Lone Boy Asylum Seeker
Today we met a teenage boy who was an asylum seeker from a war torn African country. Although just a child, he had arrived alone without family, crossing the dangerous sea on a small boat. He told us he was lucky as the whole journey had only taken him 1 year, others he explained took 2-3 years. Whilst he had managed to reach our shores, his mother – his only surviving family – could not make the journey and was left in another African country as a refugee. He has no means to contact her.
We see many asylum seekers at our kitchen, but this is the first time we saw a lone boy. The boy has only been in the UK a few months, and lives in a basic room in a shelter with no access to cooking facilities, whilst he waits for his asylum application to be considered, which Croydon Council say typically takes 2-4 years on average for asylum seekers in Croydon.
We provided him hot meals, fruits packs, bread, tuna and other food items from the emergency box that didn’t require any cooking like pot oats, soup, peach tin, jam and biscuits.
There are many misconceptions about asylum seekers and refugees, often created by the government propaganda machine channelled through its compliant corporate media, in order to justify its draconian, often racist, policies against asylum seekers which at times break international law. In the following article we explore this subject.
Waiting time
With the mini heat wave London is experiencing the last few weeks we were concerned about our guests waiting in the heat for long periods, queuing to be served. So we carried out a quick time-and-motion study this week to determine the longest wait time a guest has to endure before being served. (Arriving early, before the advertised start time does not count).
Our queue is longest at the start when we open, so we measured how long it takes the last person in the queue when we open to reach the front of the queue to be served. We were considering perhaps giving out cold drinks to queuing guests whilst they waited in the heat, but we were quiet surprised, as it turned out that the longest wait is just over 5 minutes! It seemed longer as the queue progressed more people joined the queue, but the actual longest wait time was just 5 minutes.
There were slightly fewer guests this week compared to last week, probably due to the heat, but still even if the queue time was doubled, in our opinion it’s still not too bad.
I’ve witnessed another local food bank where guests haven’t reached anywhere near the front of the queue even after waiting over 50 minutes from the advertised start time, and their queue had roughly the same number of people as ours. I think this was due in part to opening late, but more due to time taken filling out paperwork to ensure no repeat visits within a month, and verification of IDs and benefit entitlement, etc. At Resistance Kitchen we insist that food is a human right, all are welcome at our kitchen every single week, no questions will be asked, no IDs checked, no registration needed, no vouchers or referrals required.
Other Interesting Posts:
Resistance Kitchen Update – Week 40
Resistance Kitchen Update – Week 39
Resistance Kitchen Update – Week 38
Resistance Kitchen Update – Week 13
Resistance Kitchen Update – Week 12
Resistance Kitchen Update – Week 10
Resistance Kitchen Update – Week 9
Resistance Kitchen Update – Week 7
Resistance Kitchen Update – Week 6
Resistance Kitchen Update – Week 5
Resistance Kitchen Update – Week 3
Resistance Kitchen Update – Week 2