The Cost of Safety

Sunday noon. Church service ends and the congregation spills downstairs from their rented room in the school’s cafeteria for a mingle. It is an English speaking church, attracting internationals living in the Netherlands, brought together not just by the language but also by the unspoken and complicated bonds of a shared colonial past.

The children rush about, popping into the room from the yard returning periodically returning to the trays of cookies on offer. They giggle and laugh freely.

It is Kwendo’s fourth church service and as serendipity would have it, the asylum centre was just 200m away. The first time Kwendo came to church with his wife and two children, he braced for rejection. He didn’t know how they would be received.

Though the church had a United Nations assortment of mzungus and African congregants, the people in charge were unmistakably mzungu. His son made a spectacle of himself that first Sunday, fussing and whining until Kwendo burned to discipline him properly but the boy was met with an infuriating tolerance; the congregations’ calm indifference to his obedience shamed Kwendo more than the act itself.

They were now in Europe and it was different here. They had been warned by veteran asylum seekers that the children belonged to the King. A single report of a beating, and social services would take them. It made no sense. Punished for parenting your own child. This king had too much time on his hands.

Kwendo had run away from a tyrant, a wannabe king, in the only country he had known as home. They had left everything behind with a grand plan to make it to Canada where safety was assured. They crossed the border by road to Kenya, got visas which in itself was a miracle for a family that never boarded a plane and took the flight to Edmonton with a layover in Amsterdam.

But Amsterdam was where their fabricated conference story collapsed. Ten hours in a detention room, his son’s angst magnifying every suspicious glance, ended with their Canadian dream denied. His uncle who had lived there since the days of Nyerere tried vouching for them but it came to nothing. Their pleas were simple. We cannot go back, we will be killed. The solution, his uncle advised, was asylum. And so the Netherlands, a mere three hour layover, became a prison. They were shipped to Ter Appel, a name he’d never heard, right as the country erupted in an anti-immigrant frenzy. He was stuck in a country that was never in the picture.

A popular politician whose hair made him look like a white Wole Soyinka, spent his days tweeting venom about foreigners and Muslims. Then, due to overcrowding and thank God for the children, they were moved to a different centre, in a rich suburb near Amsterdam called Amstelveen, where they began the long agonizing wait to be processed.

It had been a crazy three months, trying to prove that they were genuine refugees. Yah, the conference was a fib but their lives were truly in danger. That one hour and a bit every Sunday was really the only time his family felt like they belonged. The church folk were actually nice, once you got over their big English of the nose. Some actually cared and had brought them things that they had not even asked for. Like the sweet old lady who brought them an old toaster.

Kwendo had never really interacted with white people outside a service catering experience. He had met many in the hotel in Serengeti where he once worked under another uncle who was a safari game driver. Now he had mzungus trying to befriend him, and he couldn’t understand why. He wondered if they could read his body language, smell his fears, his anxieties, the tension he carried on his shoulders. His whole posture told a story of an unchosen journey, forced by circumstance. Only five months ago, he was a national sports champion, known across the country. Yet, here he was just another refugee mopping up the charity of do-gooders.

His wife Neema had adjusted with a speed that stunned him, now deep in conversation with her newfound friends, sisters in Christ, not even minding their son. How could he relax? His child was acting like these others, the ones with solid homes to return to. It was as if the five-year old had deduced his own immunity and his father’s threats were now empty. And so, every Sunday, the boy clicked into overdrive.

Kwendo was surprised when the mzungu called David approached him. He remembered David being mentioned during the service. David and his wife were moving to the South of Spain to retire, and this was their last Sunday in the church.

David looked comfortable and relaxed. His hair gelled, a plump frame, rosy cheeks, starched khaki and the baritone that reminded Kwendo of the ring announcers in WWF.

He was also forward, introducing himself with firm politeness like that immigrant officer at Schiphol that had them detained,

“I don’t think we have met. My name is David” “Yes…eeh, I am Kwendo”

“Gwen dhow, I hope to Gawd I am not butchering it”

“Yes, yes, that is the one”

“Where are you from Gwen dhow” “I am from Tanzania”

“I know where that is” and he snapped his fingers, “Next to Zanzibar! Freddie Mercury, my wife, had a crush on him?”

Kwendo had no idea who Freddie Mercury was, it certainly did not sound like a Zanzibari name.

“How long have you been in the Netherlands?” “Three months”.

“We are just leaving, today is our last church service here for the foreseeable future and we are off to the South of Spain. Malaga. We are from England originally but we have lived in the Netherlands for the last 15”

“Okay, why are you leaving this safe country”,

“We loved it here, we had a beautiful life but we had to decide where we would like to die and so me and my wife brought out a map and we found a spot we all agreed on.

I would have loved to retire in Zanzibar or maybe Kinya? Actually, more Kinya. My mother lived there, in the 50s as a child before that terrible affair with the Mau Mau and they had to leave in a huff. Left everything that they had built behind. She vowed never to return. It is a shame what the imperial empire did, so many places around the world but who wants to deal with imperial baggage. That is why we chose Spain. Affordable and warm”.

It was as though David just needed an audience. He was asked questions and answered them himself.

“You have met my wife, have you? She leads hymns in church…aah, there she is” He pointed to a woman who looked taller and older. David was decidedly younger. “We’re not as young as we once were. She is older, by ten years though it is not obvious. We probably have another twenty decent years and then it’s downhill from there”.

Kwendo looked at her closely. They were the kind of couple who had pampered pets instead of children. But what stunned him was how David spoke about planning for death. As casually a man determining the lifespan of a new aluminum roof. How could anyone have such certainty? Such absolute control over the shape of their lives.

Kwendo had recently, and reluctantly surrendered to prayer. It was his wife’s domain, not his, but since their displacement began, he found himself on his knees each morning and evening at her prompting. And against all his instincts, the prayers seemed to be working.

In this church, they found a community of Africans who saw them as people first, not just refugees. It was a solace he clung to, because his greatest fear remained the rejection of his appeal and the deportation to a certain death. The fear had nearly materialised when his case was almost rejected until this young lawyer, on a whim, Googled his name. The search uncovered a single line in a Kenyan newspaper article that mentioned his persecution. His life had been upended by a stupid social media post mocking the president, yet it was saved by a single line written by a Kenyan on Twitter.

David was now telling him about the villa they had found and describing the life that awaited them in Malaga, the culmination of meticulous planning over the years. They had a will, end of life insurance and a final resting spot.

Kwendo was glad, David loved the sound of his voice and was no longer interested in his story. He hated talking about his situation. He didn’t like to bother people with his problems.

“Fun fact, they say in Malaga, you can look across the Mediterranean to Africa, how cool is that?”

For Kwendo, whose life was upended by a Tik Tok video barely four months prior, the conversation was surreal. He had never imagined becoming a refugee. He clutched his mug of coffee for warmth but found only a cold surface. Turning his eyes, he scanned the room for his son, that rascal, growing bolder each Sunday but the boy was nowhere in sight. What is he up to now? David had moved on and his wife remained in deep conversation with her sisters in Christ, utterly absorbed.

She was too at ease. His anxiety spiked until he found his boy, hogging a phone that was not his, shoulder to shoulder with a mzungu boy. His daughter was nearby, similarly huddled with an Asian girl over a screen. He felt very alone in a room buzzing with fellowship, their freedom agonizing. Kwendo looked into his mug. The coffee had gone cold. He walked to the urn, but it was empty. A profound sense of loss washed over him. He had escaped a country where one silly mistake could get you killed, only to be trapped in another where stopping your child from making one could break your family.