Safe – but still living in fear

Lifestyle –  Thousands of miles from home, people in Direct Provision are appreciative of what Ireland has done for them but deeply frustrated by restrictions that prevent them from cooking and working. Ciaran Tierney hears their story.

The fear in their voices and the look of anxiety in their faces was palpable. Fear of consequences, of being punished for speaking out, not only from the authorities here in Ireland but from criminal or political elements back home.

It took weeks for the Tribune to set up interviews with women living under the Direct Provision system in Galway.

They were worried that they might be identified or appear ungrateful, given that Ireland has taken them in and allowed them to escape poverty, oppression, or abuse in their own countries.

They are terrified that their families might be targeted back in Africa or that they would be punished if they are deported back home. Only two women were willing to talk, after six weeks of testing the waters.

In some cases they are seen as “traitors” just for leaving, in others they genuinely fear they will be killed or harmed if they set foot back in their home villages.

So the interviews took place in the relative anonymity of a Salthill pub on two weekday afternoons. Both women glanced over their shoulders from time to time, worried that anyone might see them speaking to a reporter.

One of them had an incredible, and harrowing, story to tell. Shola allowed a childhood friend to bring her daughter to Ireland 11 years ago, supposedly for a better education.

She never thought that her friend would try to cut her off from her own daughter or that she’d also end up in Ireland, after having her life threatened by the radical Islamic terrorists of Boko Haram.

She was shattered by the effort of putting on a brave face every day for her daughter, now living with her in a cramped former hotel room in Galway City. Tired of getting by on €19.10 per week, Shola can get very down as she waits for her asylum case to be processed.

When she needed to cancel our first interview, she didn’t even have the credit on her phone to send a text message. Two years after becoming an asylum-seeker, she felt she had lost some of the pride and dignity she had working as a pharmacist back in Nigeria.

The friend who helped Shola and her daughter escape Nigeria has threatened to kill her if she goes home, she said with tears in her eyes. And she has demanded €50,000 from her, knowing full well that Shola has no access to that kind of money.

A Christian, Shola took ill at home in Nigeria, after her friend would never let her talk to her daughter on the phone. Her elderly mother urged her to travel to the city of Maiduguri to pray, because she knew of a great pastor.

Shola was at a service in a Christian church when the terrorists from Boko Haram stormed in through the doors and murdered at least 25 people. Only three people survived.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.