For four years, Naabila ‘Naab’ Akuruju waited, not knowing. Then, one morning, he received a letter informing him that he was to be deported from the country, writes Fiachra Gallagher.
Akuruju had been a resident of Knockalisheen Direct Provision centre since 2008, after arriving in Ireland from Ghana to seek asylum. After being issued with his deportation order in 2012, he couldn’t eat for a week.
“It’s like jail,” he tells me. “You don’t know when you’re going to go out.”
To his relief, and after weeks of uncertainty, Akuruju was able to successfully battle the deportation order.
And yet despite this, his life remained in limbo. It’s the same story for anyone passing through the State’s system for housing asylum-seekers. Uncertainty hangs over every resident of Knockalisheen, and every other refugee living in Direct Provision.
“You see people walking... and you see [they look] normal, but it's not.
“Some people have to take drugs before they can go to bed. Women with children who would be drinking alcohol before they can go and sleep, because of the stress,” he tells me.
It took a toll on Akuruju, personally: “I was very, very, very depressed. I won’t lie to you.”
Less than 100 metres from where Akuruju spent eight years of his life, eating, sleeping and waiting, there is a football pitch. It is home to Parkville FC, an amateur soccer club founded in 1988.
Every week, Akuruju could see teams training behind the centre. He was still relatively new to Knockalisheen when he gathered a group of friends, and approached the club about arranging a friendly match.
“We had good players. Some people from Cameroon, Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, we were friends… We went there and told [Parkville] that we wanted to play a match.”
Not content with playing a one-off friendly encounter, Akuruju subsequently approached Niall Ward, chairman at Parkville, and asked him about joining the club.
“Naab’s a once-off,” Ward tells me. “He’s one-in-a-million.”
Ward helped to arrange Akuruju’s membership at Parkville and before long, he was lining out for the club.
Both men got to know each other as time went on. Ward would drive Akuruju to training sessions and matches all over Limerick.
“[Even] If he's a sub or even if he's not togged at all, the passion and enthusiasm and encouragement of him on the sideline, it's great. It'd give you a boost if you weren't feeling the best yourself,” Ward says.
“Parkville was a place that was making me happy,” Akuruju tells me.
“I can say that, because they accepted me with their [open] arms. Not everyone does that.
“What I was doing was just making sure I was keeping myself active. You know, I tried to socialise with people, make friends, training, and come back home,” he says.
Amidst the instability of the everyday, Parkville was where Akuruju first found a sense of security. With no family in Ireland, and cut off from society by an oppressive accommodation system, the football club offered an escape.
Not everyone at Knockalisheen had – or has – this outlet. For Ward, he views it as a missed opportunity.
“To meet a guy like 'Naab' – he's as good a fella as you would ever meet – and thankfully through his own wanting to get involved with the club, and coming in that day and meeting me, that's how we know him now. That's why he's part of our club now.
“Maybe there's others now, [who] didn't have that little bit of gumption to do that… you come to a strange country, probably [after] seeing some sort of bad experience of persecution. You may not be the most confident person. You may just decide to stay inside those four walls.”
Despite being on the doorstep of Knockalisheen, Parkville have never been approached about formalising an arrangement with the centre to get more residents involved.
Offering Knockalisheen asylum-seekers – especially younger residents – a break from a life of repetition is hugely important, per Akuruju.
“Some people were there for 10 years. There's children that have been born in Knockalisheen. That is where they know, that is where they live, they grew up 10 years... the children are still there.
“They go to school with Irish children as well. But when the children finish, they have come back to camp.”
After eight years of limbo, Akuruju finally received the “good letter” he’d been holding out for since he’d first come to Ireland. With his residency secured, he took another step towards autonomy.
“Now it's better, because I have my own freedom. I can get out there and look for a job,” he says.
Akuruju is still involved with Parkville, although he admits that his playing days are drawing in. Ward hopes to assign him to an underage team as a coach.
“We'd be hoping to get him involved in coaching. The enthusiasm he'd bring to a bunch of kids would be unreal.”
Now five years on from his last nights spent at Knockalisheen, Akuruju stresses the changes that spanned his stay in Direct Provision.
“Our time was brutal,” he says.
Akuruju took part in protests while at Knockalisheen. A weekly allowance of €19.10 – the sum that Akuruju received while in Direct Provision – has now risen to €38.30. Deportation orders have been revoked. These changes would not have happened, had people like Akuruju not stood up.
“I can assure you, if not for the fight, the fight for our rights, this wouldn't have happened,” he says.
Despite this, thousands still populate Direct Provision centres across Ireland today. The recent publication of a White Paper – the roadmap detailing the government’s plan to end the Direct Provision system by 2024 – offers a tentative glimpse of the future.
“This life, this world we are living, we are living in a crazy world.
“Some people are making a business of humans, some people are doing the right things, some people are doing the bad things.
“[They] Just use us like we are something like a business for them,” Akuruju says.
For those still confined to the centre at Knockalisheen – and in centres throughout the State – the wait goes on.
Written by Fiachra Gallagher.
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