Helping Hands: Our Stories, Part Six
In 2018, I arrived in the UK as an asylum seeker. I was 22 years old and completely alone.
About a year later I found out about a local wrestling group on Facebook and I decided to try it. I contacted the coach and we set a date and time to meet. The walk to the gym is about 2-3 miles each way, it was hard for me to locate it at first.
I joined the gym and started wrestling 2-3 times a week. I thought that it would take a while for me to become good at it but it came naturally to me. Maybe it is because I have done sports all my life in my home country. Now it is my favorite hobby.
Wrestling makes me strong and feel like I can fight off whatever happens in my life.
I made a lot of friends here because of joining the wrestling group. I felt better when I found friends and started to do something that I enjoy.
When I first arrived in the UK, they put me in a shared house. I lived in a small, shared room with one other person. I really didn’t like my living situation. My roommate and I did not speak the same language and he snored all through the night.
After I was granted asylum I was on the waiting list for my own apartment for a year and a half.
I think wrestling gave me a lot of confidence to make it through this time. When you wrestle, you are not acting like a child and you have to prepare for every match on your own.
I finally got my own place during the middle of the COVID-19 lockdown, but when I went to visit it for the first time I found that it was in a very bad condition.
I had to leave the shared house that I stayed in until then and I didn’t have anywhere to stay while I was fixing my house. I was really worried about it.
Thanks to my friends they helped me to repair the house and worked with me almost everyday.
The only thing I can advise is try to make friends, because they will be your family when you need them to be.
In my home country, people love wrestling. If you are a good wrestler then you can be famous and your family, friends and country will be very proud of you.
My dream now is to become a famous motivational speaker. When you are well established you can help people that are unable to start something on their own.
I see motivational speaking as a way that I can help people to do what they want to do, the way that famous wrestlers inspire me to have confidence.
When I was alone and I didn’t know anyone I found The Comfrey Project. When I first saw The Comfrey Project I thought ‘okay, I found what I need at this moment.’ It means family that I don’t have here in England and a part of heaven where you find many friends.
I met many people from different cultures and we all helped each other during hard times.
My hope is to be a part of The Comfrey Project to share my positive messages and motivational speeches for our community.
We all have dreams, we just need to have enough encouragement to pursue them.
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The Helping Hands campaign was organised by a group of Comfrey volunteers who wished to share glimpses of stories that inspired them during the past year. Stories that highlight challenges, hopes and dreams unique to refugees, and others which are shared amongst humans regardless of background. A crowd-funding campaign has been created alongside this effort, in order to raise funds for The Comfrey Project to help us repair our polytunnel at the Windmill Hills garden and raise security on the site.