Elly Omondi Odhiambo is from the Kanyamwa clan of the Luo tradition,a people of Western Kenya.
He has studied,worked and lived in Northern Ireland for nearly twenty years.He has researched and co-written several migrant-themed commissioned reports including Africans West of the Bann and Voices from the global South. He worked on the social and health care needs of migrants in northwest Ireland.
In Kenya, Elly worked did research work and capacity building promoting corporate responsibility and philanthropy.
He wrote a play Did You Come By Boat(2010), which toured the Northwest including the Playhouse theatre in Derry and received good reviews. He has written hundreds of articles in local and international media.He previously contributed opinion articles to the Sentinel in Derry under the tag Out of Africa. Elly has co-founded and chaired migrant community organisations in the North of Ireland.
He currently works in mental health and contributes weekly articles in Belfast Media Group.
THE Stormont breakthrough – aka the Windsor Framework – may be a song to the ears of some, but not all immigrants.
THE question of segregation of schools in Belfast will continue but not for a very long time. This is because of the ever-changing diverse cultures in the city. Belfast has a fairly big population of white people from eastern Europe and other places outside Northern Ireland. Africans make up nearly 2% of the population of this city, according to the 2021 census. Then of course there are Indians, Pakistanis and Chinese, not to mention people from the Middle East. Some of their children have language challenges because English, Irish and Ulster Scots are the three main languages in the faith-based schools in the North – it cannot continue like this. Schools are supposed to be places of universal ideas and education. So more attention needs to be paid to refugee and asylum seeker families in Northern Ireland. The more we have in numbers of these new future citizens the better. These new populations are neutral about sectarian profiles in the classroom. For those who have escaped conflict there is one thing they want: a peaceful coexistence between them and their new neighbours. This includes what happens in school. There is no reliable data yet about the faiths of newcomers in Belfast and other towns. Is this important? Yes,to a certain level, as it can be used to carry out policy decisions about inclusive education. The children who are new have rights just like those who were born in the North. So kudos to any policymaker who wants to see a Northern Ireland that lives peacefully because of a neutral army of immigrants – the naysayers don't know what they are missing. There are still many schools in the North that have no black children. Some don't have any white migrant kid either. Should we expand places of learning in order to guarantee children a place in local schools? Yes please, the more bricks and mortar the better; also more affirmative action in the education sector from primary school to higher education. We are building achievers if we do this because these children are sometimes coming from a wealth of education that Northern Ireland can only benefit from. Some people argue that government has no money to increase the number of pupils in primary or students in higher learning. They also attack affirmative action by saying that instead of increasing equal opportunity to children it gives too much advantage to minority communities. How these advantages are measured is a mystery. Once they are inside the Northern Ireland education system the youth from around the world need to be mentored to make the North a better place. Their culture is needed – performance in education, creativity, inventing great products for the future, excellence in sports, all these are benefits that will continue increasing with migration.ellyomondi@gmail.com
THIS column has been receiving feedback from those who are interested in the subjects of community relations, racial harmony, diverse cultures, migration, politics, food, education, religion, music – the list is endless.
ACCORDING to the 2021 Census, the population of people born outside the North of Ireland was 256,900. This is a good size of people, 13.5 per cent of the actual population of the North. I am sure most progressively-minded people and right-thinking employers in Belfast and beyond cannot wait until we get a good half a million non (Northern) Irish people living and working here. This increase will bring more prosperity, investment, talent, cultural richness and many more global benefits. I have recently read the thoughts of West Belfast politician Tony Mallon who is crying buckets for the end to what he calls uncontrolled migration. He takes a liberal perspective on some political issues, for example a nationalist-unionist collaboration, and that has been his way of running for public office during elections, albeit as an independent. Tony speaks for a moderate way of thinking, that nationalists and unionists do not need to spend time being politically divided, instead they should smell the coffee together. Thumbs up Tony! Now, how does that co-existence turn into an opposite agenda when foreigners are concerned?
FOR 25 years, Patricia Byrne has been shaking up the theatrical space with theatre that is mainly directed at social issues, not just entertainment for the sake of it. Her work as co-founder and artistic director of Sole Purpose Productions has put the City of Derry and Ireland firmly on the map.
THE more we see and hear it, the more we should talk about it so that one day it will be a minority pursuit. There is institutional racism in multiple sectors of the economy in the North. It is actually embarrassing to stop talking about it for fear of being labelled ‘chip on your shoulder’ or nonsense like that.
PEOPLE smugglers earn anything from £2,500 to £15,000 for every person they ship into Ireland or the UK. It is a very lucrative business.
ON Sunday past, the curtain came down on the life of one of Northern Ireland’s most illustrious intellectual powerhouses, Annie Yellowe Palma. Anne had a late diagnosis with cancer in August of this year and was given a short time to live.
NOTHING really big has happened to justify Brexit. For example, we haven't seen any saving of the sterling pound economy from wastage. This was one of the major claims of the people who wanted the United Kingdom to leave the EU.
THE legal situation in the case of the young Belfast boy Noah Donohoe is still not convincing. Some politicians have made the right decision to oppose the PSNI’s formal request that was granted by the courts that they hold on to sensitive information surrounding the death of Noah. Councillors in Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council passed a motion with no dissent that the public interest clause should be withdrawn from Noah’s case. The police have consistently argued that the release of this information may harm public interest and therefore they asked the court to maintain something oddly called public interest immunity.
IT is one of those things in life that you believe that you have woken up on the right side of everything, that you have made the right decision to leave your country of birth with excitement to join a university in Northern Ireland – an experience many in struggling economies will not have. You realise that nothing is constant. This is the feeling a soft-spoken Nigerian student had when she landed in Belfast in this, 2022. Accommodation was a problem, as it is for many people now in the North. At her new house, an Airbnb, she was welcomed by two dogs. The student was reassured that those dogs don’t bite, they are timid fellows. She is not afraid of canines anyway, but in her culture, pets living in the house is not as common. The landlady was friendly the first few days, after that it turned very comical and then mean. The racist language towards her was repetitive and unbecoming. Should she stay on or leg it? There is no better way of showing your disappointment than by being straight about it. So she told her landlady that enough was enough, no more humiliation. No-one likes to be bullied and an ignorant, racist verbosity can define a person. It happens like this: Some people can be practising discrimination in their private sphere but the people who know them, family and friends, will not believe that they are indeed men or women of the ‘I don’t like you because of the colour of your skin’ persuasion. This is why it is difficult to fight racism, because it is contained in closets that others don’t know about. There is a hierarchy of racism and discrimination. Not many people in the North will want to be identified by either. So what is the problem? Burden of proof, racism in the closet and other competing campaigns against inequality informs the future of peace and quiet for the victims who have to endure this skin-deep thing. To say that racist feelings are perceptions by the victim is a lie that has been built over generations by politicians and governments who will go the extra mile to rely on the burden of proving whether what was uttered or done was offensive. There is an African saying from the Shona community and it goes: “A womb is an indiscriminate container, it bears a thief and a witch.” Fair enough, that sounds graphic, but it also means that same racist human being was not born like that. So no excuses. International students bring over £26 billion to the economy in Britain and Northern Ireland, these students bring big investment. We have seen new buildings mushrooming in university towns all over and it is a record effort being carried out to satisfy the needs of the students. I am glad that the student finally got a university apartment to live in. •WE know that the Earth provides for those who nourish it. It is said that the war of the stomach is fought and won with the hoe or tractor. But is it that simple? Not in the Horn of Africa, which has been experiencing extreme hot weather and famine in the last three years. This column spoke about the famine in East Africa and four Irishmen – Fra, Francis, John and Robert – showed what the Irish people are known for the world over: Humanitarianism. They said that they wanted just one person or one family to benefit from a donation of theirs that would face-off with this scandalous famine. Their gift to the dying poor will go to a family with very urgent needs. •GOVERNMENT, oh dear! Can the St Andrews Agreement of 2006 be recalled or the people consulted now so that a government can be established? There is no meaningful devolution now in Northern Ireland because no-one seems to care about it any more. On the other hand, it is fantastic that the slated Stormont elections will not happen because the people have said that it will be a waste of money. Some of us are looking for jobs to do, to make things better here for you and for me, but others don’t want to look themselves in the mirror and say, enough is enough let’s do some work. •All self-respecting people in society must continue to demand justice for Noah Donohoe and his family.
“MY mother worked as an NHS nurse for 45 years after she left Mauritius for the UK in the 1960s. My father (of Asian origin) left Kenya about the same time, thanks to the offer of a British passport during the political turmoil in Kenya.” That's Suella Braverman in her own words. She is the British Secretary of State for the Home Office. This is the department that is in charge of making decisions about the lives of immigrants who have come here on different types of visas and, of course, refugees and asylum seekers. Braverman went on to say: “The best thing about being an MP is the chance to serve and say ‘thank you’ to the country I love, which has offered my family and I so much security, opportunity and warmth.” I wonder if it is selective memory that has nothing to do with the Minister because it was her South Asian parents who migrated from Africa and not her, so being of a second or third generation, she is immune from being criticised about her recent comments on sending people to Rwanda while their asylum cases in the UK are being attended to.
KASHINDO David, what a force in the boxing ring – and in real life! Kashindo has never lost a fight since entering competitive boxing in Belfast two years ago. He has nothing to defend because no-one is coming for him yet.
THERE is something deadly happening in Africa right now, truth be told – let’s call it the Great Political Famine.
ONE needs an encyclopaedia now to know the cultures of Ireland – North or South. Something called the Irish culture is now debatable in every sense of the phrase.
