At the time of this interview, Feaven Chae (‘Heavenly Spicy Tea’) was nearly 14. She had been at our school for six months and her English had developed remarkably since her arrival in Bexleyheath in the back of a lorry in October. She wasn’t in any of my classes, but I was asked to interview her for the school radio show during a month when PSHE lessons focussed on slavery, refugees and human trafficking.

I was told Feaven was talkative but reticent, that I was unlikely to get much out of her because she just wanted to be an “ordinary Thamesmead girl” …as if such a creature exists!  As soon as that microphone was on I couldn’t stop her! This skinny, delicate looking girl with her newfound love of K-Pop, had a core of steel and a story she wanted to tell.

Our radio station is run by year 8 and, given some of the content, it was decided not to broadcast the interview; so it got forgotten on a hard drive. Here is an attempt at a transcript of the first part.

You might imagine the mood during the interview would have been rather down and depressing, but there were a lot of smiles and laughter…and just occasionally tears. Feaven is a happy, outwardly carefree girl, she has come through what I hope will be the worst part of her life, has loads of friends…and knows how to make them! She’ll do well.

I felt a bit out of my depth…particularly when she was so unexpectedly honest and open about the very nasty things she witnessed and experienced. Other than being a moderately good listener, I was simply not qualified. I’ve edited as little as possible; only adding a bit of punctuation, and a removing couple of disturbing or personal details at her request. I have also changed her name… unnecessarily so, for the bright girl said she had changed it a few times already.

Why did you have to leave Eritrea?

‘Cos I didn’t have any good quality of life… and it was like difficult to live in Eritrea. I have got my sister bigger than me and she is naughty. She didn’t used to go her school and it must have been she missing her lessons. So my mum went to my sister’s school and then they were talking to her teacher. When they were at the school the police came up to my house to take my sister but my sister wasn’t at home… just me and my siblings was at home, and I was the oldest from my siblings.

So the police take me into the police station and then I was stay there for five days, and then my mum came to the police station and she took me from the police station …by a secret about how she did that. I can’t tell you the secret …I promise her…and I hided.

Tell me about your journey to England.

First from Eritrea I escaped to Sudan and then I have been there for a couple of weeks and there were a lot of people. We hadn’t had enough food and water You had to look after ourselves ‘cos no one cannot look after us like our family. And then from Sudan we travelled to Libya and then we were there… like travelling up by Sahara Desert. It was very difficult like we hadn’t had enough food and we hadn’t had water.

There were a lot of young children like 5,6,7 year-old and then it was got very bad. Like there were other people that they tried to look after us, but they couldn’t ‘cos the people who were checking us to deliver, like the drivers they were like racism. If we don’t pay them they were call to our family or other people who can pay money to them. We had to pay. Almost about like $3,000 for each person. You cannot offer-price for it.  For some people there… like children… it is too hard for them to pay $3,000.

It is very amount of money, but if they cannot pay to them they will kill us. Most people have been killed ‘cos they hadn’t had enough money to pay to travel to another country. You can’t be a traveller with them if you don’t or if you cannot pay the money. If you cannot pay, or if you cannot call to your family for the money, they were shooting in front of us. That’s the most dangerous bit of our journeys.

Like it was very difficult. You cannot show any person that you care if they shooted another children. You have to hide your tears. If they see you are crying, they just kill you whether you pay or not. They just shoot you with the other people they have shooted. You have to hide all your cares, and you have to wear like you be like their religion. If they find out you praying like Tewahedo way…they just kill you by knife at night..or they just shoot you in front of the other people travellers.”

So how did you get from Libya across to Europe?

I got to Libya and then I got to travel on bus around to a city. They took us into this place and then we had we had to stay there for couple of months as well , ‘cos there were a lot of people in front of us without any food, without any water. Like most of the girls had to… I don’t know it’s hard to describe it …dirty things.

There were a lot of people lying in there, and then from Libya we had to take a small boat. They said we had to stay in boat for a couple of hours.. but it was a whole day to stay in the boat…  ‘cos the boat wasn’t good enough to take us to Italy. After we began our journey the engine broke down. We have to stay like, yeah, we were just drifting in the sea. We were scared. Most people think ‘Oh we are going to die’ , or something like that.  A lot of panicking  ‘cos the boat cannot travel.  They told us to “do not move!”,  ‘cos if we moved to the side the boat we just turn over and fill up with sea, and we had to stay there for a day and then the big ship come up to us and then they took us into the big ship. And then we had to travel like two days in the big ship, yeah to Italy.

When we are over to Italy the Italy police and …what’s they calls…all the immigration… took us into one place but not all of us. They separated us to different areas and then told to go with different people. I didn’t get to be with my previous people. I go into a different group. I went there and then we don’t know any languages to speak to other people. We found Eritrean people and then we give them our number to call our family people in England.

So you were in Italy by then. And what was the next stage on your journey to Britain?

We give our family phone number to the person, and then he call to our family. He asked them to give money to his friend… or give it to his family member in somewhere, I don’t know where, and then my family had to give money to his family member ‘cos he told him he will take a responsibility for us.

He told us he will put us in safe place and he will take us to different group.  We couldn’t communicate with other people that’s why we trust only him. We have to put trust only him and he took us to Calais… and he tried to put us in different cars.  And you know, like some cars they just took you to other places and then they just put you down there… and you have to walk up to the area where the big lorries come.

It was hard. Like if you haven’t got enough money to get our food, it’s not our language… even we don’t know any languages from any person.  That’s why we cannot ask for anything to help us other than an Eritrean person. ‘cos we cannot communicate with other people, therefore we have to rely on them. But some Eritrean people there they only pretend to be our helper.

He put us in different cars but we haven’t had time to get into Britain then. Unfortunately we tried time again.

It was cold and for food  I had to … Wait can I? I can’t….

A pause while Feaven briefly cries …and I sit there feeling useless… offering her a secret plain chocolate Hobnob. Her bright eyes didn’t miss a thing.  I told her that my biscuits would be locked away  in a different drawer later. If only adults had the resilience of children.

Image: from the ‘art tent’ in Calais with thanks Suzanne Partridge.

Read this: https://threadbearingwitness.com/suzanne-partridge/