Welcome to the Kent Centre for Lone Children.
If you are seeking a safe place and have arrived here with no family or friends, we are here to ensure that you are dealt with appropriately.
The barbed wire and locked gates are for your protection.
We have painted over Baloo. And Micky. And Minnie. In case they give the wrong impression.
Please proceed to a room with blank walls and prepare to answer all of the questions you will be asked; be prepared for us to not listen.
Be prepared to explain why you got into a dinghy to sail across one of the most dangerous stretches of water in the world.
Be prepared for us to question you about how old you are. Over and over again.
Be prepared for us to ask if you’ve been trafficked – but not explain what that means.
Be prepared to sleep on a dirty mattress on the floor.
Be prepared for us not to care if you have nightmares, miss your family, cry at night.
Be prepared to be sent to a hotel where you’ll be left on your own. Again.
Be prepared for us to ignore your trauma, disbelieve your story, cancel your childhood, send you back.
Be prepared for a hostile environment.
Liz McPherson
Liz McPherson has been horse-riding in the Mongolian desert and motorcycling in Morocco but tends to stick more to poetry these days, which is not necessarily a safer pursuit but definitely a less sandy one. Liz’s work is in Dreamcatcher, The High Window, Obsessed with Pipework, Culture Matters, Dreich, and other print and online poetry zines.