A Kind of Refugee/Living in Limbo

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A Kind of Refugee/Living in Limbo

Front row: Cassandra Mark, Malaika Mark, Francine Morris, Michael Mark. Standing: Althea Mark, kneeling, Emmanueal Mark

Our children, Malaika, Cassandra, Michael and I arrived in London, May 1990, having flown out of Robertsfield Airport on one of the last flights leaving Liberia.

I could still hear the warning issued at the last social event held at the American Embassy: All American citizens should evacuate the country immediately. The neatly folded map, which pinpointed safe houses if the rebel army rolled into the city sooner than expected, was now a crumpled piece of paper.  

We disembarked holding one suitcase each.  I was in charge of passports, birth and marriage certificates and diplomas, now more valuable than gold.

Aldin Mark, my husband (Emmanuel)’s sister and resident of London since 1960, met us at Heathrow airport. She took us to her home on Ifley Road, Hammersmith, within walking distance from Shepherd’s Bush in London.  It would be the first in a series of temporary homes.  I shared a room in the crammed, narrow, two-story apartment with my three children.  When my husband arrived six weeks later via Sierra Leone, Guinea and Belgium, he joined us in the bedroom where two single beds joined together was our private space.

 Soon after Emmanuel’s arrival, we went to the Citizens Bureau where our status was established and legal aid provided. My husband was born in Grenada, a former British colony, and still held a British passport which allowed him to obtain British passports in Liberia for our children.

Dr. Emmanuel Mark, king of his castle in Liberia

We were placed in a B&B in the Bayswater area. It was home until we could be resettled elsewhere. My family was assigned two rooms. My husband, I and our six year old son shared one room.  Our daughters, aged, nine and eleven, shared another.  We were ashamed to be in this position but the civil war had determined our fate. We drew solace knowing that the situation would be temporary.

Like the other families, we were seeking to begin a new life having lost all we had. We were happy to be alive. Starting again from scratch, although daunting, was a second chance. We had sacrificed everything. My husband had abandoned his medical practice which he had run with his cousin Dr. James Thomas and his wife, Gloria Thomas, a nurse; he had also vacated his teaching position at the A.M. Daglioti Medical College in Monrovia and the eight roomed home he had built.

I had given up my teaching position at the University of Liberia. I barely had time to say goodbye.  We had withdrawn our children from school and had left family and friends behind. We wanted to survive the atrocities, the shameless ethnic killings, the burning of villages and sometimes, it occupants, the gleeful killing of intellectuals and anyone for whom a grudge was enough to be sentenced to death.

Our B+B, once assigned in Bayswater, the children travelled by train to attend school.  I had  enrolled them as soon as we arrived. The younger two, Cassandra and Michael were at Brackenberry Elementary School and the older, Malaika, at St. Mark’s Anglican Secondary school in Parson’s Green.  

I worried about them. Until now I had driven them everywhere. Now, I accompanied the younger ones to school; the older child, Malaika, had adapted to travelling alone. 

The cook who dished out breakfast in the B+B on Queensborough Road, was a Jamaican immigrant. 

I remember finding this odd. Officials of Countries, where people ranted against immigrants stealing jobs, still hired immigrants to carry out delicate duties. Just as I found it odd that a Haitian once guarded our hotel room in New York when my husband was detained for not having a transit visa.  We were flying from the Caribbean via New York back to Liberia and he didn’t think he needed one.

Our fellow refugees included a Somalian family who had fled an uprising in their home; my family--my husband, Grenadian, carrying a Liberian passport, our Liberian born children and me, a US, Virgin Islander, and an Irish family. Why the Irish were placed in the B&B I never found out. Perhaps they were fleeing the Protestant/Catholic clashes in Northern Ireland.

We ate our dished out breakfast, read about the horrors that were taking place in Liberia, searched for work, shopped for clothes and books in second-hand stores, to sustain our family of five.

After three months in the B &B, we were assigned a two bedroom apartment in St. Clair’s Mansion near Shepherd’s Bush. We needed several trips by train from Queensborough Road to Hammersmith to transport our belongings. Financial assistance was expected to last until my husband and I found employment. 

 I was eager to stand on my own feet. Staying at home was not an option. I had been working since I was fourteen and very independent.  I could not conceive being dependent on my husband or a government. 

While searching for teaching job, I sought temporary work and found one at H. Samuel’s Jewellers that hired extra staff for the Christmas season.

Here I was, a trained university teacher, working at a jewellery shop, with people, for whom every second word was “fuck.” I was appalled at the language. In Liberia, people cursed when they had been provoked or angered. Here curse-words naturally attached themselves to nouns. Everyone hung out at a pub after work. I couldn’t join.  I was a mother of three with limited funds and an unemployed husband.

My husband was told that because he had a Swiss Medical degree, he was required to sit exams and to familiarize himself with British medical culture.  While contemplating his next step, he also sought temporary work and was often told he was over qualified. I remember he had applied for a vacancy at the post office and was turned down.  

I imagined the people at the head office thought he was a mad-man who fancied himself to be a medical doctor. Why would a doctor apply for a position at the post office?

 

Fullham Cross Girls' School

During my free time, I volunteered at my son’s primary school and was privileged to chaperone classes on field trips to Kew Gardens, the Natural History Museum and other places. We allowed ourselves simple pleasures and took our children to the Planetarium, Madame Tussauds, parks, zoos and fairs.  

We made small sacrifices, took advantage of the rich surroundings so that we could have a normal life, and educate our children

The New Year, 1991, brought a brighter outlook as I had been offered work as a substitute teacher at Fulham Cross Secondary School, an all girls’ school.  I was unimpressed by their lacklustre attitude towards education. Attending classes was a chore and a bore for these girls. Their goal was to finish school at the voluntary leaving age, have children or work in a shop. Students lacked motivation and teachers showed little interest. They felt these students were a lost cause.  A bright spot was the students from India and Pakistan who studied seriously. Second generation West Indian immigrants were already falling into the trap.

The urge not to fall into complacency coincided with an embarrassing encounter with a student one Saturday afternoon when I was on my way home.  She asked me if I lived in the neighbourhood. In answer, I pointed to the building in which I lived. “You live there?” I heard the emphasis on THERE. My new home was marked, a place where homeless people were housed. 

 A big scarlet H had been plastered on my forehead. I vowed to get out as soon as possible. I learned that it was an unmentionable place.  If I had known, I would have lied.

The temporary apartment at Sinclair’s Mansion had given us more room and privacy.  My job as a substitute teacher allowed me to give up the government stipend.  I felt better about myself.  I was no longer accepting handouts. It was a step away from dependence, a step away from “homeless.”

After six months we obtained British residency.  My children were settled in school—my oldest studying German.

Attending a family wedding in London

Despite my husband’s large, supportive family, whom I got to know well, and despite being surrounded by a West Indian community, I felt unsettled.  Our social rug had been snatched from under us. However, birthdays, parties and weddings helped to make us feel at home. 

London market (Hammersmith)

I wondered how these “West Indians,” who had left the Caribbean thirty years ago, still sounded like they had never left the islands. Markets and shops, run by East Indians, sold tropical food, and other familiar products. A visit to them was taking a little trip to the Caribbean or Africa.

Our children had attended a private school in Liberia and received the best education available.  In the London schools I taught, learning eagerly was discouraged by other students.  Working as a substitute teacher, I witnessed the students’ lack of will to learn and I worried about how this attitude would affect my children.  

My own previous experience with adolescents and teenage students had been discouraging. I had taught teenagers in inner city Connecticut, watched them stare out of windows despite the innovative teaching methods that had been introduced.

 One lasting impression was a student lifting a chair and threatening the classroom teacher with it.  And I had taught at Addelita Cancryn Jr. High School, a middle school in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, nicknamed “Vietnam.” The administration building at that school had been set on fire twice. Adolescent hormones were raging war. 

I had vowed not to teach that age group again.  And here I was teaching in London in an environment where students also shouted abuse at teachers. Once a student arrived drunk and had to be held up by her classmates. I later learned that her parents were alcoholics.  The last straw was a class that displayed their dislike for the presence of another substitute teacher, me, by screeching until the head master arrived. Teaching had become a nightmare which I hoped to escape.

My prayers were answered when my husband was offered a position at the University Children’s Hospital in Basel, Switzerland.  But new problems would surface in a country whose language and culture was foreign to us.

© Althea Romeo-Mark

“A Kind of Refugee: Living in Limbo,” WomanSpeak: A Journal of Writing and Art by Caribbean Women. Ed. Lynn Sweeting. Bahamas. 2013.