Democracy Now!
Baobab women who have been granted refugee status talked with Lydia Noon to share their experience about the 28 day transition period.
“That period when you’re waiting for your papers, when you don’t know what’s going to happen, it takes a bit of your life away,” says Kia, a refugee from Uganda, as we chat on the phone.
Kia applied for asylum in June 2012. She finds it difficult to talk about what she describes as a ‘terrible time’, following the trauma of fleeing her country in the first place. “I am not the type of person who’s going to cry out for help,” Kia tells me. “I should have.”
I found Kia through Baobab, a busy drop-in for undocumented, asylum seeking and refugee women in south Birmingham, four miles from the city centre.
Read more in her article: 'If I'd known what to ask for, I wouldn't have gone hungry!'
Check out her other inspiring activism, Middle East and Refugee articles on her website.