone. The mother of the family walks up to each of us in turn and offers a spicy fried patty which we each take from her hand and put in our mouths. A copy of the letter is faxed to the lawyer for advice on how to respond.

The woman who didn’t cross her name off yesterday is reached, she’s fine. She was in a rush to pick her children up from school and forgot to come back.

The roof starts leaking, we move the fax machine over and get a bucket to catch the drips.

The woman who was shaking comes back.

“How did it go?”

“There was a problem with my card but it should be fixed now. It is my baby’s birthday today and I have no money.”

I give her a bag and point to the back room where we keep the toys and clothes people donate. She leaves with a full bag and a smile.

Mid - November 2006

I arrive at the Unity office a little later than I planned. It is quiet. I tidy up the toys lying on the floor and organise the leaflet rack. It is a cold rainy day.

A man and a woman come in, it is their first time here, their faces show anxiety. They are given the forms to put their contact details on but are uncomfortable writing. I fill the forms out form them. They hand me their most recent letter from the home office. “Liable for detention” it says. They have been here 3 years. They don’t go into details as to why they came. “Politics”. I don’t press to know. I lift my head from looking at the form I am writing on and past the couple I see a smiling face I recognise. It’s the man I took to the hospital. I smile back. The couple have to go, it is their time to sign in at the home office.

I talk with the man. He has somewhere to stay but he still hasn’t been able to see a doctor. The only place he is told to go is Accident and Emergency and we already tried that and it isn’t an accident or an emergency although it could become an emergency if it is not dealt with. Someone makes a few phonecalls. He is not entitled to see a doctor. It is at the discretion of the practices. We find him some addresses to try and he heads off.

People come and sign their name. Men on their own, women on their own, families, women with push chairs. They go to the home office and then come back and cross their names off the list so we know that they are out.

“Safe for now”, says a woman with 2 children on her return.

Another woman with 2 children about 3 years and 18 months comes in. She starts talking to me very quickly. Her English is perfect but I am still finding it hard to understand her. Slow down. Her lawyer will phone. She isn’t going to sign she is going for a special interview and she wants to leave her children at Unity. Fine. The younger one is asleep in the push chair. The older girl is quiet with cheeky eyes.

Another woman this time with 3 kids. Another pushchair. She is early for signing so they come in to wait for their time. The children start playing. The office is small and there is a lot of walking around and over toys, kids and pushchairs. She says “I’ve been here 3 years if I couldn’t stay why they no tell me this when I arrive? Why?” The baby starts crying and then the girl starts crying. I hold the baby while his mother sorts out the bags and the other kids and then after a bit of backing the pushchairs in and out of the door into the rain they are off with a nod and a thank you. I sit on the sofa beside the litle girl who is still crying, put some dolls around her and ask her if she wants a biscuit. She says no but takes it.

It is quiet for a moment. I go and wash the mugs and the thermos flasks that had hot coffee in them, drunk at a vigil outside the home office.

The girl starts playing with her little sister’s balloon. She throws it at me with a naughty grin, she throws it in the air, her arms up high. She chases it around the office. Her little sister has woken up, I take her out of the pushchair, she reaches over me for some toys. Their mother comes back. I breathe a small sigh of relief. She was gone quite a while, and I wasn’t sure what to do with the kids next if she didn’t come back! They get ready and go to leave. The woman says, “When I was in Dungavel you at Unity helped me so much, thank you, thank you.”

The steady flow of people coming and going doesn’t stop. Sometimes they stop to talk. Often they put some coins in the collecting tin by the door, sometimes it is just a nod in and a nod out.

One woman asks a question. “How can I get permission to work? I have been volunteering as a receptionist and they are turning it into a job in January and they want me to apply for the job. I was told that I am eligible to apply for the right to work and my lawyer applied in April but still I haven’t heard anything.” I have no advice to give her.

The lawyer of the woman who left her kids with us while she went for her interview called. “Is she out safe? How long was she in there? I couldn’t reach her on her mobile so I was concerned. Okay they’re out, that’s good.”

A man comes in for the first time. He has been in the country for four years. The letter he shows me from the home office again says that he is liable to be detained. There is someone else there who speaks his language. Translating back and forth to find out his details, a bit of his story. Darfur again.

I update a woman’s details. Get the names of her 3 children. Why is she here, why has she been here for the last 4 years and now has to register at the home office every week? There was family pressure to perform female genital mutilation on her daughters. She took them away.

A middle aged couple come in with warm homemade bhajis and pakora. They are welcome and delicious.

A worried family. The girl who looks about 12 does the translating for her mother. “Has there been a fax?” No. I’m handed a phone to speak to a man, I call the lawyer, they’ll send the fax. The woman paces as we wait for the fax. She looks in pain, she walks like her hips are painful. The papers arrive, they take them to the home office.

While this is going on there is competition for the phone line. A teenager is calling for a friend who is in detention but they are not sure where. When she isn’t on the phone she is chatting about her Highers. “Have you done higher maths?”, she asks someone else, “ How did you find it?”

The man who went looking for a doctor comes back. He has not managed to find one. He said, they said that he had somewhere to stay and was not going hungry and not to worry. He said, he said, “I’m worried, money means nothing to me, I need my health.” And they said that they couldn’t help him and he talked some more to them with philosophy. “I think I made trouble there, Anna.” I laugh, make him a coffee, he huddles himself besidet the heater with paper and pen.

I get on the phone. I try another practice. Do you take asylum seekers? “Oh yes.” Can you help? He is registered but his identity card hasn’t come through yet and he is in temporary accommodation. “Oh, we only take asylum seekers housed in our area.” I press the point. She is fractious.

“It’s not our responsibility!”

“Well, whose responsibility is it?”

She switches to being gracious and polite and there is a lot of rustling. I am given a name and a number. I call. What is the situation? She doesn’t know anything about him. He is not officially entitled to anything but she could get him a temporary GP as long as she has the induction papers. Induction papers? I find out where these are and phone.

“We’ve already dealt with this man. We sent his papers to the woman last Tuesday.”

But I just spoke to the very same woman and she knows nothing about him.

“We’ll fax the papers again today.”

All this time the man is sitting and drawing. He is an embroiderer. Used sewing machines at home. He comes and shows us his work pen on paper. Beautiful, intricate, symmetrical patterns. He has written under it, “Man is not God, Life is War, Good Luck Unity, One Love.”

www.unitycentreglasgow.org

Early November 2006

It’s cold outside. I tuck my head down, walk into the Unity office, straight past the man sitting on the corner of the sofa and dump my bag in the corner.

“She doesn’t recognise me”, the man says. I spin around to look and I do remember him. It is the man from Sudan that I took to the hospital last week.

“What’s my name?” he says. I call him by his name and he is satisfied that I do remember.

He went to Liverpool on the bus as instructed by the immigration officials via the Scottish Refugee Council but once at the gates there he was refused entry. They said that he didn’t have the right papers and that they had to know that he was coming to let him in. He slept in the bus station in Liverpool that night and then made his way back to Glasgow with help from charity organisations.

Back at square one he was given another appointment at the refugee council and set off on his own this time. He had been trying to do the right thing. He is not inside the system nor outside it. He still must report to the Home Office to say that he is in the country but he is not entitled to any support or accommodation nor does he have the right to work. He said that he would come back with any papers he was given to show us.

There is a new volunteer at Unity today. I listen while things are explained, some I know, some I don’t. There is a flurry of activity when someone doesn’t come back from signing at the Home Office. Has she been detained or has she just forgotten to come back and sign out at Unity?

There is a woman sitting at the desk thinking and writing. I am asked to work with her and write her story for a potential press release. I am handed her file and I read it as she sits opposite me. She used to live in Nigeria. Her sister was subject to extreme violence and she went to help her leaving her 2 year old daughter with her father. When she got back from her sister the house had been ransacked and her family had disappeared. She escaped with her sister and claimed asylum in the UK. She has been living in Glasgow since 2002. Her sister was granted asylum and can stay but she wasn’t.

In April of this year she got a phonecall that she didn’t believe saying that her daughter was in the country. She still thought that it was a sick joke until the immigration officials visited her and started asking her questions about her daughter. She started believing then that her daughter was in the country. She asked and asked to be put in touch with her. Friends, the local MP, lawyers pushed to find out where the daughter was but received no answers. 9 months later she received a letter to say that her daughter was in the care of social services in England and was with a foster family. As soon as she opened the letter she phoned the social services department mentioned to be told that her daughter had been flown back to Nigeria the day before. She still has had no contact with her daughter and doesn’t know into whose care she was placed in Nigeria.

I look at the woman and I am lost for words. I ask her to show me what she has written to add to this information. She starts to read it out. Her voice soon breaks and her eyes fill with tears. I take the paper from her. It’s okay, I can read it.

I draft a press release and we wait for her lawyer to fax papers she needs to sign. There are children playing in the small office. I watch the woman watching them.

www.unitycentreglasgow.org

End of October 2006

End of October 2006

I arrive in the morning for a full day at Unity. I am given a file to look at. It is the file of a family who were taken from their home yesterday morning at dawn. They were taken in a van to Dungavel detention centre. I phone Dungavel to find out the name and number of their lawyer. We want to find out what the lawyer is doing to stop them being put on the flight they are registered for on Friday. Is there anything we can do to help keep them here?

It is the day that an old friend of mine comes to sign. I have known him for more than 3 years. We chat and laugh about good times past. We sit in silence thinking about the hard times. Once he left I looked through the filing cabinets and got to know the paper work of the office a bit better.

A lady comes and stands for a while. “She always looks upset but she never wants to talk”, says another.

A man comes in obviously in pain. He perches on the arm of the sofa, he’s been to the refugee council and the home office already today. Now he is with us. He wants to go to the hospital. I will take him. While waiting for the taxi someone else fills me in a bit – he’s not been here very long, maybe a month, he is destitute, he has no family.

He struggles to the car and we get to accident and emergency. He slumps on the chairs, lying down as soon as we get there. I prise the piece of paper out from his hand. It is a letter which is the only documentation he has. I go the counter and wait for the boy in front of me to reschedule his appointment for the check up on his broken arm. Accident and emergency, shares a reception with orthopaedic outpatients.

Once alerted to his presence a nurse comes out immediately and takes him through a set of double doors. When roused he can walk but as soon as he is left alone he slumps, eyes closed. I wait behind and give what details I know, his name , the date of birth given on the piece of paper I took. Then I am soon called through as well. They ask me if I know what is wrong, I say I don’t know. He only has a little English and they are having trouble communicating, they call for an interpreter. The nurse says there is nothing immediate and urgent, his heart and blood pressure and whatever else they are able to check are fine. He complains of pain down his right side. But that’s not what I notice most. I notice just how tired he is. On the bed he is slightly curled. There is a blanket folded loosely over his legs. I unfold it and tuck it round him placing some under his head which is resting on the metal side to the bed. And he is shivering. His whole body is shivering, spasming, quaking. Waves and waves of it coming and going. I stand with him, I put my hand on his head. He doesn’t even seem to notice me. I sit beside him for a time. The tremors, on and on. I witness and I am with.

A doctor comes in, introduces himself and goes to examine the man. Every time he pokes at the man’s right side, the man curls up and pushes the doctor away. This annoys the doctor. I had moved the back of the bed down so that the man could be more comfortable and rest but for examination the doctor needed it back up. He asks the man quickly in loud English to move up the bed. Then he says,

“Are you gonna behave? Are ye gonnae act proper? Sit up on the bed! I can’t examine you properly like that!”

I immediately feel my feet sink into the ground to give me the strength to stay tall. How dare he talk to this man like that. He knows nothing about him. The doctor asks him again more slowly. I help the man move up the bed.

“You see he’s doing it now”, he says as an aside to me, colluding in our knowingness about the uncooperative patient. I’m having none of it. I continue to make the man as comfortable as I can.

A second doctor comes in. They are both bemused. As the man lies between us trembling they tell me how nothing medical is wrong with him. Oh but something is so wrong. They ask me what I know. I suspect he has been through trauma, to me what he is going through looks like the release of shock. I know he has been sleeping in the station too, has nowhere to go.

The interpreter joins us in the cublicle, a stocky man with grey hair. We learn some more. The man is from Darfur in Sudan. His parents were murdered before his eyes, he has been beaten (mainly on his right side and about the head). He wants to get well. He is not htinking of doing himself harm.

“There is nothing wrong with him that would cause him pain”, the second doctor says, “unless it is in his head.”

Or in his heart I think. The pain of it. The second doctor is trying to help.

“Surely the organisation that deals with asylum matters has a responsibility to....”

I just look straight at him.

“Surely they do,” I say.

The man is back up , the doctors give him a box of paracetemol.

And as we are leaving the second doctor says,

“isn’t there somewhere you could take him to, where he could maybe get some counselling or something.”

I think down the line of priorities and that step seems a long way off even if it were available. I don’t answer and just look at him again. As we are walking away the first doctor, the one who asked him to move up the bed catches my arm so that I am spun round to face him.

“Thank you”, he says with a sincerety that shocks me. I am not sure what I have done. Taken a difficult situation off their hands? I know there is nothing they can do for the man.

We go to the city centre by taxi, under the clyde and along the expressway. At the refugee council the man goes to take the five pounds he has from his pocket to pay for theh taxi. No. I cover it. The waiting room is full of toys on the floor. And the cheery radio station is on loud. Happy pop tunes. Some other people waiting. One woman comes to see us, she takes us down a corridor to the interview rooms. They are all full. We stand in the corridor for a while and then we are shown back to the waiting area. The man has stopped shivering, he complains about his back. He crouches in on himself whenever he is left.

This time a man with a shirt and tie takes us through to another room. He talks quickly, he has an accent my ears are not tuned to. I am having difficulty keeping up with what he is saying. I know there is no hope for the man to be catching it all. Have you applied for asylum, which forms have you filled in, have you been screened, what did the police say, when was that? A colleague is called for interpretation over the phone.

This goes on for a while. I am bored, I don’t like small offices. I am wondering what is going to happen. I want to make sure the man has somewhere to go, at least for tonight but what if we can’t sort it out, what will I do? I have planned to see friends tonight, would I just leave him to go back to sleep in the station nothing resolved, but I said I’d cook for my friends and that is... I can see the refugee council worker looking at the clock a lot too. Wondering when he can get home. It’s not that we don’t care, it’s just that, well, you know, we have our lives to life. I couldn’t take him home, I don’t know him, he might be dangerous. I want to get away, to leave this situation, the care of the man, in somebody else’s hands.

What has been established is that the man has been in the country for a couple of months and he is known to the immigration authorities. He has the piece of paper that he was clutching with his registration number. And he had to report to the Home Office building in Brand Street today, which he did. But despite all that he is not fully in the system. He needs to be “screened”. This doesn’t happen in Glasgow except in exceptional circumstances (8 month pregnant women for example) because the staff in Glasgow are trained more for removals. There are more screening staff based in Liverpool. The man will have to go to Liverpool, but he is reluctant. He doesn’t want to but he is not given a choice about it. We leave the refugee council. The man has been given £15 cash for food and a ticket for the 11pm bus to Liverpool. He didn’t want to go tonight, he wanted to leave it a day to go and see the people he had met at the mosque. But the ticket had already been printed, he has 6 hours more in Glasgow. He accepts.

As we leave the office he turns to me and speaks directly for the first time.

“Anna, why they go send me away.”

My heart melts, I feel like for the first time I know who he is and that he is communicating with me. He says,

“Thank you, thank you so much, God bless you.”

I am moved. I deeply regret the thoughts of flight that I had had in the office and am so glad that I have seen this through. The man has come alive for me. He tells me how he hasn’t seen his wife and 2 children for 2 years and he is looking for them. He thinks they are in Glasgow, “How do you know?” he just taps his head. Hence the reluctance to go to Liverpool. And the fear, the strongest words yet,

“They no send me back to Sudan, I will be killed, I no go back.”

He says he will come back to Glasgow the next day, I know that this is deeply unlikely if not impossible but say nothing. I take the name of his wife and children and promise to keep a record of this at Unity. I give him the phone number and tell him to call. Keep in touch, let us know how he is getting on.

We walk into town together. He is going to the mosque to say goodbye to the people he has met there. I am going to the train station to catch a train and go and see my friends. I wonder how we will part. He breaks away first, he has things to do. We take each others right hand. We touch right cheek to right cheek. We touch left cheek to left cheek. We let go our hands. I watch him walk under the arch of central station.

Anna’s Unity Diary

Start of October 2006


My first day at Unity. The office is small and it smells of hard work. There are toys on the floor, a battered sofa in the corner, cups of tea on the filing cabinet. On the desk by the door is a little notebook. This is the focus of the days events. People come and people go. They sign their name in the book, they leave and usually they come back and cross their names off the list. Their names in the book isn’t all they leave. There is a heartwarming display of trust. People I have never met, give me their handbags, their mobile phones, their children to look after for the time that it takes them to go to the home office to sign in. They are scared. Scared these things will be taken from them there– their phones, their belongings, theit children. Scared too that they might be taken. That is why they sign in the Unity book first. If they don’t come back we will know. Someone will know they are in trouble. If you are in trouble, you really want a friend to know about it. That’s what friends are for. That’s when you know who your friends are.

One woman came in distressed. On the edge of tears, her voice failing her. She sat down and brought out the letters she had been sent. One was a normal routine letter – routine, like having the ability to work taken away and being made to cross the city every week to enter a heavily guarded building to sign your name on a piece of paper to prove that you haven’t run away is normal. But in this twisted state of affairs hope means that today nothing dramatic will happen and the status quo will be prolonged a little longer.

So, she has this one normal letter which noted that she signed in last week, which she did, and another letter which arrived at the same time telling her that she didn’t sign in (but she did) and saying that she was now liable for immediate detention. They were telling her that at any moment she may be picked up and taken to prison. Can I just restate her position. No crime has been committed. She asked if she could seek refuge in this country, years have passed of her living here with her family and now she is sitting in front of me breathing fast and shallow in a state of pure panic because she has a letter telling her that her and her whole family may well be taken to prison at any moment. For asking for a place of safety because they had none.

So I go with the woman and her 2 letters to the Home Office building on Brand Street and there are 2 men at the gate. The gates are shut, locked. With each person who comes to the gate it is open they are let through and then it is shut behind them. We go through the gates and I explain the situation. The first man is friendly, he has a smile on his face, is he trying to be helpful? How does he view his job? We are not allowed ins but he takes the letters inside to find out what’s going on. I wait with the woman. She doesn’t stop talking, do you think it will be alright? Where has he gone? What does it mean? The man left by the gate asserts his authority.

“Can you move over please?”

There is nobody else there in a wide courtyard space. We meaninglessly shuffle a bit to the side and continue talking ignoring his presence.

The other man comes back with the letters. He confirms that she was there the time before to sign (she knew that) and that the other letter was a mistake (she didn’t know that) and she was in no immediate danger of going to prison (for the crime of asking for a place of safety) and that was that. She wouldn’t quite believe him. Asked him again. He told her again. Her face pleaded with his, reassure me. He put his hand on his heart and said I promise you that this letter wa sa mistake, just come as normal next week. Normal.

Walking back she talks of the fear. She talks of moving the kids around friends and families so that nobody is sleeping in their own home just incase the immigration officials come in the night. Nightly uprooting after the big uprooting.

At last she smiles and I breathe a sigh of relief. She thanks us and leaves.

In comes another woman with her husband. She is wound up and in full flow. Why, why, why do I have to go the post office to get hand outs of money, I hate it I hate it, I don’t need this money, I am a french teacher I can work (but she can’t) my husband is an engineer, we could do things but this, this...

And the people keep coming, kids arrive, play with the toys then are picked up again when their parents are finished. The sign in at Unity, they sign in at the Home Office, they sign out of Unity. He signs in at Unity, he signs at the Home Office, he signs out at Unity. She signs in at Unity, she signs at the Home Office, she signs out at Unity. All day. Every day.