Alice Chigumera

Born: 15th May 1965

Harare, Zimbabwe

Date of interview: 31st May 2006

Once your children arrived in the UK did you approach the council to see if they would help you with housing?

I didn't approach the council in, I didn't know that I had all those privileges, one way or the other and I think again also because of pride, being somebody who had always worked on my own and done things I never, I can never say like a refugee like what they say in the newspapers that refugees drain the benefit system and all that, I sustained myself with my two children with my carer's money, helped by my friend to baby-sit when I go to work and did everything on my own. I managed to save because my job was quite stressful, the one I was doing.

I say to myself I'd rather move in Reading there's vacancies of carers in Reading and decided that's the only thing I could do, I couldn't break the system in Foreign Affairs, one way or another through my experience, I knew that I would not get a job there, so I just went with the little that I could get at least to butter my bread, so that's how I moved to Reading