A time for sharing joy and sadness

Co Meath's former holiday camp is playing host to more than 500 asylum seekers this Christmas, writes Kitty Holland in Mosney

Lahnon Adamolekun (35) and his wife Kateryna (30) are looking forward to their second Christmas together in Ireland, with mixed emotions. Though they will spend Christmas in Mosney, the new year will see them take their next step in Ireland, in a new home - a rented apartment in Donabate, north Co Dublin. The couple - he is from Nigeria and she from the Ukraine - have called the former Butlins holiday camp near Julianstown, Co Meath, "home" for the past two years.

The camp, which until 2000 opened between May and September as a destination for 200,000 Irish holidaymakers a year, is now open year-round.

Its 21st-century residents are asylum seekers. The biggest asylum accommodation centre in the State, it can house up to 800 people at a time. As the number of people being admitted to the asylum system has fallen over the past two years, however, and the processing of their applications has accelerated, the numbers in centres such as Mosney have fallen.

Smaller centres are being closed and residents moved to bigger centres such as Mosney. It currently houses just over 500 people from about 20 different countries and most of them are families with children.

Sitting in the bright, airy Kosy Kitchen canteen, the Adamolekun couple are in buoyant form. Lahnon and Kateryna explain they met in the Ukraine about seven years ago, where Lahnon says he was travelling.

They married four years ago and due to persecution, says Kateryna, they fled. She came to Ireland first, in 2003, with their daughters Karen (6) and Lorraine (2) and she has since got refugee status. Lahnon joined them last year and they have applied for family reunification to allow him to stay.

They also now have a third daughter, Hillary (seven months). They had hoped to celebrate Christmas in their new apartment though waiting until the new year has its advantages, smiles Kateryna.

"It is very nice here though and our first daughter doesn't want to leave. She keeps screaming, 'I don't want to go!'. It is very busy here, lots of children."

As we chat over coffee at about noon, the canteen is beginning to get busy. A display of lights, in the shape of Santa, sleigh and reindeers, shimmers above the hot-plate counter and, children of all ages are around, some eating lunch, others playing, laughing and generally enjoying tumbling with each other.

Kateryna nods that she too will miss the creche facilities, the canteen and the friends they have in Mosney.

"But it will be better to have our own home, to start our life properly in Ireland. Oh that will be very good," she grins broadly. Karen goes to national school in Donabate and they got help with finding an apartment there from the local health board and their community welfare officer. On Christmas Day they will go to a Pentecostal church in north Dublin in the morning and join about 400 others for Christmas lunch in the canteen. A number of the residents will spend the day in the homes of friends or family outside Mosney.

Catering manager Ann Durnan promises a party atmosphere in the Kosy Kitchen. Not all the residents will celebrate Christmas, of course, with many being of non-Christian denomination. The focus, says Durnan, will not be on the religious dimension of the day but on the coming together and sharing joys and sadnesses.

"It will be a bit of a sad day for some, missing family and loved ones, of course. But here in the restaurant we hope to have a happy atmosphere. We'll have music, and along here," she says, gesturing to a row of shutters along one wall, "we'll have hampers made up on display. We will give out tickets for the raffle and there's great joy when people win a hamper."

The wooden tables will all be dressed, she adds, and there will be "lots of sweets and chocolate for the children. They love that". On the menu will be traditional turkey, ham and all the trimmings, but also grilled halal meat and rice, mackerel baked with tomatoes and a Russian dish - golubohi - which Durnan describes as a "parcel stuffed with cabbage, rice and pork".

Among the desserts are trifle, fresh fruit and plum pudding with custard. Asked what those who are not familiar with plum pudding make of it, she laughs.

"Well, they mostly all try it, but they might prefer the custard to the pudding."

There are other parties in Mosney in the lead-up to Christmas - perhaps the most charming, that in the camp's Mabuhay Playschool which cares for 35 one- to five-year-olds for three hours a day, Monday to Friday. The facility enables the children's parents to go to classes either at the camp or in Drogheda and Dundalk.

"We dress the children up as angels, wise men, kings and as Mary and Joseph, and we have a black baby doll as the baby Jesus," explains Liz O'Reilly, playschool manager. "Santa comes and we give them each a little present of a book and some sweets. It is lovely and they all look so sweet. All the children join in whether they are Christian or not and the parents are happy for them, too. It's a communal thing really, more than a religious thing."

The children generally are the same as any other, though some are "challenging", she says. "There can be cultural issues, speech and language difficulties, different discipline methods at home."

Some, she says, are not read to at home, as in their countries that is the traditional role of grandparents. "And the grandparents aren't here so they miss out on that."

Some also are not familiar with crayons and pencils or how to hold them. She says very few are traumatised and most settle well. "If we have them for a good length of time we can really get them ready for school here."

Children aged five and over at Mosney attend up to 10 national schools in the Julianstown area, with children aged 12 and over going to secondary schools locally and as far away as Dundalk.

The adult school, where students take classes in English, literacy and computer skills, will also hold a small party.

The eight students taking the English-as-a-second-language class one morning last week came from Uganda, the Congo, Algiers, Libya, Croatia and Afghanistan. Few were inclined to talk to The Irish Times, though Mary-Jane Osumare from the Congo was happy to say she liked the two months she has so far spent at Mosney. She has been three years in Ireland, however, and is still waiting for a decision on her asylum application.

Also at the English class, Abdhul Hayy Nasseri from Afghanistan has been three weeks at Mosney, having spent one year at an asylum accommodation centre in Dundalk. "It's okay here. I miss my wife Nadia and my mother in Afghanistan." He said he had "religious problems" in his home country after he converted to the Jehovah's Witnesses.

As multi-coloured lights were being hung like bunting about the camp last week, Mosney's manager Patrick McKenna said Christmas Day would be quiet "like in any family". And as in many families it will be tinged with sadnesses.

As Kateryna and Lahnon make their way to the Kosy Kitchen counter to get some lunch, an Afghan asylum seeker, Dawi Roushean, approaches, saying he is a poet and would like to show his poem about Christmas. Written in stilted English, it tells of Mary and Joseph's search for a safe place and people's non-acceptance of them, and later of Jesus.

"I have been here in Mosney 15 months and before in Co Clare," he explains. "I feel we are in a limbo situation, waiting to see if we are accepted."

Asked whether he'll take part in the Christmas celebrations, given his poem, he says he will, despite being Muslim. He picks up the sheet of paper on which it is typed. "I think", he says, "asylum seekers' situation in Ireland is very similar to this Christmas story."