Nick didn't know what the word "bored" meant, but he knew how it felt. The 24-year-old Russian asylum-seeker has been living in the Connemara town of Clifden since March, waiting for the official interview to determine whether he will be allowed to stay legally in the State as a refugee.

He looks up the meaning of this new word in his English-Russian dictionary. "Everyone is this [bored] after a week," he says in his faltering English. "It's crazy. Maybe in Dublin, because it's big city, you can do more things. But here, if you don't have work, you go crazy. It's a problem for everybody. Just eat and sleep. It's not normal for a man."

Nick, along with 21 other asylum-seekers from Europe and Africa, are currently living in the scenic Co Galway town more renowned historically for emigration than immigration. (He, along with others interviewed, asked us not to use his surname.) They are among 2,600 asylum-seekers dispersed outside Dublin since late last year in a government effort to relieve accommodation shortages in the capital.

Newly arrived asylum-seekers now spend a few weeks in reception centres in Dublin before being bused to full-board accommodation in other towns and villages while their claims for refugee status are processed.

Clifden's dispersees stay in a comfortable and spacious purpose-built hostel on the outskirts of town called Dun Gibbons. All its tastefully decorated bedrooms have televisions and ensuite bathrooms. There is a large, communal TV room with comfortable sofas and a big kitchen to make tea and coffee.

The asylum-seekers do not cook their own food, but are served three square daily meals in a bright upstairs restaurant. Their laundry is taken care of by the hostel. Under this system of direct provision, they receive "comfort money" of £15 per week per adult and £7.50 per child.

Dun Gibbons's married co-owners, Patricia Dunford and Michael Gibbons, are generous and thoughtful landlords who far exceed the letter of the detailed contract they have signed with the Dublin-based Directorate for Asylum Seeker Services.

The asylum-seekers want for nothing - apart that is from stimulation and certainty as to their futures. They are not allowed to work legally while their asylum claims are being processed, although a bit of cash-in-hand work is not unheard of.

Nick says when he first arrived, he borrowed a bike from Michael to tour the area, but there's only so much scenery you can fill your days with.

In the town, a 10-minute stroll from the hostel, tourists browse in the gaily painted shops for Connemara marble, tweed jackets and kitsch collectables. The Bord Failte office does a brisk business, guiding many day-trippers to nearby Innisbofin. The restaurants, bars and hotels are filled, although one trader laments a downturn in this season's business which he puts down to some bad reviews of the town in French publications.

Meanwhile, the asylum-seekers for whom this tourist haven is now home, fight their daily battles with boredom and depression. Mustapha, a Muslim from Chechnya in the Caucasus region of Russia, breaks up his week by visiting the nearest mosque, almost 80 k.m. away in Galway. Victoria, a Romanian, tries to find ways to entertain her young daughter, Ramona. She is eager to be independent by moving to private rented accommodation in Galway, where her husband lives, but their application for rent allowance has just been turned down.

The hostel's co-owner, Patricia, a clear-eyed and lean-framed walking enthusiast, is sympathetic to the asylum-seekers' needs.

She allows them to clean their own rooms in an effort to devolve to them some small element of control and privacy. She has organised with a local VEC for some English lessons to begin next month and has borrowed some old computers so that her guests can learn word processing skills.

"We find that the single males are the most difficult to keep happy," she says. "If there's a family unit, they get on with their family affairs. If it's a couple, OK, they get bored, but they are contented within themselves. It's the single males who find it hardest to find something to do."

Clifden received its first group of asylum-seekers last December, within days of Christmas and months before the mandatory dispersal of newly arrived asylum-seekers gathered pace, sparking what appeared to be a wave of xenophobia in towns and villages throughout rural Ireland.

The town did not hit the headlines with stormy residents meetings or pickets as witnessed in many other areas, including Clogheen in Co Tipperary. While there were some grumblings, a local French-born GP, Dr Sophie Faherty, set up a support group as "a preventive measure in case there would be some stupid remarks or racism".

In the season of goodwill, locals donated clothing and toys and offers of help. A local man made an anonymous donation of £1,000 to Stanleys department store in the town to provide rain wear for children. Seated in the living room of her town-centre house, Sophie takes out photographs of African asylum-seekers enjoying their first boat trip.

"They all got in a frenzy of leaving the hostel after two to three weeks," she recalls. "At the beginning they couldn't eat the food, so there were pregnant women who were losing weight."

Patricia explained to some of these women about sleeping sickness and encouraged them to keep themselves active. To overcome dietary problems, the women taught the hostel's cook how to prepare the kind of food they liked. Patricia now knows by heart the recipe for the fiery pepper sauce ubiquitous in African cuisine. She recognises that, when you don't have a lot to do every day, you focus very much on your food and how it's prepared.

Many of Dun Gibbons's original asylum-seekers have since left. Health boards have the discretion to allow asylum-seekers, in exceptional circumstances, to move from direct provision into the private rental sector, where they receive Supplementary Welfare Allowance of £76 per week as well as help with their rent.

Patricia says 24 family units have moved into new accommodation on this basis. A further 24 people have "disappeared", thereby forfeiting their State benefits. Patricia presumes they have gone to Dublin.

Out of about 40 asylum-seekers who have stayed in Dun Gibbons over the past eight months, Patricia says only one Iraqi family has to date been granted refugee status, entitling them to live permanently in the State.