Dickson Rwigamba is a 22 yr old man originally from Rwanda. He was only six years old when the genocide of 1994 led his family to flee the country. He reveals his story to Jamie Clark
9am. Charing Cross, London. The Connection at St Martin’s day centre for the homeless. Wet. Raining. Cold. Like clockwork the heavy front doors creak open to greet a weary shuffle of worn out, homeless hostel seekers. The staff, no less weary and worn out though dedicated and professional to the last, then get down to the serious tasks of assessment and referral to the various in-house specialist teams. It’s an incongruous sight amidst the blurry backdrop of the Southern Counties finest as they stream out of Charing Cross Station and bustle by eyes down to take up their Soho and Covent Garden positions in Westminster’s working line up.
I'm here to meet Dickson Rwigamba, the subject of my article for The New Londoner. He’s not hard to spot. Fixed up, looking sharp, the name’s Rwigamba, Dickson Rwigamba as an imaginary trilby lands effortlessly on the proverbial coat peg. Part 007, part Thierry Henry, the Va Va Voom in his presentation is there for all to see. He’s granted me an hour’s interview before he dashes off to work in John Lewis just up the road in Oxford Circus. With cuff links gleaming, silver suit shining, it feels like a Forbes exclusive, though all similarities with square mile aristocracy end here.
Dickson is a 22 yr old man originally from Rwanda and was only six years old when the genocide of 1994 led his family to flee to neighbouring Uganda. Dickson’s mother came to the UK in ‘98 and after seven years of separation he eventually joined her in 2005. A sadly all too familiar pattern of irrevocable relationship breakdown then led Dickson and his brother to a three month period of ‘hidden homelessness’ sleeping in Hackney building stairwells as they struggled to comprehend how having managed to elude one of the twentieth century’s most horrific genocides, they could not make it work with mum. I’ve only an hour; to probe deeper would be an inappropriate intrusion though the incredulity and hurt remain etched on his brow. Dispassionately he looks at me and after pausing says, ‘people ask me why she did that, I just don’t know’, the fragmentation and upheaval of early family life surely takings its toll however. He escaped the streets after a friend told him of the New Horizon youth centre near Kings Cross who referred him to a Centrepoint hostel. A period of a year and a half in three separate homeless hostels in Willesden, Camden and Swiss Cottage then followed until he finally secured a small bedsit with Paddington Churches Housing Association in Willesden. Two years after becoming homeless in the UK and a 19 year old Dickson finally achieves a degree of stability. No queues jumped, no drugs taken, no crimes committed, no benefit fraud, no complaints.
On Dickson’s questioning as to the purpose of the article and the magazine, I explain it attempts to portray the realities of the lives of those migrants new to London. ‘But I’m not a new Londoner’, he exclaims, half in jest though half making a serious point about the rightful seat he feels he now occupies in the big smoke. In his eyes, he is a Londoner pure and simple. A new Londoner might be someone who arrived in the last few months perhaps, such is the natural ebb and flow of the capital’s populace. In fact, are not our friends from the North chasing TV dreams and lines of coke in Soho as much deserving of the epithet ‘New Londoner’ as he? Economic migrants can come from Preston too.
Dickson currently works a thirty-hour week for John Lewis in Oxford Circus after completing a two-week work placement set up by The Connection at St Martin’s back in 2009 and having impressed with a canny ability to engage the customer. He’s not been on any benefit for 18 months now and his three years studying welding at the College of NW London forged more than anything a keen desire to graft and progress. When the opportunity at John Lewis came along he grabbed it with both hands. ‘I love my team, I love to work. I hate benefits, they get on my nerves, you don’t get enough money, they’re annoying. Better to be stressed at work than stressed on benefits….’ And with words like that Dickson could ironically be the darling of the Right whose natural political instinct might be to deny the contribution of those whose join us from overseas. ‘I’ve had only one day off and been late only twice in a year and a half’, the colour draining inexorably from the anti immigration Red Tops with every inspiring word of defiance and self help.
I move onto his experiences in the UK and look to explore any damaging influence of the negative press from certain sections of UK society. Dickson talks only of the negativity of those who don’t help themselves, claims to have never been stopped by the police and with an arresting, though perhaps slightly naïve innocence asks, ‘Why would they stop me? I’ve done nothing wrong?’ It’s reassuring to know that on this occasion the authorities are getting it right.
So how come this optimism? This confidence? Of course it’s ultimately all down to Dickson himself, his take on life, his appreciation of what he has and what he has escaped, but he knows he’s met some good people along the way. He attends a local church on Saturdays and for practical, rather than religious reasons converted from Islam to Christianity whilst in Uganda. It’s the part that other well-known religion has played that stands out however. ‘I played for three separate Football teams at one point and I help train one of Connection’s teams too. It made me positive’, he adds proudly. The best team I ask? ‘The Connection of course!’, said as much out of loyalty than anything else, the ‘C’ word complete with definite article carrying extra weight and conveyed with extra meaning. And Connected with this our London community Dickson truly is. Job done.
And so we finish with the inevitable questions about the future. Big house? Fast Car? Top job? Not so. ‘I want to get a UK passport, though I must pass the citizenship test first and save £1000 to pay for it’. I think of all our forebears arriving in London at some point in history from all corners of the globe and wonder if they’d have passed the Life In The UK test today. Dickson continues, ‘I also want to learn to swim, to ice skate and most of all to act!.’ Keeping it practical, simple, being realistic but with dreams still to pursue seems to be the way for Dickson and as we prepare to leave, the Connection press officer, Sophie, then poses the most important question of all? ‘But are you happy Dickson?’ ‘I’m getting there’, is his sanguine response. With an attitude like this, you wouldn’t bet against him.
