"Me and my husband had good jobs in Uganda and a nice house with four bedrooms and a compound. I had money in my country. That is not why I came here" - Mary, destitute asylum seeker.
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I picked Mary out from the crowds of people gathered in the gardens where we arranged to meet without knowing what she looked like or where she would be. There was something about her that was different to the swarms of lively, animated people around her. She stared straight ahead, with a look of bewilderment and loss fixed upon her face, in only a way somebody can when they have no idea of what their future will bring.
"I've been here for some time," Mary tells me. "Watching these happy people and you know I started to cry. Can you believe that?" I can believe it and in fact I wonder how some of my other friends who are living like Mary don't breakdown in despair at a system that has refused them sanctuary, branded them liars and forced them to live in appalling situations in order to survive.
Mary looks somehow older than her 42 years, but then one might expect that she would having spent the last three years of her life living destitute, in fear of being snatched by the authorities and swept away to the country that she came here to escape from and especially, most especially, having not seen or heard from the person she loves in more than five years.
A life interrupted
Mary and her husband were working as pharmacists in Uganda when men working for the government raided their business and took them captive; beating them both daily and subjecting Mary to multiple and repeated rapes. Upon their release Mary's injuries to her stomach, where she had been repeatedly kicked, were so severe that she needed an immediate operation. When the men raided their property for a second time, accusing her and her husband of supplying medicines to Congolese rebels, a neighbour phoned Mary and advised her to get as far away as possible.
Her husband was in Western Uganda at the time of the second raid, but fearing for her life she arranged for a friend to take her across the border into Kenya. "From there things got progressively worse for me," she says. "The Kenyan government was deporting Ugandans back to Uganda and I was scared. My friend arranged for me to leave Kenya, but I had no idea where I would be going."
A Christmas like no other
On Christmas Eve in 2003 Mary arrived in the UK and was advised by a friend to explain to the authorities what had happened to her and to claim asylum. "I had never known a Christmas like it," she tells me. "I was sent to Liverpool to claim asylum, but when I arrived there the offices had closed for Christmas. I spent four days in a room alone, thinking to myself ‘What is England? Nobody talks to you. All you can do is sleep and that is it.'"
Mary was given temporary accommodation and issued with a GP, who, upon seeing the injuries that she had sustained to her stomach, and that were still bleeding, referred her to hospital for an operation. In May 2004 she was interviewed by the Home Office and asked about the medical treatment that she had received.
"I had a medical report that showed my injuries were consistent with torture and the Medical Foundation (for the care of victims of torture) had supported my story, but the judge ruled that my injuries could have been acquired in another way and did not believe that I was at threat of persecution if I was returned home."
Living destitute
It has been three years since Mary's last appeal rights were exhausted and since then she has relied on the goodwill of friends and local support organisations to help her to get by. "My life is terrible," she says weeping. "I sleep on a friend's sofa, but in the past I have slept on the streets. What choice do I have? When you hear the police sirens you are afraid. It is terrible, so terrible. Sometimes I just walk around like a dead body. When it gets to night I wonder whether I will survive to the next morning. I am thankful that I have survived another day, but I wonder what tomorrow will bring for me. I know of women who are forced to sleep with men in order to have somewhere to go at night."
As a refused asylum seeker, Mary finds herself without any financial support or accommodation. She is one of the tens of thousands of people estimated to be living destitute in the UK. Aside from the support that she receives from friends, many of whom know only too well that they might also end up in the same position as her, she goes to the Red Cross every week and receives a handout of basic food supplies and £3.70 for her travel expenses.
"If I walk there and back I can save the £3.70," she says. "See this skirt I am wearing? I rummaged around for it and paid 80p. People think ‘Oh these asylum seekers, they have nothing where they are from so they should be grateful.' But it is not true. Me and my husband had good jobs in Uganda and a nice house with four bedrooms and a compound. I had money in my country. That is not why I came here."
The future looks desperately uncertain for Mary. Not only has she not seen her children since she left her country almost five years ago, but she has never received any news about her husband's whereabouts. She has tried finding him through the Red Cross Tracing Service, but the search did not bring her the news that she had hoped for and his whereabouts remains unknown.
"When I am in bed I get scared that they will come and pick me. Definitely they will get me one day. Some people think that Africa is like the UK, but it is not. In that place people are being killed. They take you to a house and you die there. That is why we run. Not that we want to come here, but because we know what happens next if you don't."
With that Mary starts to quietly sob. Later, when she leaves, I watch her disappear through the crowds of people, her 80 pence skirt blowing in the wind. She winds her way through the swarms of people oblivious to her suffering, disappears behind a bus and returns to her underground life of uncertainty. I tot up the cost of the two drinks we shared at the table and realise that they come to £3.70. The amount that Mary will have to survive on for the next week.
