‘I hated my home’
“I hated my home,” declares the 34-year-old mother with the braids in her hair.
The one-bedroom council flat that Habiba shares with her mother and two young children used to be so cramped and dirty that she dreaded going home – until a team of volunteers from Every Nation Church stepped in.
Habiba's mother, Zhahara, sleeps on the sleeper couch in the living room
It took 12 people, £1,000 and three days to transform the flat in a tower block in Fulham Broadway, west London, with a coat of sky blue paint, new kitchen cabinets and furniture from Ikea.
The act of kindness prompted Habiba, who currently survives on benefits, to cook a 10-litre container full of Ethiopian vegetables for the church’s Christmas celebration.
“It was really so dark, so dirty in the corners, everything… It’s so bad, to be honest, I couldn’t even change it.”
Habiba shares her small bedroom with her son Philemon, five, and daughter Feaben, four, while her mother, Zhahara, sleeps on the sleeper couch in the living room.
Born to a Muslim family in Ethiopia, the former immigration translator has had to flee for her life more than once. After the death of her father, the family moved to Somalia – only to lose her brother and their home in the country’s civil war in the late 1980s.
A scar on Habiba’s face bears witness to how she was shot through the cheek during the conflict. At the age of 19, the family sent Habiba to Oxford in Britain for medical treatment.
However, she had to run one more time – this time to escape violence at the hands of the father of her children. “I have really bad time, so I ran away,” Habiba recalls.
The flat in Fulham was to be a temporary refuge until her eldest turned five. But the local council informed her that she would have to wait two more years before she could have a home with a separate bedroom for the children.
A social worker from the council then wrote to the church, asking for help to overhaul the flat. During a Sunday service, the pastor, Wolfi, called on the congregation to do not only a Besom – a practical project to sweep away suffering – but an “extreme Besom”.
Emtia, who runs Besom projects in the church, obtained paint sponsored by a local store, free furniture and the 12 pairs of hands needed. “Emtia she just organised,” Habiba says.
“This is Christianity, what they have to do.”
Standing next to her new white kitchen cabinets, Habiba adds: “I feel home now.”
And the children?
“They love it.”
