‘I left home for my children’

What's your money worth? A series from the front line of the cost-of-living crisis, where people who have been hit hard share their monthly expenses.

Name: Fatama Osman*

Age: 32

Occupation: Qualified nurse, but currently unemployed

Lives with: Her twin daughters, Amina* and Aminata* (10)

Lives in: A single room in a hostel for asylum seekers in Dublin, Ireland, which serves as a bedroom, kitchen, living room and cupboard all in one. The blue-carpeted room has one single bed, one double bed, a table and a separate bathroom attached. The hostel is in a neighbourhood with grocery stores, cafes, and a post office where Fatama collects her weekly welfare cheque.

Monthly household income: 392 euros ($423) or 98 euros ($106) weekly as a direct provision from the Irish Department of Social Protection

Total expenses for the month: 551.47 euros ($595)

*Names are pseudonyms to maintain the family’s privacy.

A year ago, Fatama Osman came to Ireland from Sierra Leone with nothing but two suitcases and her young twin daughters, after she was forced to flee home in search of asylum.

Her husband, who spent his life’s savings trying to get them to safety, had to remain behind.

“I left my country because of the security of my children and, most importantly, the Bondo society; they want to initiate my kids and I am totally against that,” Fatama says of the women’s initiation groups that practice female genital mutilation (FGM) in West Africa.

In Sierra Leone, 83 percent of women aged 15 to 49 have been victims of FGM, according to the 2019 Demographic and Health Survey (PDF) carried out by the country’s ministry of health. Despite being considered a serious rights violation, FGM is a practice that is prevalent in 92 countries, according to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), which estimates that 200 million girls and women have undergone FGM across the world.

Fatama did not want her daughters to be among them.

“The Bondo society takes off the women’s clitoris from the private part and it's dangerous, some kids are not able to survive this,” she says. “My own session was so worse. They did it to me at the age of 15. I did not want my girls to experience that.”

Fatama says her mother and mother-in-law had been pressuring her to get her daughters “initiated” and after her own mother kidnapped her children one evening in 2022, she knew she had to escape.

When her daughters were taken, Fatama tried to get help from the police, but they told her it was not a crime, she says. Finally, with help from strangers, she and her husband found out where their children were. They rushed to a clearing in the middle of a forest, where the girls were about to undergo FGM along with a bunch of others. The twins, Amina and Aminata, screamed “Daddy! Daddy!”. Fatama and her husband grabbed them and fled.

The family knew they couldn’t return to their own house because Fatama’s mother would find them, so she and her girls stayed with a friend for a few days until finally her husband paid a friend to get them out of the country to safety. There wasn’t enough money for all of them, so he stayed behind while Fatama and the children left for the Republic of Ireland.

Although her husband’s friend travelled with them to Ireland, once the flight landed in Dublin, he was nowhere to be seen. A good samaritan taxi driver bought food and water for her children and took Fatama to Ireland’s International Protection Office, where she applied for asylum.

They were given a place to stay in a hostel, “temporary accommodation” for asylum seekers. On May 26, 2023, a little over a year after they came to Ireland, Fatama and her daughters were granted refugee status. However, due to the influx of refugees since the start of the war in Ukraine, as well as the ongoing accommodation crisis in Ireland, they have no choice but to remain at the hostel.

In Ireland, students, immigrants, citizens and refugees are all struggling to find housing. Nationally, there were 8,665 people in emergency accommodation in the last week of April, a 14 percent increase from the same week the year before, according to data from Ireland’s department of housing.

Hundreds of asylum seekers are currently facing homelessness as the state does not have the capacity to accommodate people at the rate that it is receiving them, according to the Irish Refugee Council. This has led the government to repurpose various buildings, including hostels, as accommodation for asylum seekers.

In the hostel, Fatama, Amina and Aminata live in one room, where they sleep, cook, eat, study and store their belongings. It is hard to infuse their personality into such a space, where many people live but few call home, Fatama says.

For the first few months in Ireland, all that mother and daughters did was “eat, sleep, eat, sleep”, Fatama says. At that point, she had no income, no savings, no support.

Three months later, their social welfare grant finally kicked in, and Fatama now receives 98 euros ($106) weekly as direct provision income support from Ireland’s Department of Social Protection. Her first instalment provided her with a lump sum for the first three months that she had been in Ireland without support; that money went towards buying school uniforms and supplies for the children. Luckily, attending school is free of charge; however, she needed to buy things like stationery, school ties, and bags that she wasn’t able to afford until that point.

Fatama’s family is entitled to a direct provision of 302 euros ($326) weekly, but 203.60 euros ($219.68) of this amount is automatically deducted to pay for her accommodation and the food provided there. What remains is barely enough to cover her weekly expenses, let alone to save so she can send money to her husband back home, she says. Right now neither of them has enough money to arrange for him to join them in Ireland, but she hopes that one day this will be possible.

Sierra Leone has been experiencing high inflation and economic hardship as it struggles to bounce back from the COVID-19 pandemic and the Ebola outbreak before that. Unprecedented anti-government protests, sparked by a financial crisis, broke out in August 2022, not long after Fatama left the country.

Now with the general elections approaching in June, Fatama says all business in the country has dried up and her husband is one of the victims. He trades in agricultural goods, but these days, he is unable to leave his house to buy produce, let alone go to the markets to sell goods, due to the high cost of fuel and instability on the streets due to the fast-approaching election, Fatama says.

While Fatama is used to living in economic strife, she did not expect to still be scrimping in Ireland.

Back home, she was a qualified nurse. So in Ireland she chose to find a job in the one place she was familiar with - a hospital. But before Fatama can work as a nurse in Ireland she has to either make sure her degree from home is recognised, or become newly qualified. As she does not have all her transcripts from back home, and cannot afford the 350-euro ($378) oversees qualification recognition fee, she is hoping to get a nursing degree in Ireland.

While figuring out how to find her way back into nursing, she started working as a cleaner at a hospital in January 2023. However, one evening on her way home from work in February, she tripped on the stairs and nearly hit her head on the railing but someone behind her caught her in time. The doctors conducted some basic tests and found that she had lost her speech and feeling in her arms. After doing some scans, doctors found that she had suffered a stroke, and also had a blood clot in her brain, which in retrospect explained the dizziness she felt every time she bent down to clean.

This meant that only two months in, Fatama had to give up her job. Though her intention had been to supplement the welfare payments with her own earnings, her health no longer allows her to engage in any form of manual labour.

While physical work is burdensome for her, she is throwing herself into her studies. She attends remedial English classes and has also been accepted into a nursing programme at a college in Dublin. “It would be good to have some additional training on how things work in Ireland,” she says, though paying the fees remains a concern. She also hopes that in the time it takes to get her qualifications, her health will improve enough for her to be able to work as a nurse.“I am hoping and praying that I get a scholarship because I really don’t like sitting around doing nothing and I miss working as a nurse,” she says.

Over the course of a month, from April 21, 2023, to May 21, 2023, as part of a collaborative project, Fatama Osman tracked her expenses with reporter Esha Mitra.

Here are the expenses that tested her finances the most.

Groceries

For Fatama, food is an important expense, both for nourishment given her health condition, and also for maintaining a link with Sierra Leone and creating a sense of home in Ireland.

“In Ireland I can’t cook my own food as usual. Here they give us food. But in my country, I had freedom, freedom in the sense that whatever I wanted to eat I can make it myself and everything … In Ireland if I had my own house it would be much better,” Fatama says.

While many international protection applicants live in mini apartments where they have access to a kitchen and an in-house grocery store, the hostel Fatama lives in does not have a kitchen, so she cannot cook her own food. While she can cook rice in her room using an electric rice cooker, she can’t make anything that requires cooking on a flame.

The generic meat, soups and potatoes served at the hostel’s communal restaurant are hardly to the taste that Fatama and her daughters are used to, and they are not enough. “They serve lunch at 1:30pm and dinner at 5:30. There is no food served after that, in our culture we don’t eat dinner before 8 so that becomes very difficult,” Fatama says.

But she has found a bit of respite through a local NGO that allows people to book time slots to come and use its office kitchen. So Fatama uses the facility once every week or two to make food that tastes like home. She usually cooks chicken curry with spices and seasonings she’d typically use in Sierra Leone, if she can find them.

Fatama’s essential basket of groceries usually includes a lot of rice, chicken and something to create flavour, such as tomatoes, onions, and Maggi flavour cubes. She also stocks up on tea, milk, eggs, juices, and breakfast items for the children like bread and cereal. Sometimes she goes to an Asian store to find familiar ingredients like cassava leaf to take her cooking to the next level.

After the food is cooked, Fatama stores it in the mini fridge in her room and reheats it using the communal microwave in the hostel’s dining hall. Mother and daughters usually reheat and eat the food for three days straight. Although it may get repetitive, “my daughters like this food a lot more because it reminds them of home and it is tasty,” Fatama says.

April 2022: 79.96 euros ($86) for essential groceries**
April 21- May 21 2023: 93.19 euros ($100)

Medicines

Ever since her fall last year, Fatama has been on regular medication to manage the blood clot in her brain and keep it from recurring.

The first couple of weeks after the fall at the hospital were extremely hard for her family. She was admitted to hospital for five days while her neighbours at the hostel took care of the children. Even when she got home, she could not strain herself too much.

Now her health has improved significantly and she is awaiting results from new scans taken at the end of May to find out if she still has a blood clot in her brain. However she still gets exhausted quite easily and cannot walk long distances or do labour-intensive work. Pursuing her studies and taking care of her children is about all she can handle for the moment.

Her doctor has recommended that she eat iron-rich foods, such as cow liver. However, on her current budget, this is not something that she’s able to afford and she mostly gets her nutrients from vegetables and some chicken. So her medicines are crucial. Though she has a health card that allows her to get general medication for free, her prescription drugs do not fall within that category.

“I feel lucky that I was in Ireland when I fell because back home they would not have had such machines and medicines to treat me,” Fatama says, adding that she was relieved that she did not have to pay for her hospital stay as healthcare is free for asylum seekers in Ireland.

April 2022: 42.12 euros ($45.44) for four medications prescribed by her doctors**
April 2023: 45.93 euros ($49.55)

Transport

Every week, Fatama has to go to the post office to collect her weekly welfare payment then do her grocery shopping. She also attends weekly English classes, and drops off and picks her children up from school. For all of this, she travels by bus.

Last year, transport was one of just two sectors that saw a decrease in prices, according to Ireland’s Central Statistics Office. From May 9, 2022, Ireland’s transport authority announced a 20 percent reduction in prices and the adult fare for buses in Ireland dropped from 2.30 euros ($2.48) to 2.00 euros ($2.15) and children’s fares from 0.80 euros ($0.86) to 0.65 euros (0.70).

But transport still accounts for a sizeable chunk of Fatama’s monthly expenditure.

Due to her health condition, Fatama can’t walk too far so buses have become the mode of transport she relies on.

April 2022: 144 euros ($155) to top up her and her children’s Leap Cards (Irish bus passes)**
April 2023: 120 euros ($129)

Miscellaneous expenses

Another essential expense for Fatama is her and her children’s phones, particularly the internet top-up she uses to stay in touch with her husband through WhatsApp calls. Unfortunately, however, it has been a month since she last heard from him, and she’s worried for his safety.

“I keep calling him, but his phone is off and when I called a friend of his he got angry at me saying he was busy,” Fatama says. “I’m worried for his safety. After we left, he was the only one left behind. And now, with the elections approaching, anything can happen. Thinking about it too much makes my head hurt and I get very depressed. It is so so depressing, I can’t think about it too much because my health will get worse.”

“I have to stay happy for the kids, at least I am grateful that they are safe. For me I couldn’t say no [to undergoing FGM], but they are my kids, I should be allowed to say no for them.”

Fatama also does her laundry twice a month at a laundromat at the petrol station near her hostel, for which she has to pay. With the limited space in her room, the whole space becomes cluttered with clothes whenever it's laundry day, she says. “The home is choked … I am happy when there is free space then you can put everything properly, but now we just sleep in the middle of the stuff.”

2022: Monthly phone bills: 70 euros ($75)**; monthly laundry bill: 30 euros ($32)**
2023: Monthly phone bills: 60 euros ($65); monthly laundry bill: 42 euros ($45)

**Last year’s costs are from Fatama, Consumer Price Index data from Ireland’s Central Statistics Office, data from Healthwave.ie and estimates based on prices from Transport for Ireland and prices from Eir and Lyca mobile providers.

Six quick questions for Fatama:

1. What’s one thing you had to forgo this month? Extra classes for the children. The girls really wanted to join ballet, but they want us to pay 7 euros ($7.50) every week for each of them and you have to pay a total of 100 euros ($108) and something per month and I can’t afford it. The other thing is I wanted them to take extra classes online (for school) and I never knew they had to pay. They started doing it online and then they told me they have to be paying 36 euros ($39) for each of the kids [each week] and I can’t afford this. For English and maths, especially for maths, they need it. They are very smart and they are mostly doing well in school, but it is not easy to go to school in a completely different place. Plus they can’t do any of the extra activities they want and I have to say no to them. One of them loves to draw, and the other likes music.

2. What’s the hardest financial decision you had to make this month? I normally send my husband money each month. Last month in the beginning of April I had sent him 50 euros ($54). But this month I have not been able to talk to him and anyway sending money to Sierra Leone is very hard and without talking I wouldn’t know where to send it. But even if I had spoken to him I don’t have any extra savings this month to send him. Paying for me and the kids itself finishes the money and I really feel guilty about that.

3. When finances get tough, what gets you through the difficult times? My girls. The whole reason I came here is because I wanted them to be happy and secure. And they are happy. They laugh, they play and seeing them happy makes me happy. I am glad I was able to get them out of there and protect them.

4. Which is the most worthwhile expense from this month? The twins got invited to a birthday party and it was a skating party. They actually know how to skate but obviously we didn’t bring their skates with us when we came to Ireland. They were really really begging me so I bought them skates. I normally would not but I was happy they were invited to a party and I want them to have a happy life. I want them to be joyous. So I bought roller skates for both of them for 69 euros ($75) and a 40-euro ($43) gift card for a birthday present for their friend.

5. What’s your biggest money worry? Saving some money to send to my husband. If he can save enough money he can come to Ireland. ... It’s really difficult because without each other … the separation is making me restless because the father of the family is supposed to be taking care of us. The other thing is college, if I don’t get a scholarship, I don’t know how I will go. I can’t do cleaning work anymore. It is too bad for my health so I want a proper job but without an Irish degree I won’t be able to get that.

6. What’s the saving hack you are proudest of? I have not been able to do it this month because I have been busy with classes and studying because my graduation for my English classes is at the end of the month [May]. However, before that, I used to cut hair in the hostel and people would pay me 10 euros ($11), 20 euros ($21.57) whatever they can afford. It would be cheaper for them and I would also be able to earn some extra money.

Read more stories from the series: What's your money worth?