Hélène Amouzou’s story is hard to stomach. She was forced to flee her home country, Togo, in 1992, as years of political turbulence erupted into protests and violence. Her husband’s political affiliations put them in danger – they, like hundreds of thousands of Togolese, ended up in Benin, Toga’s eastern neighbour. From there, the couple and their infant daughter went to Germany to seek asylum, but soon after their arrival, found their name on a deportation list. When Amouzou’s husband went to attend a registration appointment, he never returned. Amouzou and her young daughter went into hiding.
Amouzou eventually returned to Benin to search for her husband, not realising the German government had sent him back to Togo. In the autumn of 1997, she decided to return to Europe, but this time to Brussels. She began again, building a life from scratch, without her husband. But for almost two decades, Amouzou lived without any official status – that hellish loop that forces immigrants to live in intolerable conditions, tormented by bureaucracy. She eventually became a Belgian citizen in 2015.
