Picture by Sara Woods, all rights reserved to the author. It took Stephen* two years to get to the UK. The journey began in his home country of Sudan, crossing through Libya, Italy, France and Belgium before reaching the UK where he is applying to stay. Like thousands of others, he spent several months in France and Belgium before eventually crossing the UK border, earlier this year, in the back of a van.
Stephen had been through several months of failed attempts before this: Being discovered in Calais after several hours cramped in the back of a van from Belgium with a group of four or five others, then being stuck in France, getting the money together to travel back to Belgium and try again.
“If you have a good luck you can pass; if you don’t, the security check will take you out,” he explains. “First they use dogs, and if the dogs indicate there’s something, they will check it for themselves… If they can’t find anything easily they have to take the truck to the computer scanner… It’s quite scary.”
