Alice

Alice left Kyrgystan in 2003. She worked there as a professional musician, until one day she was arrested for playing at opposition rallies, tortured, and forbidden from playing in her orchestra. She was forced to flee, and came to the United Kingdom.

Since then she has been struggling to reassemble her life and to regain her health. She was made homeless during her asylum procedure, and after she obtained refugee status moved from hostel to hostel before finding permanent accommodation. She has found it impossible to continue her music, and difficult to get a job.

“Being an asylum seeker effects your whole life, your routine, it effects everything…because sometimes you want to do nothing, drop out of everything, you want to leave your courses or English courses or whatever, you want to go away, but to where?”