WOMEN'S TALES:Salome Mbugua believes in solidarity. Her belief has been justified. AkiDwa - the African women's group she founded - is now a network for all women migrants to Ireland. It has changed lives, offered hope and spoken up for a section of society confronting a double challenge, writes Susan McKay
WHEN SALOME MBUGUA came to Ireland first, in 1994, people stared, and smiled. She stood out as a young black woman in a place where few were other than white. "I was seen as something good and precious, something they even wanted to touch," she recalls. She went back to Africa, married an Irishman, and returned here in 1998. "The atmosphere had totally changed," she says.
It was beautiful to me that there were so many people of colour, but the attitude of the Irish people had changed. People said things like: 'Go home, nigger.' I was very isolated, and I am a very sociable person."
She had never intended to settle in Ireland. "I wanted to work with the UN. That was my vision. I felt I needed international experience, and America was my destination of choice - but it never worked out." She laughs. Better things worked out. During her year here, she met and became friends with an Irishman who had worked in Tanzania. Back in Africa, she got a job in Uganda, as did he. They met up again, fell in love, and married. "Then his father got ill and we came back to Ireland," she says. They have children now, and anyway, Mbugua is too passionate about her work to go anywhere else.
Mbugua was working with homeless boys in Dublin's inner city, and while bringing one of them to the Mater Hospital one day, met and got talking to a nun, who directed her to the Sisters of Mercy. With their support, AkiDwa, the network of African women, was set up.
"At first we shared our experiences. Racial abuse was a big issue," says Mbugua. "Women who were pregnant had people saying to them: 'Don't bring another nigger into this country.' One woman had come with a work permit, but her business had been vandalised. Two women were experiencing domestic violence. Two were refugees. All of us were highly educated. I'd worked as a gender development officer in Uganda, and another of us had been a midwife in Tanzania. Most of us were having trouble getting appropriate jobs. We had all been through difficulties. We needed time to heal. The Sisters of Mercy got counselling for us."
With funds from the Combat Poverty Agency, AkiDwa set about analysing the needs of African women in Ireland. Eager to integrate, they decided to get the support of Irish women's groups, holding meetings in women's centres in towns such as Waterford and Longford. AkiDwa has come a long way since then. It has become more inclusive.
"We began to see women from Afghanistan and Iraq and Romania, so we changed to become the migrant women's network. We are the only migrant women-led organisation in Ireland," she says, with pride. "I am even on the board of the Equality Authority."
AkiDwa's research is powerfully revealing. A study of African women in the Irish workforce backed up what Mbugua and her colleagues had been hearing from women all over Ireland.
"We have women who are engineers, doctors, teachers and lawyers and they are working as cleaners," she says. "I am a qualified social worker with a Master's degree from UCD and I have worked in a shop. It is very demoralising."
The study found that overseas qualifications were not recognised here, and that almost 60 per cent of women surveyed who were employed were in jobs that did not match their skills.
"We advise women to take whatever jobs they can get, and to do voluntary work," says Mbugua. "If you want to get started, you need Irish experience and you need Irish references."
AkiDwa has published a book, Herstory, a collection of biographical accounts of the lives in Africa of women who have come to Ireland, written by African journalist, Olutoyin Pamela Akinjobi . Many of the stories are deeply shocking, containing descriptions of slave labour, domestic violence, female genital mutilation, murder, torture, grinding poverty and destitution.
Emma, raped in prison and pregnant in Cameroon, was abandoned by the man who said he'd marry her after her escape and forced to go into exile; Violet, raised in extreme poverty in a large family with an abusive father, ended up homeless on the streets with her baby son, but worked to save money to escape.
Nina had to watch the agonising female circumcision of her friend in Nigeria and years later fled the country with her baby daughter after her husband tried to force them to undergo this brutal procedure. Iye Jillo, a journalist from Sierra Leone narrowly escaped being killed as many of her colleagues had been during the war. There are others.
All of these women came to Ireland, where some of them were also told: "Go home, nigger."
"We want those providing services for migrant women to be aware of the the sort of lives they may have had, so as to be culturally sensitive to their needs," says Mbugwa. Inevitably, any group providing support for women, has to deal with the issue of domestic violence and migrant women may be particularly trapped and isolated. This week AkiDwa launched a booklet by Juliet Amamore, who is from Uganda, providing an African perspective. It will be launched by Senator Ivana Bacik.
Eniola Oke is a young Nigerian who fled political persecution in Nigeria and came to this country five years ago. "My attitude when I got refugee status here was: 'What can I give back to this society?'" she says. "AkiDwa gave me a lot of insight. I did a lot of voluntary work. I did courses. Eventually I did a postgraduate course in youth and community work at NUI Maynooth. My daughter was seven. Before, she was very lively and good. She got a lot of racism at school. I used to see her standing alone in the playground. She used to cry a lot and she used to say to me: 'Mummy, just let's go back home.' Then she stopped crying, but she wasn't OK. She built up a lot of bitterness. We lived in a camp for asylum seekers and she hated the other children knowing that."
At college, Oke found that she was simply ignored. "When I spoke in the group, there would be a pause, and then everyone would just move on. One day, I began to cry and the lecturer asked me why, and I explained how I felt and soon everyone else was crying and we talked about it and it was resolved. Moving out of the camp was great and we got a house. I got a job, and I'm working for AkiDwa now. I am happy, and my daughter is on top of the world," Mbugwa smiles.
"Despite everything, we walk tall," she says. "I think we are transforming Ireland."