JOHN AND HIS FAMILY HAVE AT LAST MADE IT THE END OF THE BEGINNING OF THEIR LONG JOURNEY TO BECOMING SCOTTISH

Right now, at this very minute, as my cold fingers produce these words, thousands of desperate souls are setting out on a journey most of us cannot begin to comprehend.

They are gathered in dusty courtyards in the desert city of Agadez in Niger. I was there in 1980 when the world was unrecognisable from the world today. I remember a place of one storey buildings and the first trees I had seen in weeks. We had crossed the Sahara from north to south and Agadez was the town when mankind finally was able to find a toehold. There were bored soldiers and the relics of the French Empire. A dilapidated old colonial club with no electricity, beer as warm as tea and a swimming pool filled with thousands of tiny frogs. In the morning the cries from the minarets were haunting in the oven warm air of the dawn. By the mid afternoon, it was too hot to walk fifty yards.

And my lasting memory? The crumbling toilets in the old colonial club. My eyes catching sight of something dangerous. A shaven head and a fierce pair of eyes. Burned brown skin and raggedy clothes. My half pissed brain started to sober up fast. Fight of flight........

And then I was suddenly frozen to the spot. The danger wasn't danger after all. The danger was a mirror. My first mirror in six weeks. The eyes staring back at me were none other than my own. Different eyes in a different me.

Agadez was the end of our journey across the burning vastness of the desert. Today it is the beginning of the journey north for the thousands who are willing to cash in their every chip to put their lives on the line for the chance of a life worth living.

Agadez means a place in the back of a Toyota 4x4 to dodge the soldiers and head out into the oven baked Saharan emptiness. And then, if a slow death of thirst is avoided? Then it is the lawless anarchy of the failed state which goes by the name of Libya. Warlords and people traffickers and the Italian Mafia. A spot on a dingy and a desperate bid for the shores of Southern Europe.

And then? Maybe weeks and months and years in an internment camp. Maybe the long slog north all the way to a tented village in the woods outside Calais or Dunkirk.

And then? A place in the back of a truck. A dingy on the cold, black waves of the Channel.

And then? A life off the grid. A sweat shop and a pound an hour. If that. Or worse.

We aren't all that happy at the the moment with the way things are going on these cold, rainy islands of ours. We're sick of the austerity and the inequality and the complete and utter lack of any kind of acceptable government. We're sick of the potholes in the roads and the boarded up shops on the high street. We're sick of hearing how many of us are eating care of foodbanks.

It is hard for us to imagine the kind of abject misery which drives all of those who are waiting in the heat and dust of Agadez to buy a place on the back of a Toyota 4x4 and the chance to play a desert version of Russian Roulette. It is hard to imagine our rainy islands as the promised land.

Not many make it. So many hurdles. The desert. The criminal gangs. The sea. Fortress Europe. Fortress Britain. The walls are high and mighty, no matter what the Trump-light hate mongers say

All of which maybe goes a little way to explaining the absolute joy which broke out in First Base two days ago. Regular readers of this blog will be familiar with struggle of the Samuel family. We have been helping them to keep body and soul together in the cold, dark reality of Teresa May's much vaunted Hostile Environment for over three years now.

For many years they have been hanging on by their fingernails. They didn't cross the desert and the sea to come here. They spent every last penny they had on plane tickets and a work visa. And for many years they worked and paid their taxes. John started school and Dami finished school. They assumed they would be allowed to stay and work. They were wrong. After six years, the Home Office said thanks but no thanks. No more work visa. No more right to stay here. No more nothing. Time to pack your bags. Time to leave. We don't want the likes of you any more.

Then they made the smartest move of their lives. A bus ticket to the sanctuary of Scotland, a place where the BNP and Tommy Robinson don't even bother to try. They came to Dumfries and spent the last of their cash on a deposit and a month's worth of rent. And then all they had left was a wing and a prayer and a referral to a place called First Base who provide food to people who had no food. A place where the rules of Theresa May's hostile envionment don't apply.

Soon the town of Dumfries took the family to its heart, especially when their story hit the TV screens in the form of a BBC documentary called 'Breadline Kids'. No doubt thousands tuned in when the show was played live. More than a million have watched them on YouTube.

Soon the Scottish media were telling their story and hundreds of Scots were moved to donate money to the JustGiving page we had set up to keep the family afloat. The months flowed by and the Home Office hardened its approach. Every official letter threatened a return to mean streets of Lagos. Without family. Without funds. Without any kind of hope.

The Brexit vote empowered the newly minted Prime Minister to harden the Home Office into new depths of cruelty. Open racism spread through the streets of post-industrial England.

And to be honest, things looked pretty bleak. But thankfully the good folk of Dumfries never wavered. By hook or by crook, the community kept the family afloat. One by one, local politicians of every colour took up their cause. The Home Office disdainfully swatted away every entreaty from SNP and Labour MSP's. But when the newly elected Tory MP took up the family's torch, it made life a little more complicated for the hostile envronment merchants.

They overplayed their hand. They rejected the family's application for 'leave to remain' on bogus reasoning. They broke the law in black and white. On paper. In writing. They opened up a crack in the wall for the family's solicitors to ram a crow bar into.

I drove the family to Glasgow for a meeting with the solicitors fearing the worst. Instead they exuded genuine optimism. The Home Office had played arrogant hardball and set themselves up. And one thing hit me. The solicitor pointed out how lucky the family was to be in Scotland. To expose the mistakes of the Home Office required getting on for £2000 worth of legal fees. For a family living on fresh air, £2000 might as well have been £2 million. Had they been in England, they would have been doomed to a detention centre and a one way ticket to Lagos. Scotland provided legal aid and the keys to justice. Scotland offered the chance to fight the lawlessness of the Hostile Environment. Scotland had their backs.

And two days ago the news came through. They were granted to 'leave to remain in the United Kingdom'. They had finally arrived at the journey's end all the thousands of desperate souls in Agadez spend their every waking hour dreaming of.

They have made it. No detention centre. No return to the streets of Lagos where none of the local gangs would have believed in their being utterly penniless. Where the danger of John being kidnapped for ransom would have been of the 'clear and present' variety.

We have lots of bad days in First Base, but this was a good day. A day when for once we got the chance to enjoy a happy ending. The effort it has required to keep the family out of the clutches of the Home Office has been extraordinary. First Base has had to raise over £10,000 to pay their rent. Multiple Scottish newspaapers have fought their corner. Multiple MP's and MSP's have fought their corner. And the local community has never wavered. Not for a day. Not for a minute.

And now? Well the road ahead is still a long one. The family has made it to the end of the beginning. Their 'Leave to remain' is good for the next thirty months and then it must be renewed. Renewing will cost them £8000. After 5 years they will to find another £8000. And another £8000 after seven and a half years. And another £8000 after ten years. For ten years they will be eligible for no benefits other than access to the NHS. 'Leave to remain' means the right to work and pay taxes for the services everyone else uses. I guess over the coming decade they will send somewhere in the region of £50000 to the Treasury in the form of income tax and NI and VAT. Christiana will be a carer and Dami will become a midwife and John, well John might become more or less anything.

And then? Well after fifteen years and £80,000 worth of contributions, the family will finally arrive at their journey's end and be awarded their citizenship.

Hopefully when that day at last comes, the citizenship they will be awarded will be Scottish. For that is what they very much are now. Scottish and proud to be so. Proud and grateful and blessed to have become a part of the community which took them in and made them welcome.

And we should all be proud to. We should be proud of the road we Scots have chosen to travel. Proud to have resoundingly rejected the Farage poison.

Proud to be on the right side.