yorkshir eevening post, May 12, 2011
After finding safe refuge in Leeds, asylum seeker Elsa Temesgen and her daughter Betty faced a fight to stay.
As they prepare to become official British citizens, they tell Grant Woodward how they’re building a new life in the city.
ELSA Temesgen has been hitting the books hard. “I have studied 1,300 questions,” she says, warm dark eyes opening wide as if to indicate that her brain is full to bursting point.
“Some of them were very hard. Some questions even Britons did not know.”
The studying obviously paid off. Having duly passed her test on life in the UK, Elsa and her daughter Bethlehem – who friends call Betty – will next week swear allegiance to the Queen at an official citizenship ceremony at Leeds Town Hall.
It will mean they can stay in the country for good, marking the end of a traumatic journey that took them from Ethiopia to West Yorkshire, saw their home raided twice and included anxious stays in detention centres as they faced being sent back to Africa.
Betty, now 14, was just seven when she and her mum landed at Heathrow Airport in December 2004.
She remembers seeing snow for the first time. “I asked my mum what were those white things falling from the sky,” she recalls with a laugh. “I had never seen anything like it before.”
Full story on yorkshire evening post.
After finding safe refuge in Leeds, asylum seeker Elsa Temesgen and her daughter Betty faced a fight to stay.
As they prepare to become official British citizens, they tell Grant Woodward how they’re building a new life in the city.
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| Bethlehem Temesgen, known as Betty, and her mother El |
ELSA Temesgen has been hitting the books hard. “I have studied 1,300 questions,” she says, warm dark eyes opening wide as if to indicate that her brain is full to bursting point.
“Some of them were very hard. Some questions even Britons did not know.”
The studying obviously paid off. Having duly passed her test on life in the UK, Elsa and her daughter Bethlehem – who friends call Betty – will next week swear allegiance to the Queen at an official citizenship ceremony at Leeds Town Hall.
It will mean they can stay in the country for good, marking the end of a traumatic journey that took them from Ethiopia to West Yorkshire, saw their home raided twice and included anxious stays in detention centres as they faced being sent back to Africa.
Betty, now 14, was just seven when she and her mum landed at Heathrow Airport in December 2004.
She remembers seeing snow for the first time. “I asked my mum what were those white things falling from the sky,” she recalls with a laugh. “I had never seen anything like it before.”
Full story on yorkshire evening post.
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