Beleyu Muluneh

Beleyu Muluneh was born in Ethiopia in 1959 and came to London, after living in Saudi Arabia, in 1980. She describes how she responded when a woman criticised her for wanting to return to Ethiopia when she retires.

Listen to Beleyu (in Amharic, mp3, 533kb)

Transcript

Read transcript in Amharic (pdf 29kb)

'One day when I was chatting with friends, I told them that my plan for the future was to go to Ethiopia to retire. One English woman got very angry with what I said and asked why, after taking our jobs for such a long time, I wanted to go to Ethiopia.

'I answered her question by saying, "I have learned to work and live a decent life here, but I have not taken anything from this country and I have been paying tax for the whole of my working life. When I go home to retire I will go when I am old and not working age. I spent the years of my prime here, what does it matter if I go there to retire?"

'So what you understand from what the lady said to me is that people do not take into consideration what we contribute to this country. They think every immigrant is a sponger and unproductive. They do not see us as part of the workforce.'

Copyright Evelyn Oldfield Unit