12 years on from escaping the Iraq war, going between living on the street and couch surfing, a former asylum seeker can now start his life over. Mohammed Ahmed, known as Mo, describes his years of living without stable accommodation as “black”, but now, thanks to a new Wigan Council programme that supplied him with a fully furnished flat, he can see some 'light in the dark'.
Leaving behind his family and his home country, ravaged by war, to come to the UK in 2008, Mo had to wait until 2020 before he managed to get official documents which allowed him to legally work. In that time the 38-year-old ‘has done what he needed to’ in order to survive, he told the Local Democracy Reporting Service.
Waiting for the Home Office to grant him asylum, he ended up living on the streets of Wigan, which left him passing the lonely hours of the day walking from Leigh to Tyldesley on a daily basis, no matter the weather.
