Financial Times FT.com

Refugees need lessons for life

ByJames Fontanella and Tom Burgis

Published: January 24 2008 15:46 | Last updated: January 24 2008 15:46

Having endured militia attacks, weeks in hiding, an escape to a cold, distant country, years of peripatetic near-destitution and most recently a Christmas in detention, Adesole Adefowoju now faces a new problem: boredom.

At Yarl’s Wood, the detention centre for asylum seekers near Bedford in the UK, the Nigerian 10-year-old spends her days in the same lessons as her sister, Deby, seven, and brother Dapo, six. “They give us multiplication and even the five-year-olds can do them,” she sniffs.

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