Thiyalini's Story

My name is Thiyalini Srikanthan.

I am a refugee from Sri Lanka.

I’ve never heard my father speak. When my mother was pregnant with me he got throat cancer and lost his voice. He had a pipe in his throat. My parents’ lives were very hard. My mother worked on a market stall and looked after my father. We didn’t have electricity. One day, me and my sister were making a table when she knocked over a gas lamp. The oil splashed onto her face and body and caught alight. She was so beautiful. Her whole body was burned.

During the civil war our village was often bombed. My friend’s house, three doors away from mine, was bombed. They were all killed. I saw their limbs on the road on my way home from school.

My husband grew up in the same village as I did. He was nine years older than me and had many injuries from fighting in the LTTE army. My parents didn’t want me to marry him but I loved him. He’s a good man. In the end they said ‘it’s your life, you can choose’. When we married he was in hiding from the LTTE because they wanted him to go back. He had to move away because they came to our village to look for him. He left when I was pregnant with our second child. I didn’t know where he had gone because it was dangerous for him to contact me. Sometimes I got calls from someone saying he was my husband asking me where I was. But I couldn’t be sure it was him. It could have been the LTTE looking for him, or the Sri Lankan army. It was very dangerous for me in my village.

The LTTE fighters and the Sri Lankan Army raped many Tamil girls and took their children. I couldn’t stay. But I needed permission from the Sri Lankan army to take the boat from Jaffna to Colombo. I was afraid. I tried to make myself look dirty before I spoke to them so they wouldn’t try to rape me. I didn’t tell them about my husband. There were many other people trying to make the same journey and we all had to wait to find out whether we could leave. We had nowhere to sleep except the road. Even if we had money we couldn’t buy food because the soldiers refused to sell us anything. I had brought some rice and sugar with me and we survived on this, eating a little of it each day. Those who ran out of food ate fruit from the trees. On the fifteenth day they let me and my children leave.

In Colombo I arranged passports and we went straight to India. At first a kind relative of my husband let us stay with her. But after twenty-five days she told us that she couldn’t keep us any longer. So we had to go to a refugee camp called Rameswaran. In the camp they gave us clothes and some food but it was not a home, people called it jail. There were thirty-five people sharing three rooms and three toilets. There was no running water, just a well. The roof was made of leaves, it leaked and didn’t protect us from the wind blowing off the sea. I was so glad when I found a job looking after elderly and sick people. With this money I was able to rent a room. After three years living in India my husband made contact with his relatives, who told me he had gone to England. My sister sent money to him to pay for a lawyer and he arranged for me and the children to join him. I went to the British Embassy in Madras to get the stamps in our passports.

When I arrived in England I was very happy. My life changed forever. Straight away I was certain I want to live here. There are lots of friendly Sri Lankan people where I live in Merton. My children go to swimming classes. My husband encouraged me to go to Merton College to learn English. On my first day I was very scared. Everyone was white. I couldn’t speak to them, but I’m much better now.