Karina Cruz left behind all she knew in Colombia when she arrived in London as an eleven-year-old in the nineties. She was shy, scared to speak English, and bullied at school. Now, she is a community leader and a respected voice in Lambeth Council. But it didn’t come easy and the struggles are far from over.
Zac Liew
The ‘90s were traumatic for many Colombians but the children born there who fled to other countries with their parents lived through a new kind of trauma. This was especially true for children that were just starting secondary school, like Karina.
It could be said that year 7 is a good time to make new friends. The reality for many asylum seekers this age who don’t speak the language is that they have to sit and watch as others make friends and they drift quietly into the background.
“I didn’t know a word of English. I was put in my local school where there was a big Turkish community, the kids were speaking Turkish and English and for a while I didn’t know which was which,” Karina says.
Going to a deprived school in Tottenham made it even harder. “I saw kids with guns. At the time I told myself they were toys, but thinking back on it now I don’t think they were.”
Karina would move again just six months later, this time across the river to south London. She went to a Catholic school where she met other Latin American children in her situation and though this was a source of comfort, she found fewer reasons to fully integrate herself into British culture.
“I didn’t learn English properly because I was always with the Latino kids. The teachers left us to fend for ourselves, we used to sit at the back of the class and just chat. We didn’t really learn anything, and I left school with only a handful of GCSEs,” she says.
One of the teachers would embarrass Karina and her group of friends by reading out their full Spanish names in front of the class when calling out the register, which was met with laughter from the other children.
Somewhere along the way, things started to shift. Karina did a qualification in health and social care after school and became passionate about helping those in need. She met people who inspired her.
“There were a lot of older African women in my health and social class and because I was so young, they looked out for me. It was really nice,” she says. It wasn’t until she went to Anglia Ruskin university in Cambridge to study sociology and hispanic studies that she really got to know English people and their culture. But even then, feelings of not belonging came back strong.
“I remember my mum bringing Colombian cheese to Cambridge and my English flatmates complaining about the smell,” she says.
“I had never really met English people before. It was weird to be in my halls of residence with all these English people. And English still was hard, so understanding jokes and things like that was tricky.”
It’s no wonder then that Karina made better connections with other ethnic minorities. After university she worked her way up from doing a job in a call centre and now is a program manager in Lambeth Council in conjunction with Unicef, making sure children’s rights are being respected. The programme is called Child Friendly Lambeth.
These days Karina is a point of reference for Latin American immigrants in London and works to help immigrants and ethnic minorities assimilate into British society, drawing from her own experience.
Karina tries to go the extra mile with Latin Americans because she knows the next person who they go to for support might not be able to help them properly. She explains that the language barrier is a big problem and that many Latin Americans come to her for advice about immigration lawyers.
She has also developed the skills and the know-how to advise vulnerable groups including ethnic minorities across a range of everyday problems: “If anyone has a problem with housing, with schooling, I can help. People come and ask me what the best schools are if their kids have special educational needs. Even if it’s not Lambeth, people will contact me because they know that even if I can’t help, I’ll know someone who can.”
Even though Karina has worked her way up the ladder she is aware of the barriers in place for someone like her.
Six years ago council staff who were part of Lambeth Black workers wrote a letter to councillors in Lambeth, saying they felt “despair, humiliation, disappointments, rejection and loss of staff unity” as a result of racism at work.
Karina says the situation has moved forward since then, with schemes being launched to support ethnic minorities in their applications for roles within the council.
But progress is slow, she says.
(Photos provided to The Prisma by the interviewee and authorized for publication)
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