One Refugee's Story

“My husband was murdered in front of my two young daughters and me. Armed men broke into our home and murdered him. Our daughters were 3 years and 10 months old.”
 
This is what Sola Oledapo says when she is asked how she became a refugee. At 4 a.m. on the morning of February 26, 1998, masked gunmen smashed into their home and shot her husband, Tunde, while Sola and her two girls looked on in horror.  
 
“They threatened to kill me and the kids too,” Sola recalls softly. “I did a lot of pleading and then maybe something startled them. They left before they carried out the threat.”
 
Tunde Oladepo was an editor and journalist for the respected Nigerian newspaper, The Guardian and very respected in his field. In 1997, he had been made the Chairman of the Nigerian Union of Journalists.  As Sola says of his work, he was “telling the truth”  - and telling it in the face of constant threats from the then current military dictatorship in Nigeria. Security forces attacked him on several occasions.  
 
Sola and Tunde were happily married and had two young daughters, Femi and Bolaji. Sola taught Grade 11 and 12 chemistry at a local high school. It “was a good life” she reminisces. But his murder changed everything. At Tunde’s funeral, Sola noticed one of the murderers in the crowd. She knew immediately that she was being watched so she left with her daughters for her parents’ village. Even there, after a time, people began coming and asking for her, so it wasn’t safe for them or her family.
 
Through Media Rights Agenda, she managed to get to a refugee camp in Ghana where she lived for two years. Their basic needs were covered; food and a simple shelter where she and her girls slept on the floor. But one day, a fellow refugee gave her a piece of paper: a list of church contacts in Canada. She wrote to each church on the off chance that one would hear her story and offer her a chance to leave her life of limbo in Ghana.
 
Her letter reached a Unitarian minister in BC who contacted the MCC Refugee office in Vancouver. First United Mennonite Church responded to her story and Sola and her daughters finally boarded the plane that was to take them to Vancouver.
 
“I felt fear, anxiety, and happiness all rolled into one,” she recalls of that journey. “When we arrived, we had such a warm welcome. Our sponsors met us with a big bouquet of flowers and banners!”
 
People in the church had done a great deal of preparation to help Sola get settled. An apartment had been found, furniture, clothing, and food had been donated and bought. Fred Klassen, one of the church members, even researched her favourite foods and found recipes on-line.
 
“The following week before we moved to our apartment was a flurry of activity by the sponsor group. They helped me set up the phone, sign papers for social security, and helped me with all the other details of getting established in Vancouver,” she says. “And they not only did the ‘nitty-gritty’ necessities. They also took the time to show us all over the city and included things that would delight my little daughters - like our first visit to Stanley Park.”  
 
But those first months were not without their challenges. Not surprisingly, food was a big difficulty at first, especially for her kids. They were used to “kinke” (millet) and gumbo (okra) sauce and found Canadian food unappetizing. The wet weather was also a challenge, coming from a hotter, drier climate.

At first, just getting around in the city and grocery shopping were big challenges, partly because there are so many cards in our daily North American life – bankcards, library cards, debit and credit cards, grocery store cards and more. Sola remembers one day when, rifling through her stash of cards, she tried paying for the bus with her library card.  “All very embarrassing!” she laughs.
 
But it wasn’t so funny at the time. She remembers wanting to stay indoors for those first weeks, afraid of doing the wrong thing, afraid even to get on a bus.

Another “culture shock” for Sola and for many people arriving here from other parts of the world, was adjusting to the way North Americans organize our social lives around busy crowded schedules.
 
“You have to call ahead here before you visit – very different from the casual, always-welcome drop-in system in Nigeria,” she explains.
 
Both the fear of doing the “wrong thing” culturally and the more formal visiting expectations of life in Canada contributed to Sola’s sense of confinement those first months. She was afraid to leave her apartment, finding North American life overwhelming. Coupled with that, was the fact that what she had longed for – safety – now gave her the space she needed to grieve her losses. Grief had seemed a luxury in a refugee camp where day to day survival was all she could concentrate on. Now, Sola simply wanted to find work so that she could fill her days with something other than memories. But her sponsor group encouraged her to take her time to grieve and found an organization that provides help for people who are survivors of torture. Through this organization, Sola found a measure of healing.
 
Eventually, Sola returned to school, studying first to be a care-aide and finally to be a licensed practical nurse. Even though she had taught subjects like Grade 12 biology in Nigeria, she was forced to take these courses here in order to qualify for further studies. She has since remarried, marrying Chido, another Nigerian journalist whom she had met in the refugee camp in Ghana. Her children are now 8 and 10 years old and love their life here in Canada. Memories of their father’s murder are fading, the nightmares almost all gone. Sola and Chido also have a son, Dotun, who is now 3 years old. The family reached a big milestone when Sola, Chido and Sola’s daughters all became Canadian citizens.
 
Sola is thoughtful as she reflects on her experiences and her life as a refugee. She describes a memory from her university days in Nigeria.  
 
“I saw Liberian refugees on campus. I noticed their odd dress, their funny accents, and saw them begging for money,” she recalls. “They were ‘refugees’ – a label I never considered in all my wildest dreams, would be one that I would wear one day.”  And she adds a thought that probably most of us in North America would share and assume: “Never in all my dreams did I plan to ever leave my country.”
 
Although she is grateful for the new life she has here in Canada, she misses her home in Nigeria. Still, she knows that she will never go back, knowing she will feel fear of being followed if she does. But she has come to love and appreciate her new country.
 
 “I love this country. I feel safe and secure and my children love it here; they are so happy now. It is a new life.”

She is also deeply grateful to her sponsor group at First United Mennonite Church.
 
“Beyond the money they gave, they gave me so much more in moral support,” she says. “We had been forced to leave our family, and our sponsors became our extended family here. They basically were there for me, looking out for me. They did a lot, and I’m very grateful”.

For more information on how you can get involved, contact Jennifer Mpungu at our Abbotsford office (604) 850-6639 and Toll-free at 1-888 622-6337 (Mon-Thurs: 8:30 a.m - 4:30 p.m) or e-mail her at: refugee@mccbc.com. In Vancouver contact Jamie Spray at (604) 325-5524.