March 3, 2008

Dear Friends,

There is always more than enough to share about the work I am doing, but it occurs to me that Marieke’s work, unpaid and too often unheralded, has always been an important part of a ministry that we consciously share. The difference is that she has never had to chair a church meeting, and has been free to serve out on the margins of the institution where there is much need. It’s high time I told a bit more of her story.

Her main work aside from singing in the choir and that sort of thing is the time she puts in with our asylum justice program, which provides legal assistance for destitute asylum seekers. At a minimum this involves every Tuesday and Saturday, but she is often down at the office an hour before she goes to work in order to send faxes or work with the files. Regularly occurring emergencies have her on the phone or running down to the church at any time of the day or night.

One afternoon, for instance, one of our solicitors rang her to help a woman with three children who had just been arrested and put into detention at the Yarls Wood Immigration Removal Centre, near Heathrow, to be sent back to Nigeria.

She had come to this country with her husband, but after continuing abuse from him she had secured a divorce. Her husband lost his appeal for asylum and was sent back to Nigeria, and in the meantime she gave birth to their third child. The child was born with a bowel defect, which, at birth, was provisionally repaired, though it would require further corrective surgery. But the hospital refused to perform the corrective surgery because the child, as the child of an asylums seeker, was not entitled to a “non-life-threatening” operation. When they were re-located from London to Cardiff, Cardiff’s University Hospital disagreed with the original hospital and put the child on a waiting list to have the necessary corrective surgery.

We found out about the arrest from the child’s GP, who was enraged by a phone call from the police asking for enough colostomy bags to last the 7-month-old child until they had been returned to Nigeria. The GP called the solicitor, and the solicitor telephoned Marieke, who got in contact with another solicitor, who cut short a meeting and came back from London to work on the case. So two solicitors here and one at Yarls Wood started working into the night, assisted by Marieke and another City Church member, trying to move heaven and earth before the scheduled removal flight that coming Saturday. In Nigeria, of course, there would be neither access to surgery nor the required colostomy bags. The issue was one of basic humanity, regardless of the merits of any asylum case.

At 2:00 the next afternoon we heard that all this effort had been successful, and this woman and her children would be on a bus coming back to Cardiff.

It doesn’t always work out this way. Asylum Justice works with people other lawyers have dropped because they have lost their first appeal for asylum and money for legal assistance has dried up. Often these initial failures have occurred because of an asylum seeker’s lack of familiarity with the system or the inadequate preparation of their case by a legal aid solicitor. Our volunteer solicitors and volunteer assistants like Marieke give the time and attention to clients that enable them to put their stories in a framework that will be clear to the judges who review them on appeal.

I could tell you many more stories about Marieke’s work if I had time. We got a second computer at home so that she could cope with the volume of emailing and Internet research she has been doing. She spends hours with some clients helping them put their stories in their words. She spends months researching particular cultural traditions and political contexts to prevent cross-cultural confusion.

The work can be overwhelmingly complex and under funded and keeps uncovering unexpected issues that are important to respond to. We have recently begun to explore ways to provide mental health support for asylum seekers experiencing things like post-traumatic stress or who are recovering from torture. One of our members, a psychiatric social worker, along with one of his work colleagues, a Somali man, has established a support center in an area of Cardiff where many of the asylum seekers live, and I am putting in lots of extracurricular time finding financial support and other resources for their work. Nor are church members’ concerns merely local. Two have just returned from Lisbon, where they went to protest the presence of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe at the European Union-Africa summit. The “no room at the inn” story we tell at this time of the year is a contemporary and local as well as global reality.

In comparison to all the work Marieke is doing, I don’t seem to be doing much myself. I just got through with a course I’ve called “The Way,” an introduction to Christianity as a way of life, and I’ve been teaching a university course in New Testament Greek. So I keep out of trouble while Marieke is working so hard. We’re all well. Tina and Rachel will be bringing us new grandchildren in 2008. I’m entering my last year before retirement and feeling anxious about that. I feel as if I am just beginning to reach my stride.

Tom and Marieke Arthur

The 2008 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 152