Ireland

New to the Parish: Coolio Antonio moved to Ireland from Angola some 15 years ago.

I’m not shy to speak to people any more and if I have to fill out any important forms, I’m not afraid or embarrassed answering the questions any more”. “It makes me a lot more confident and helps me to make more friends,” he says, and it has also opened up more opportunities for him. And I don’t mind the rain and the cold any more. The past three years have made a big difference in my life,” he says. I moved to Dublin 3 five years ago but it’s very hard to find somewhere and very expensive. It was a shock but in a good way”. Now I’m currently looking for a new job,” he says. “A week, a few months, and then years passed. But if you go to the house of the government, they have everything you can imagine. The rest of us are poor,” he says. “But I got more confident as time went on, day by day,” he says. When I started, on the first day, I wanted to run away and pretend I was going to the toilet but never come back,” he laughs.