Kirubiel Abraha

Kirubiel Abraha was born in Eritrea in 1965 and came to London in 1991.  He talks about how the process of applying for asylum made everything in his life seem very temporary, and about working in fast food restaurants.

Listen to Kirubiel (mp3, 1mb)

Transcript

'So the process went on for three years, and after three years I have to go through court and prove myself, that I’m a genuine refugee. So for me that was the worst part of it.  I mean… it really had an effect on me because I couldn’t have any thoughts for long term. Everything I did was for short term.  Because I don’t know what’s going to happen next…

'Everything was on temporary basis, because I don’t know how long it is going to take. Whether they going to accept me… You know, you can see that if you don’t have a long term plan, nothing serious can be done. I can’t build on my career, I can’t go to the right courses, the courses have to be short, yeah.  So for three years my life was on hold, you can say… 

'When I arrived here, all the experience I had was in teaching and military service. I didn’t have enough qualification to be a teacher here, so teaching here is out of the question. I didn’t have any other experience, so when I looked in the employment section of any newspaper, I couldn’t find anything that I can do.

'Obviously I was started studying in the university and I was hoping after five or four years I would be able to do something, but in the meantime I have to start somewhere so I looked at any manual jobs. And as you can imagine it was not easy to find any manual jobs, because you need a reference. And I came from Eritrea, nobody can give me reference. 

'So in desperation I went to McDonalds. I kept looking at every McDonald’s but this particular McDonald offered me a part time job, without any reference. I told them where I came from, what I’m doing at the moment, I couldn’t give them any reference. They gave me the chance, and I was grateful for that. I worked with them part time for almost a year, and that reference helped me to go to work in another Burger King restaurant in Victoria.

'I could have gone further in my career working there, because they were offering me to management training courses like that.  But obviously I already was studying so I couldn’t go to any further courses, so I have to leave that and start mini cabbing because mainly I needed money to pay my education as well as my bills… 

'I did social sciences… And then I went on further to do Applied Statistics as a Masters, and I graduated in Applied Statistics in 2001.'

Copyright Evelyn Oldfield Unit