"THIS is my home. I'm Scottish now, even if I don't look it. I used to live in Somalia. There was a civil war. My family owned a shop and tribes kept invading us and taking our money. We had had enough and decided to leave, but there wasn't enough money for us all to come, so just me and my mum came. On the way we found out she was pregnant with my little sister. First we went to London then the Home Office brought us to Glasgow.
It felt weird when we arrived because we didn't know anything about this country: exciting and sad at the same time. I didn't want to leave my family. We don't know where my dad is now. It's difficult to keep in touch.
I get up at seven. I don't eat breakfast. I just get ready for school then catch two buses. If I was back in Somalia I don't think I would be going to school as I'm turning 16 in January, and I'm considered a woman. I should be married. Sometimes at school I hear that someone has been deported, usually by text from my friends or from a teacher. Our bilingual teacher is an angel, like a second father. He is in charge of the unit for all asylum seekers. At one point there were 23 nationalities in the school.
I always wondered, what am I good at? And now I know what I'm good at. I'm good at helping people. I know what it's like for a lot of these families. I have my papers now and I live in a nice area and I feel happy to go home, but to begin with I was living in the flats, in Scotstoun, and I was just scared. If we heard someone got taken, I didn't sleep at night. If we heard someone knocking on the doors, we were scared. Even my little sister could feel it.
I came up with the name The Glasgow Girls, which is the title of the documentary the BBC made about us. At first the idea was they would make a programme following me and my friend Rosa, but then suddenly one of our closest friends, Agnessa, got detained. She got dawn raided and the programme changed. It became about us trying to get her back, making phone calls, sending faxes, doing petitions in school. When the programme came out last August we got a lot of support and everybody started asking what we were all about. Originally the Glasgow Girls were just four of us -me, Agnessa, Evelina and Rosa - but eventually three more Scottish girls from this school joined.
We met Jack McConnell. We got invited to the parliament by Bill Butler in September and that was great, such an honour, and Mr McConnell wanted to have a private meeting with us. So we started talking to him and expressed the issues. I looked in his eyes and I begged him, "Please help us." He said he would see what he could do. He looked like he understood. He gave us so much hope and we had so much faith in him. But after that we went to the parliament again because the Vucaj family were taken away. That time Mr McConnell did not meet us. Saida Vucaj wanted to talk to him. I was upset. She is just a 13-year-old girl and she was saying please help us. It was a horrible feeling. We've pictures of us crying from then.
I really thought he would help us. But obviously there's no help from him. He didn't just let me down, he let me and all the other asylum seekers down.
I remember in Somalia hearing my grandmother screaming. Sometimes she would take me and lock me in a room and I would just wonder why she was doing that. I would hear screaming outside. When I first came to Glasgow I had depression. I had to take antidepressants. I was all over the place because we heard that my grandfather had died. And that destroyed me, because he was my dad really. I used to live with my grandparents. I heard that his only wish was to see me before he died. I was his little angel.
I can't explain how I feel when a family is taken away. It is more than horrible. Every few weeks someone goes: about four or five families from our school since August. When Saida Vucaj was taken away I was so angry. I fell on the toilet floor crying. It was so unfair. This weekend we had an asylum seeker taken away. We went to see her last Sunday at Dungavel detention centre and it was the most horrible experience. There is barbed wire and electric fencing everywhere. They call it a home. What kind of home is that?
Tonight I'm going to just go home and spend time with my family because my mum moans that I never do. I'm always out. The only time she sees me is on television or in newspapers. My spare time is spent doing Glasgow Girls stuff. At school lunch breaks and intervals we get together. Even the weekends and after school we just go to public meetings and do protests. It does get a little bit in the way of my studies, and I'm trying hard to work on both of them. But how can I concentrate on my studies if one of the people who I know so well has been taken away? I can't just sit down and do nothing."
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