"You’re only old if you feel old,’ says one of the self-sufficient Latin Americans who tell their stories to Penny McLean."
Ramiro Urbano, 75, is volunteer with the Latin American Elderly Project
I came to London in 1997. My neighbours were involved in the FARC [the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia guerrilla movement], and the army thought I was involved, too, and wanted to kill me. It was a case of mistaken identity – I wasn’t involved. I had one week to leave my country. I had no choice or I would have been killed or kidnapped.
I had had a shoe shop there and I’d lost my business. I came here and worked and then I got a pension, thankfully, because I paid my national insurance here.
You realise that you have to adapt, and you have to keep struggling to survive here. For me the saddest part of leaving my country was losing my friends and not having anyone I know of my age around me. I’m very lucky however as I have my sons here, so that was consolation. I think your family has a responsibility to take care of you and to support and help you. You can’t rely on the system, you have to look after yourself. In Colombia, you have to rely solely on your family.
It’s important that people get together to support and protect each other, to campaign or petition the government and request that they protect those asylum seekers who are in need. Because one person alone can do nothing to change their situation, they need support.The key barrier for me, integrating in London as a mature person, was not knowing the language. There are more opportunities in London for people my age, and so it is possible to integrate if you can speak English, more so than in my own country. I do voluntary work every day at the Latin American Elderly Project and little by little I am trying to learn English, I never stop learning. I’ve been to English classes here, too. The problem at my age is my memory!
The centre also provides photography classes, dance classes, keep fit – lots of activities to combat isolation among the elderly. Groups like ours help different communities within London to mix with one another through the activities we organise. I think I’m a role model for Latin American men, as lots of people think that Latin American men are macho but I do everything at the our centre. I clean, wash up, I help women to get the bus, collect people from different places, I go to the bank, I help with the accounts, I’m the secretary on our management committee, I do anything that will help. I come here early every day to open the centre for the volunteers. Sometimes I’m so busy I forget to have lunch.
I’m very happy here in London. At the beginning I found the cold weather very difficult, but now global warming seems to have changed that. I love the museums and all the monuments, because I used to read a lot about British history in Colombia, and so it’s great to see in reality. One of my favourite places in London is my local pub in Ladbroke Grove where I play snooker and mix with the locals. Now I consider myself a British Colombian Londoner.
The Latin American Elderly Project, Claremont, 24-27 White Lion Street, N1
Amada Vergaro, 68, from Chile, founder of Latin American Golden Years Day CentreI fled Chile with my husband, mother and four children, including my seven-month-old son, following the 1973 coup. I was a councillor and well known for my leftwing views. Because I was a nurse and social worker and knew and worked with the community, one of the policemen warned me that the military were coming for my family that afternoon.
A taxi came to collect us and our dog, on the taxi roof, started barking, so the military stopped and searched the taxi. I covered my son up with my hand over his mouth, so they wouldn’t hear him. They shot our dog, looked inside and said, “These are not the ones we’re looking for – we’re looking for the one with a baby.”
We travelled across the Andes in a small taxi. We reached Argentina, whose military presence was even worse than Chile. The military police came looking for us. The hotel owner saved our lives by sneaking us out of the back door to UNHCR staff at a local church.The UNHCR gave us an ID card with a number, not a name. We had to remember this number from then on. I said, “Are you going to tattoo it onto our bodies as well?” They said, “You should be grateful, we are saving you.” I said, “Not really – we don’t want to be refugees.”
We arrived in 1977 and were sent out of London. Our family was not welcome. In Sutton Coldfield, our neighbour kept shouting, “Shut up, you piece of shit,” whenever our kids played in the back garden. I bought a dictionary to find out what this meant – the first words we learnt. In Dundee, our initial experiences were not much better – my son was bullied and hospitalised for three days. The locals didn’t understand where these Indian-looking people were from.
My husband Fernando and I took action: started learning English, made a cotton patchwork map of all the South American countries and took all our kids with their musical instruments to play at the local community centre and schools. We educated people about Chile and why we had to flee. From then on our lives improved.
When we were forced to move from Scotland to London in 1986 we couldn’t get work. We had to live on benefits for a year. I had been a social worker with the elderly in Chile, so I organised the Latin American Golden Years Day Centre. I set it up because I was receiving a lot of calls from elderly people who were desperate and couldn’t communicate in English. They had suicidal thoughts, were lonely, rejected by their own children and grandchildren because they didn’t fit into this society. They were left, like pieces of old furniture.Our centre is a place where elderly people of all nationalities can talk to one another, get advice and do creative things like sewing and painting. We don’t advertise, we function through word of mouth.
A lady comes every Wednesday to give advice on housing and money matters. If our people need help at the hospital I ask for an interpreter for them, or I do it for them over the phone. We’ve made the centre as homely as possible. Everybody knows one another.I’m 68 but you’re only old if you feel old. One British lady is 93 and she’s so wonderful. Her face lights up – she can’t come to the centre any more but I go to visit her. They are beautiful people who have such nice stories to tell. Everyone has a culture to pass on and that’s what we are doing. Last week at our centre, some elderly people were telling each other stories about their youth – and they were laughing so much. Someone has been recording their stories so they can be played in schools to educate the younger generation. We have things to give.
Latin American Golden Years Day Centre, 1-29 Cancell Road, SW9, www.latinamericangoldenyears.org.uk
