Spirasi (Spiritan Asylum Services Initiative) was set up in 1999, an initiative of the Spiritan Fathers, to support the rapidly growing number of refugees and asylum seekers reaching Ireland.   Its first leader was Fr. Michael Begley.

Initially Spirasi was founded as an English language centre but it quickly expanded into a multi-disciplinary centre where education, counselling/psychotherapy, on-going therapeutic interventions, training programmes and a befriending programme were provided.   Very many of the asylum seekers were severely traumatised as a result of torture and inhuman and degrading treatment.    Studies have shown that 50% of them have been victims of torture.   Spirasi sees up to 10% of that number in any one year.

My connection with Spirasi came through the Befriending Programme.    Sr. Dympna Cassells and I, as well as other Mercy Sisters from other parts of Ireland, were among this new group who responded to an invitation on the Mercy website in autumn 2018.   On our first visit to Spirasi we met Deirdre Markey, co-ordinator of the befrienders’ programme.   Deirdre introduced us to the more experienced befrienders and other Spirasi personnel.  After a number of training days we were ready to meet our prospective befriendees.

Let me introduce you to my befriendee.    I’ll call her Susan.  She is a Nigerian woman living in Athlone Accommodation Centre with her four children ranging in age from 13 to 2 years and six months   Our first meeting took place in ‘Vincent’s coffee shop cum library in Athlone town.  Deirdre from Spirasi was already there to introduce us.    Susan arrived up the stairs carrying her little daughter Phoebe in her arms.   From the start, the presence of this charming little girl with her beautiful bright eyes and dark curly hair, artistically arranged in little bobbins, added an extra dimension to our meetings.    She suffers from epilepsy and is always under her mother’s watchful eye.

From cautious and tentative beginnings our relationship grew.    Susan became more relaxed as she described life in the accommodation centre, what it was like to look after four children in a mobile home, to travel to Crumlin with her oldest and only boy who has a knee injury.    This boy, whom I will name Joey, is a first year in Athlone Community College where he is excelling at schoolwork and games.   Two of his sisters are in sixth and third class respectively.   All three are availing of music lessons provided by New Horizons.   When I had the privilege later on of visiting the family in their mobile home, I witnessed the great love and care that prevailed there.  Susan is a loving mother and an excellent manager; Joey had his own little cubicle and the two girls each had her own allotted space to do her homework.

Lines from Charles Swain’s poem ‘Home Defined’ come to mind:

Home’s not merely four square walls,
Though with pictures hung and gilded
Home is where affection calls
Filled with shrines the heart hath builded!

While Susan speaks freely about her children, about their accomplishments in school and other activities, telling her own story is very different.   She admits that despite the help she has received in Spirasi she has not yet arrived in a place, even in a confidential therapeutic setting, where she can talk about the difficult circumstances that led to her leaving Nigeria.     Proving that she is ‘more than’ her difficulties, Susan has explored ways of advancing her own education, thus improving her chances of employment, if and when she gets permission from the Irish State to look for a job. She has completed two certificate courses on-line in the area of human nutrition, and a thirteen-week night course on Occupational Health and Safety in Athlone IT.   While the night course was free of charge Susan had to make sacrifices to cover the on-line courses.

It is now two and a half years since I first met Susan.  In January last she got the good news that she was being allocated a three-bedroom apartment in Letterkenny.   She and her four children would be very happy to say good-bye to their very confined living space, and yet they were facing more unfamiliar territory – new schools, new neighbours, a new town far away from Athlone; even Phoebe, about to graduate from Pre-school, was venturing into a new space.

I am happy to relate that the news from Letterkenny is very good.   I have heard from Susan via Zoom and telephone that she and the children are delighted with their new home; they got great help from Túsla and other bodies to settle in, and Susan herself is getting involved with other residents in their sixty-unit apartment complex.  She might well say with David Whyte in his poem. ‘The House of Belonging’:

This is the bright home
in which I live
This is where I ask my
friends to come,
This is where I want to love
all the things
It has taken me so long to
learn to love.

 

Rosarii Beirne rsm
Western Province