Mother’s courage gave children a new start

In the latest in our series of stories about inspiring mums, Chris Bond talks to mother-of-five Mammy Davis about her remarkable journey from Liberia to Yorkshire.
Mammy Davis a refugee from Liberia, with two of her five children in SheffieldMammy Davis a refugee from Liberia, with two of her five children in Sheffield
Mammy Davis a refugee from Liberia, with two of her five children in Sheffield

IN 1990, while many 13-year-old girls were playing with make-up or swooning over posters of New Kids On the Block on their bedroom walls, Mammy Davis was running for her life.

Liberia is Africa’s oldest republic, but 24 years ago the country was on the verge of economic collapse and embroiled in a ruinous civil war as rebel militia overran much of the countryside and seized control of the capital.

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Amid the ensuing violence and turmoil tens of thousands of people were forced to flee their homes, including Mammy and her family. During the chaos she became separated from her mother, but worse was to follow. “I was captured by the rebels. They took me into Sierra Leone and killed my dad in front of me, it was terrible. They wanted to kill me but instead they took me to be one of their girlfriends,” she says.

As for her mother, she doesn’t know where she is or even if she’s still alive. It’s almost impossible to imagine the traumatic effect this must have had on a young teenager and not surprisingly Mammy still finds it difficult to talk about today. By the following year the bitter fighting had spread into neighbouring Sierra Leone. Mammy, along with a group of friends, managed to escape, although she was now pregnant. “I walked from Sierra Leone to Guinea for three weeks and I stayed in the bush all day and night.”

They evaded the rebels and reached the border having made their way across an inhospitable landscape home to dangerous animals including snakes. “We met some other people along the way because the fighting was everywhere and people were just running away.”

By this time the international community had intervened and refugee camps were set up by the UN. It was while staying at one of these camps that Mammy, who now had a son, John, met her partner, Jack Davis. He, too, had fled the war in Liberia. “We stayed a long time in the camp and after a while we started to integrate ourselves with the culture. They spoke different languages like French and Kissi and we learned how to speak these.”

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Together they had two children, called Patricia and Princess Diana. “My partner was listening to the news when he heard she died. I was shocked because she was a very nice lady, but he said when you get pregnant if it is a girl we should call her Princess Diana.” So the following year they did.

The family left the camp and went to live in a town but in 2000, just as their lives appeared to be settling down, the fighting in Liberia and Sierra Leone spilled over the border.

“The Guineans started treating us badly and because the rebels came from Liberia they said we were spying. But we weren’t spies and I said ‘some of you know me, I’ve spent much of my life in Guinea.’ I told them I hadn’t lived in Liberia since 1990 so how could I be a spy?”

However, the situation worsened and Mammy and other refugees started getting stopped in the street and strip-searched by soldiers. Once again she and her family were forced to flee but this time she was separated from her son who ended up being taken by neighbours into Sierra Leone to stop him falling into the hands of rebel soldiers. “It was a long distance and we had to walk a long way, day and night. I was pregnant again but the baby didn’t survive because it had been a very difficult journey.”

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Despite such heartbreak she had to keep going for her young family and they ended up in a UN camp not far from the border with Mali. “They gave us rations so we had oil but no sauce to cook with and we had to go into the bush and speak to the local people to get some potato leaves and cassava leaves.”

While at the camp Mammy and the other women were encouraged to learn new skills and she turned her hand to making African clothes. Then in 2004, she was among the first people to be given safe haven in the UK as part of a resettlement scheme set up between Tony Blair’s government and the UN refugee agency. She, along with her partner Jack and their daughter Princess Diana, were flown to London before heading to Sheffield.

Not surprisingly it took her a while to acclimatise to her new surroundings. “It was strange to begin with, the culture was very difficult. It was very busy and everybody in the morning passed by on their way to work. But the Refugee Council were very good and helped us in the first year.”

She began trying to trace her son who she hadn’t seen in nearly five years. Thankfully he was still alive and in 2006 he and Patricia, who had also remained in Africa, were reunited with the rest of the family in Sheffield. “I was so happy and it was a big relief because you want to have your family with you.”

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Mammy began building a new life for her family and was delighted when she got her first job as a cleaner with the council. “It was six months before I got my first job and I was so excited because it meant I had my own money and every day when I woke up I had something to do.”

She stopped working when she pregnant again but now that her two youngest daughters, Rachel eight, and Josephine, six, are both at school she’s returned to work. “I’m working with great people, I work in a special needs school as a cleaner and I do another cleaning job at a solicitor’s office.”

However, her family’s new life in Sheffield hasn’t been plain sailing. Mammy says that John, who is now in his 20s, was traumatised by his childhood experiences. “He finished high school but he didn’t go to college he went to prison for attempted robbery.”

She says the Home Office is in the process of trying to deport him although an appeal has been lodged against the decision. She says he regrets what he did and just wants a second chance. “When I go to work now he’s the one who picks up his little sisters from school and he helps me a lot.”

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Today, the 38 year-old, looking resplendent in a colourful dress and gravity-defying gilded headwear, has brought her two youngest children to Highfield Trinity Church in Sheffield, for a special gathering of refugees from across the city to mark the 10th anniversary of the Gateway Project, which has helped resettle some of the world’s most vulnerable refugees.

Mammy, who has now split up with her partner, became a British citizen in 2012 and has no plans to return to live in Africa. “My life is here now, I have no family in Liberia,” she says.

Both Rachel and Josephine were born in Yorkshire and haven’t experienced the trauma and hardships their older siblings endured as young children, and despite the uncertainty surrounding John the family faces a brighter future than at one time ever seemed possible.

Seventeen-year-old Patricia, who struggled to read and write when she first arrived, has caught up and is now in college, while Diana, 16, is finishing high school this year. “Patricia is a hairdresser, Diana wants to be a nurse, Rachel says she’s going to be a doctor and Josephine says she wants to be a lawyer,” Mammy says, proudly.

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Like any mother, she hopes her children’s dreams will one day come true. “I really give thanks to everybody who accepts refugees all over the world because they give people like me and my family the chance of a new life.”

She also constantly reminds her children how fortunate they are to be here. “I wish I could have come here as a teenager in 1990 because my life could have been better. That is why I always talk to my children and tell them that they need to give back to the community and respect people here, because this is our home.”

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