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“Wow to good news.”

By Miana Badd
August 26, 2009 at 2:09 pm

When you look you can find. The International Tracing and Message does amazing work . It is so lovely if you are there and see everything for yourself, when they are reuniting families within UK, or giving someone good news about their families.

It has happened to me when I was less than expecting it. I woke up one morning, got out of the wrong side of the bed and in a bad mood. Luckily there was nobody there to be my punch bag. While doing my usual things – going to college and Red Cross, I had no idea good news awaited me.

When Frank Higgins, The manager of the International Tracing and Message Service told me that he had news about my son, I cried and hugged him hard and hurt his ribs. The pain was so strong that he was scared of my hugs and now hides whenever he see me. The pain took weeks to heal. Ha ha ha ha.
Am sorry, that I hurt him but at that time I was just over excited and only thinking about the good news.

After he gave me this news he became my hero. I wanted to buy the strongest glue and stick him to me until he locates the rest of my family. And I’m still looking, if anybody has an idea which shop I should go to buy the glue.

And here is another amazing reunion.

On the 04/08/2009,  The manager of The International Tracing and Message had news for an unsuspecting couple, who came to our office searching for each other (husband and wife) on different occasions.

The wife came to use the tracing service trying to find her husband, whom she left in Chula, Somalia. The  separated when they were attacked at home and they both fled in different directions.

The husband moved from Manchester to Glasgow for immigration reason. When he was here he met some people from the Bajuni community, who knew him before in Somalia. One of the men told him how he had met his wife in the city centre in Argyle Street, Glasgow a few weeks before and wanted to know how she was.

The husband was so surprised, because he did not know the whereabouts of his wife as he had fled home years back . He started using his own ways of searching and asking people but with no success. Then  he went to ask at the mosque where he was advised to come to the Red Cross.

He was given an appointment to come in and they took his details and some information as routine. Frank Higgins was so clever that, after this man had left, he remembered he had seen a female name like the one this man was searching for. He retrieved his file and Walaaaaaa ! ! ! there it was.

Frank arranged another meeting and called them both in. Well, I wish everybody was here to see this moment, when two people are reunited who have been living alone for all this time, each thinking the other is dead. They hugged, cried and laughed with happiness. And us in the office did our own group hug, for a job well done.

Image ©ICRC

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Comments (2) »

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Tags: finding missing family, International Day of the Disappeared, international tracing & message service, Somalia

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 26th, 2009 at 2:09 pm and is filed under Health and social care. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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