FOR the women coming to this country looking to make a better life for themselves it can be a terrifying experience. Betty Makoni talks to LOUISE HOWESON about her experience

 

BETTY Makoni’s heart raced when she heard the police knocking on the door of her home in Essex. In her native Zimbabwe, she was used to being harrassed and bullied by armed police because of her campaign work for sexual abuse victims. Betty, who now lives in Stanford-le-Hope, says: “When I answered the door to a smiling police officer in the UK I couldn’t believe it. That is when I began to realise how different it is in this country. “They asked me if they could help me and treated me like a human rather than interrogating me.”

The international human rights activist has worked tirelessly to help thousands of females who have been the victim of sexual abuse.

She launched the Girl Child Network in 1995 to combat the widespread rape of young girls in Zimbabwe.

Eventually Betty had to flee Robert Mugabe’s oppre-ssive reign in the late Nineties because the government didn’t support her.

In 2009 her husband Irvine, who is an engineer, got a job with EDF and they moved to the UK along with their sons Pinokuwanashe, Spencer and Mukudzeishe.

Although Betty learned to speak English from the age of six she still had a lot to learn about the culture in the UK.

The 41-year-old says: “I had my own stereotypes of what English people were like from the propaganda in Zimbabwe. “We were told the English were all imperialists and I had the idea that everyone was a celebrity and rich! “Then I saw that people here were also on benefits and poor like anywhere else in the world.”

Betty has continued the Girl Child network from her base in Essex and it now covers the USA, Canada, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Sierra Leone, South Africa and Uganda, among other countries.

Betty has worked hard to integrate herself into the local community so she is part of her new home.

She says: “When you move to a country you need to empower yourself with information and engage in your local community. “If you have been uprooted from your country you need to embrace a new culture and your own. It is about adapting to a new environment. We cannot exist in a separate box. “I met mothers going to church and taking my children to school and now I have a lot of different friends who I meet for coffee mornings and social events.” Betty believes that immigrant communities need to work harder to integrate.

“There can be animosity if people do not try to integrate. Language is about communication. If you cannot speak the language of the country then it is to your detriment. I learnt from six years old and I think it is very important.

“Calling groups of people ‘Zimbabwean communities’ and ‘Afghan communities’ is dangerous because it stereotypes people and when you look a little bit closer you see that everyone is different.”