В Глазго открыли центр, где беженцы учатся говорить на местном диалекте

A group of refugees are going the extra mile to familiarise themselves with their new lives in Glasgow. Learning the King’s English won’t always cut it on these streets. And so these women and their children who use the Bath Street premises of Refugee Sanctuary Scotland are learning Received Weegie. Ronald ‘Ronnie’ Tagwireyi, the newly-appointed chief executive of Refugee Sanctuary Scotland, came here via a rather traumatic and circuitous route from Zimbabwe, but has already discerned what extra linguistic demands Glasgow can ask of its new citizens. “We give them a crash course in Ouija,” he says. At this point, I become slightly alarmed, but try not to show it. I know it can get a bit lively out there on the streets of my city, but is it really necessary to invoke the spirits of the departed to help them get to grips with their new surroundings? “Things like ‘I’m away up the road’,” says Mr Tagwireyi, “and ‘I’m brand new, by the way’ and ‘that’s me off then’.” Read more: - My niece with Down syndrome has achieved something no one in our family ever has - Masked gangs, drugs and disorder: what the BBC got wrong about Glasgow - Memorial commemorating Highland women who fought to save their land unveiled - I never got a PhD — after the Jason Arday Cambridge row, perhaps I should have tried Ah, it’s the Weegie he’s talking about. And so, we start exchanging classic Weegie-isms, even though the term was originally coined by Irvine Welsh and his Leith confreres as a collective disparagement of the ways of the west. I’m absolutely chuffed, so I am, that refugees and asylum-seekers who come to Glasgow are being instructed in our jaggy semantics. I tell him that if they want to add an extra shot of Glaswegian to the mix, they can sometimes add an extra “… by the way”. I’m enchanted at the thought of a newly-arrived chap from the DR Congo or Ethiopia ordering a fish supper from the Blue Lagoon across the road and deploying his new language skills. “Could I get a pickled onion with that, big man, by the way, by the way?” Mr Tagwireyi first arrived in the UK from Zimbabwe in 1991 on a Commonwealth visa and flourished in a decent job with BT. Following the suspicious death of his father and his subsequent criticism of the punitive Mugabe regime, he sought asylum in Britain. However, his claim was refused, with no reason given. His life began to unravel. He lost the right to work, suffered homelessness and fell into the clutches of addiction. He turned to petty crime and had short stretches in Pentonville and Wandsworth. It was a spiral of hopelessness that continued for almost two decades, trapped inside the asylum system. A fortuitous conversation with a kindly prison officer changed his life. “This man said to me, ‘You’re not a criminal, Ronnie. You can turn things around.’ And so, he entered rehabilitation, started volunteering and became a respected figure in the refugee community, holding senior roles with organisations including the Scottish Refugee Council and Migration Exchange. He’s a charismatic and eloquent man who wants to use his past experiences to help those who are seeking to build a new life in Scotland. Last year, he was granted limited leave to remain in the UK. The Refugee Sanctuary’s Bath Street hub has been operational since early this year and, on my visit, there were around 20 women practising yoga. In June, more than 500 refugees and asylum-seekers visited this place. They get practical support to strengthen their claims, find decent accommodation and stay safe in an environment that’s recently become more hostile. The hub runs digital skills training, yoga, art workshops, English conversation classes and football sessions. And, of course, unlocking the esoteric mysteries of the Glaswegian tongue. The space covers almost an entire floor and thrums with activity, swaddled in a tranquil atmosphere that contrasts with the tumult fanned by the opportunist casual racism that’s recently settled in parts of lowland Scotland. These women want to make a positive contribution to their new land and to learn its ways. This place helps them do that by giving them a sense of purpose, maintaining their dignity and according them the basic respect they’re due as part of the human family. Many of them have fled untold horrors and endured challenges beyond our cosseted western imaginations. I tell him I’ve sensed a heightened level of threat and hostility towards asylum-seekers and refugees here in the last few years. And that this has jolted many of us out of our comfortable complacency about Scotland being a welcoming country where the tides of racism sweeping parts of England could never take root. We talk about the concept of ‘integration’, which is often regarded as a one-way street. And yet many of those in the refugee and asylum-seeker communities have a suite of traditions and received wisdom from which indigenous Scots and Brits could learn something. They look after their families. “You know, I'm so very proud that in the societies that many of our families have come from, we don't put our elderly in care homes. We look after them. Integration is a two-way street. If you don’t feel welcome, you’re less likely to try to belong. So many people don’t know many of the reasons why people come over. “Let’s talk about climate change. Here, I'll speak for Africa, where I'm from. Many countries are enduring temperatures of 45 degrees Celsius for six or seven months of the year and that’s with no rain. People in the West think climate change doesn't really matter to Africans because we’re used to the heat. But now, we can't grow anything.” He could have added that the major titans of western capitalism are among the largest climate offenders, creating a vast organism that demands endless growth, driven by companies that burn cheap fossil fuels and spend fortunes persuading governments to look the other way. The earth’s natural resources in Africa and South America are easy prey for western capitalists who know they can pay local workforces barely subsistence wages. This, in its turn, feeds a hunger to reach the West and a country like Britain. “The internet and social media have made the world a much smaller place,” he says. “I'll give you an example. If you come from a village in Congo or Zimbabwe, your dad has that one special shirt that he wears on special occasions. “But his son can come over here, start working and get three shirts for 20 quid down the Barras, which he sends home. In one moment, someone’s life has changed. He does the same again next month and the month after that. How does that look? I’ll tell you how it looks. It looks like this is the land of milk and honey. “And these things can make such a difference in my country, Zimbabwe, whose economy is just flat. If it weren't for the diaspora, loads of people would be hit. And that’s not to mention the ravages of Aids, which left so many children with no parents. “And then there are the endless wars in places like Sudan and Afghanistan, which will always prey on young men. People have always travelled for a better life. The human story is one of constant migration.” There’s a sense too that Brexit, the tone of the campaign and the rise of Reform UK have given people official permission to say things like: “This is my country and I want you out.” It’s something that was unacceptable 10 years ago. We share a laugh at the irony of people who like wearing masks proclaiming that they don’t like Muslim women wearing hijabs. “You need someone that has a voice, because our voices are being drowned out,” he says. “They are being fed a false narrative. When I was in the system, I was in Shettleston and got to know the guys there. And they would say, ‘Oh, it’s not you, Ronnie, but them’. “And they’ll show you their phone and on their feed there’s a story about an asylum-seeker from Uganda caught stealing a bottle of wine in Tesco in Portsmouth. That algorithm just keeps hitting you. It's crossed all those hundreds of miles and that's all you see. It preys on people’s fears and ramps them up. “It’s really sad and that makes me even more determined to make this place feel welcoming. You can come in and sit down and have a coffee. There's a nice atmosphere and feel some love. Simply having a roof over your head is not enough because you’re not allowed to work.” It’s why this place in the heart of my big city with its big heart is operating as a sanctuary, literally a place of protection. Many asylum-seekers will spend hour upon hour waiting on a letter from the Home Office that might not come for many years. Here, they can learn skills and practise a new language that can make their applications more robust. “They’re just thinking, thinking, thinking and anxious,” says Ronnie. “And their mental health suffers. So this is a place where you can come in and where there is no judgment and people can support each other through challenges.” And where they can learn to speak Glaswegian, the light that endures in the darkest places.