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