Friday
March 9, 2012
March 9, 2012
Photo/STEPHEN MUDIARI/NATION Ms Agnes Galawu Nemakonde, who was deported from Britain, during an interview at the Nation Centre.
By ANGIRA ZADOCK zangira@ke.nationmedia.com
Posted Thursday, March 8 2012 at 19:43
Posted Thursday, March 8 2012 at 19:43
Since last October, she has been either in police custody or detained at airports in five different countries.
Ms Agnes Galawu Nemakonde has been at Dangavel Detention Centre in Glasgow, Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre, Maula Prison in Malawi, Lodwar GK Prison and Kileleshwa, Lodwar and Kakuma police stations.
She has also been detained at Harare, JKIA, Lilongwe and Johannesburg airports as well as at Kenya’s Immigration offices at Nyayo House.
It all started on October 17, 2011 when she got a call on her mobile phone and was told she was required by the Immigration department in Glasgow.
The following day, she was taken to Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre, where she was told officials had found both Kenyan and Malawian documents at her residence.
Consequently, they gave her a one-way tickets to Nairobi and Lilongwe. “The UK sent me back as either a Kenyan or Malawian,” she told Nation.
The same night she was put on a flight to Nairobi, arriving in the morning of October 19.
Never free
Since then, she has never been free. Ms Galawu was born on November 22, 1969 at St Mary’s, a black township outside Harare, and attended Chapwanya primary and secondary schools but dropped out in Form Three.
According to Ms Galawu, at the age of 12, she moved to the farm of Janie Smith Richard, who has since died. They became close friends and in 1997, she gave birth to a baby girl, Miriam Francesca.
In 1995, Mr Richard was asked to move out of Zimbabwe on claims he was supporting gays and owned too much land, but he refused to leave.
In December 2003, armed people raided the farm and killed her daughter, Mr Richard and her uncle.
She says after that she was taken to the UK by Mr George Keoki Barmister from Honolulu before she later moved to stay with Mr Michael Sterwart, who later succumbed to cancer in 2005.
She continued staying on the farm doing paintings and other artwork. In 2008 the immigration officials took her to Dangavel Detention Centre, where she stayed for one month, and later advised her to seek asylum.
In the process, she met Mr David Alexander, a retired teacher she had met earlier in Zimbabwe. In 2010, she married Alexander.
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