When I was ten, my parents decided to leave Somalia. We split up, and my mother took the seven oldest children while I and my two youngest went with my father. I was the eldest, so it was often I who had to look after my siblings. It took us two years to travel to Denmark and three years before we were all reunited. I have so many horrible memories that I am still trying to forget. I remember a pregnant woman who died from dehydration. We sat with her body all day before they carried her out of the bus.

I grew up quickly. I got married at 16, I became a mother at 17, and I was divorced at 19. Two years ago the doctors found out that my kidneys are no longer working the way they should. This was hard to accept.

My family doesn’t live nearby, so being a single mother and ill is sometimes too much to handle. My son actually thought that I worked at the hospital because I have to go there for dialysis treatment three times a week. When I was young I didn’t reflect on the meaning of life. After I became ill I have become more religious. My mother showed me the way. Her last lesson to me was to be grateful for life and to hope. She died in December after having been diagnosed with liver cancer only three months previously. Life can be really tough, but there is always hope ahead, and I know that one day I will get a call from the hospital announcing that they have a kidney for me. I am not foreign here in Denmark, but I am not Danish either. I really just want my son to become a man.

28 years / female / single / child / sick leave / Søborg / from Somalia / came to Denmark in 2006 / residence permit in 2007