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'I fled hell - now at least I have hope'

Angel tries not to think about the icy November nights she spent living on the streets of Beijing. She was six months' pregnant, recently widowed and with a two-year-old son to take care of.

Her life in Rwanda had just been shattered. She had lost her home and her husband, forced to flee to a foreign country where no one understood her.

In 2003, Angel (not her real name) escaped her war-ravaged African country with her child after a mob entered her home and she, a Tutsi, was separated from her husband, a Hutu.

That was the last she saw of him.

Thus began a journey that tested the strength, courage and endurance of the former hairdresser to the limit.

A friend managed to get her a visa to China and Angel headed for Beijing, to claim asylum with the United Nations refugee agency there.

Angel didn't speak English or Chinese.

What money she had was soon spent on hotel bills.

An appeal to the UN for cash to spend on food and shelter was denied.

She spent two cold days on the street, suffering from asthma and fretting about the effects of no food on her unborn child.

On the third day, desperation made her bold.

'I went to the UNHCR office and just sat there with my son from morning until night and refused to move,' she says.

'They told me to go home and come back the next day but I told them I have no home, no country. This was my home because it was warm and I will stay even if I have to die here.'

Her obstinacy was rewarded with accommodation and a cash allowance. Soon afterwards she gave birth to an underweight baby with 'eyes all yellow'.

'He was so sick for two weeks, had chest problems, he did not know how to suck milk, he was vomiting, he was cold - I didn't get to see him for two weeks after he was born.'

Her now energetic younger son busily carries a bag double his size in and out of the room. His name, which also cannot be revealed, means 'Gift of God'.

But Angel's application for refugee status was rejected, even as a similar request from a diplomat from her country was approved. Penniless and unable to care for her children, Angel felt she had begun to 'lose my mind'.

'One day, I just went to the UNHCR office with my babies, I told my older son to take care of his brother and I left without them,' she says. 'I did not know where to go and wandered the whole day. I left my bag somewhere and lost my passport.'

She called the UNHCR office and asked how her children were but refused to return to get them. Eventually, the office agreed to place her children in a temporary home. Alone, she felt emboldened to challenge the authorities and narrowly avoided being jailed before she finally found a Catholic priest who was able to help her.

'He told me to go to Hong Kong and apply to the UNHCR there and he gave me money for my ticket,' she says.

She got a new passport under a new name and a new date of birth, retrieved her children and made her way to Hong Kong.

'I got to Hong Kong airport but immigration officers told me there is no UNHCR here,' she says.

'I told them I had lost my passport because I did not want them to send me back to Beijing or to my country.'

She lived in Chek Lap Kok airport's transit area for two weeks before an airport employee offered to get her a phone number for the UN office. She was interviewed and granted refugee status within days, on June 7, 2004. But one day she went to the UNHCR office only to encounter the man who had rejected her application in Beijing.

'I thought to myself 'why are they playing with my life?',' she says. Armed with a new identity, she pretended not to know him.

Angel and her children are waiting to be resettled in Canada and, having picked up English to near-fluency. She is looking forward to a job, education for her children and safety.

'I don't try to remember what happened to me. My older son has also forgotten ... he used to cry at the sound of firecrackers because they sounded like the guns in my home country.

'My friend sent me a CD of my wedding and I show it to him to show him his father, but he does not remember,' she says.

'Anyway, now I have hope. I can do anything I want.'

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