By Winnipeg Free Press |
The new decade began full of love and hope for one newcomer who faced hatred, death and despair not long ago.
Muhazu Muniru has lost nearly everything in his 33 years: home, family, security, best friend, and his health. In 2020, he has a safe place to live, a romantic partner, happiness, and optimism for long-term health and contributing to society.
In 2014, he was run out of Ghana, where gay sex is outlawed and discrimination rampant. His boyfriend, who stayed in Ghana, was beaten to death. Muniru travelled to Brazil, Central America, Mexico, then the United States, where he was struck by another life-threatening challenge.
The splitting headaches and dizziness he suffered weren’t from being worn down by the journey but the early stages of kidney disease. He was hospitalized, then placed in immigration detention in the U.S., where it was determined he faced a “credible fear” of returning to Ghana but couldn’t get an immigration hearing until after 2020.
He was released to wait in New York with a friend’s relatives, but couldn’t afford the cost of medication while receiving dialysis and unable to get a steady job. After U.S. President Donald Trump’s election and anti-immigrant rhetoric ramping up, Muniru feared he’d be returned to Ghana.
Muniru paid a New Yorker US$300 to drive him to the border at Quebec. After struggling with French for months, in 2018, he took a train to Winnipeg, where he heard about a Ghanaian community that might help him.
It did: finding him a place to stay and connecting him to the health-care system, Rainbow Resource Centre, and immigration lawyer Bashir Khan.
Muniru’s nephrologist at the Health Sciences Centre, Dr. M.E. Karpinski, wrote a letter for his Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada hearing, saying Muniru, who is otherwise healthy, would be an excellent candidate for a kidney transplant.