Asylum seeker fears worst after frostbite
TOGO MAN’S CLAIM REJECTED BY U.S.
Kangni Fiowole-Kouevi says he wasn’t sure he had made it to Canada when — overcome by bitter cold and barely able to use his hands — he took a risk and dialled 911 on his cellphone.
Fortunately for the 36-yearold from Togo, he had made it across the border near Emerson, Man. in the dead of night. He is the latest African asylum-seeker to face the possibility of losing his fingers to frostbite after crossing the border on the open prairie in the dead of winter.
“I started to suffer enormously,” he recalled in French Tuesday as he sat at the kitchen table in a home run by Hospitality House Refugee Ministry, a Winnipeg non-profit group. His hands remained in bandages.
“I fell, I cried, I was in agony. I didn’t know how I would survive the cold.”
Fiowole-Kouevi said he fled religious prosecution in Togo, where he converted to Christianity in defiance of his family’s wishes. After making it through South and Central America, he said he arrived in the United States, was detained and eventually rejected for asylum.
He said he decided to head to Canada via Minneapolis where he paid a man $700 for the seven-hour drive to the border. The night of Jan. 5, he was dropped off somewhere along the highway south of Emerson and started to walk, he said.
The temperature was below -20 C. He was dressed for winter but his gloves were not enough. He said he walked for more than four hours.
“I started to raise my hand to trucks that were passing but they did not stop.”
Eventually he found what appeared to be an abandoned building of some sort, got out of the wind and called 911.
RCMP say they received a call at 5:45 a.m. on Jan. 6 from a man who had crossed the border alone and could not describe his location. Spokeswoman Tara Seel said it took two hours to find him and the man was taken to the border office and the hospital for treatment.
Fiowole-Koeuvi said he is hopeful he will not lose any fingers, but doctors had yet to make a final decision.