People fleeing from wartorn homelands, some with just the clothes on their back, have sought new homes and hope in Camden. In this, National Refugee Week, Children's Express reports for the Ham & High on refugees who have stayed - or been told to leave.
| I felt horrible. I thought: ‘I’m not going to see my home again.’ |
Adea, 12, and her family slept in tents for two months.
Masked men forced their way into Adea Kryeziu's home in Pristina, Kosovo, pushed down the door and told her family: You've got five minutes to leave.
"Houses were burning, there was blood everywhere, I was so frightened," said Adea, aged 12. "Some children didn't even have socks or shoes. They had to run. They left their home with everything in it."
"We were lucky because they gave us five minutes. In some houses they just went in and took people out, and if they didn't like it, they killed them."
People were herded towards the station like animals, she said. "I didn't have any feeling. I thought: We are going to die or we are going to live. I felt like the most unhappy girl in the world."
After a long journey, Adea and her family eventually arrived in Macedonia, where they stayed for two months, sleeping in tents.
"I felt horrible. I thought: 'I'm not going to see my home again. I lost all my toys and my things at home. I went to a school but it wasn't a school, it was a tent. They were trying to keep us happy but they couldn't."
Eventually Adea, her mother and six-year old sister sought asylum in Britain and flew into Leeds with about eighty other families. They stayed in Halifax for two weeks before moving south to London.
"I felt so bad because I didn't have any friends to laugh with," she said, adding that other families were in a worse position. They had lost close relatives and every time she and her sister started to play, they cried.
Adea, who now lives in Chalk Farm, said her grandparents had returned home to Kosovo following the end of the war and found her home wrecked.
She has been in Britain since June and is here for a year on a permit granting exceptional leave to stay. She has gradually acquired friends. "I feel happy, but if I was in my country I would feel much better than here because I know everybody," she said.
About the team
This article was published by editors Darell Philip, 18, and Ruth Sewell, 15, and reporters Pfungwa Chipatiso, 12, Briony Hope, Maija Marsh, and Cindy Crome, all 10, and Helen Mulgan, 9. It was published in the Hampstead & Highgate Express.
