When Lilian Seenoi-Barr arrived in Derry 14 years ago, the first person to ask about her home country was John Hume.
“I was walking outside Sainsbury’s, going shopping ... he asked me, ‘where are you from?’ and I said, ‘From Kenya.’ He said, ‘Derry is now your home’.”
“I didn’t know who this was, it was just a random man walking on the streets, and my husband [Paul Barr] was the one who pointed it out. He said, ‘Do you know who that man is?’”
Now 42, as she reflects on the journey that has taken her from a women’s rights campaigner in Kenya to the founder of Derry antiracism charity the North West Migrants Forum (NWMF) to the first black mayor in the history of Northern Ireland, she singles out this chance meeting as a moment when “the stars aligned”.
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“If you had told me when I arrived here on the 23rd of December 2010 that one day I would be going into the Guildhall [as mayor], I’ll think you crazy,” she laughs.
“But having lived in Derry for 14 years, and with a background of social justice, and someone who was very heavily engaged in gender rights, fighting for the rights of our Maasai girls, I think I have a very clear understanding of what politics can do for people if the interest is serving the people.
“I think it’s not lost on any immigrant what it means to be a politician, not just in the western world, in Northern Ireland, where everything has been locked into the lens of green and orange.
“So, for any political party to ask someone like me to get involved, it’s not only a privilege, it’s something you welcome because you believe there is a new horizon.
“Every day, I thank my stars for the opportunity.”
On Monday, when she takes office as the mayor of Derry city and Strabane District Council, she will do so in Derry’s Guildhall, where the former SDLP leader’s peace prizes are on display.
“I say the SDLP chose me, and Derry chose me too,” she says. “I remember, even before I got into community work, I was walking on the street with my son, my son is non-verbal [but] sometimes he can be very vocal. People were not stopping, looking and being shocked, they were stopping and wanting to help, asking “Do you need a hand in the shops?’
“We are very happy here ... we feel like everybody has completely embraced us.”
Walking through the city centre, a stranger extends his hand to shake hers. “Are you our mayor?” he asks. “I’m a Shinner myself, but well, we’re all nationalists. It’s good to meet you, comrade.”
Derry’s incoming first citizen, a councillor since 2021, is a “proud Maasai woman”, one of a family of 14 children – “I always tell everybody we are an Irish Catholic family” – from Narok, in Kenya’s Rift Valley.
“The Maasai are well known for our traditions, we strongly believe in our way of life ... we’re very, very brave ... very generous people, really good-hearted people.”
On each wrist, Seenoi-Barr wears a traditional beaded bracelet – one in the colours of the Kenyan flag, the others in those of her clan. “I am so proud of my culture, I think that is what gives me my identity,” she says; she speaks of their “really amazing, positive practices” but also “negative ones” such polygamy – she was brought up in a monogamous family but has uncles who have multiple wives – and female genital mutilation.
Education was a priority; her father was a doctor but her mother left school before the age of 10, and married at 16. “It became a mission of her life to ensure that all her children get an education.”
Seenoi-Barr was sent to boarding school where there were “few, if any, Maasai girls in your own school ... then you go back home and you hear your friend got married, or your cousin.
“It’s only after you start growing up you realise you were being protected.”
She became involved in gender rights campaigns and founded an organisation with her brother, the Maasai education discovery-brides rescue project. “We would go to villages and educate women, do women empowerment programmes, and then also rescue girls who never wanted to get married.
“That’s where I really started my activism, and I genuinely loved doing that because it was so rewarding – getting a girl to go to school, getting a scholarship, getting an education, becoming something in their lives.”
It was dangerous work; Seenoi-Barr received death threats, and her young son Brian, who is autistic, was also under threat.
Though education means this is changing, in Maasai culture, Seenoi-Barr explains, “anyone with a disability is a bad omen.
“You’re a young mum, single, don’t know how to fight back and your life is in danger, receiving threats, and your child is also receiving threats because of their condition, you have to make the most difficult decision in your life.
“You have to choose your child’s safety ... that’s why I came here, and I am just glad that things had changed in Ireland, that my child is not seen as a bad omen, is not seen as a curse, is seen as a blessing.”
Seenoi-Barr was invited to Derry by local charity the Changaro Trust, who had volunteers in Kenya; she quickly began assisting other new arrivals and in 2012 founded the NWMF.
I’ve stopped being angry because I realised there is a lot of ignorance in the community
Initially an informal support group, it now works with more than 125 nationalities and, as its director of programmes, Seenoi-Barr has spoken out on issues such as the UK’s Electronic Travel Authorisation scheme – a US-style visa waiver scheme for crossing the Border – and the “invisible hard Border” for migrants. “They cannot really do what a normal human being can do here – can’t go and get petrol in Donegal, or vice versa.
“There [was] a concert for Girls Aloud [in Belfast], I know a lot of people [based in Donegal] who wanted to go, they couldn’t, they had to go to Dublin.”
On a practical basis “we are better off in a united Ireland. I would struggle finding any immigrant who would say that a united Ireland wouldn’t benefit them.”
On the recent claims by the Minister for Justice Helen McEntee that 80 per cent of people applying for asylum in the State were coming from the North, Seenoi-Barr is firm: “That is not true.
“I would ask the [Irish] Government to provide real data on that, that was just claims to cover their own mistake ... it is just pandering into the far-right narrative and it is such a shame that good politicians are the ones picking that narrative.”
We discuss some of those narratives: around the UK government’s determination to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, the recent tent encampments in Dublin and arson attacks on buildings intended to house them.
“I’ve stopped being angry because I realised there is a lot of ignorance in the community,” says Seenoi-Barr; she blames governments for “scapegoating” migrants and using them to “deflect” from their own failures.
“Migrants have been used as political pawns. I came here in 2010. The crisis in housing, crisis in health, crisis in public services did not start now, they started well before I came to this country.
“It’s getting worse but it’s not because of immigrants, it’s getting worse because government is not investing in public services.”
Of the Irish Government, she says she struggles to see why they are “pandering” to the UK administration’s stance on immigration, and says “Irish politicians have let Irish people down.
“I don’t believe there’s no money. There’s so much money, there’s a surplus in Ireland, for God’s sake.
“You can build more houses and get people off the streets, you can invest in every public service and eradicate the poverty that people are facing, invest in skills and employ more people, give them a good wage, look after the most vulnerable in society but we choose not to, and it is a political choice.
“Right now, the easiest way is to blame the British government immigration system. Ireland is an independent country. Why do they have to do what the British government is doing?
“We seem to be falling into that trap, even with good politicians that I know for a fact have no racist bone in their body are silent, and they are afraid of speaking up, and that silent majority is the reason why this small minority is very loud, because we’re not speaking up and we’re not pushing back.”
She recalls the nuns who used to visit her Kenyan high school to recruit nurses to come to Ireland. “Look at the contribution immigrants make to this society. All of a sudden, the people you need are now a problem?”
The 2021 census showed Northern Ireland is changing. A total of 65,600 people – 3.4 per cent of the population – belong to ethnic minority groups; though the numbers are still small, they are increasing, and are around double the figure in 2011, and four times that of 2001.
Just under 150,000 people (6.5 per cent) living in Northern Ireland were born outside the UK and Ireland, the highest such figure ever recorded.
Seenoi-Barr describes the changes she has seen since her arrival 14 years ago. “I used to go to Belfast and Letterkenny to shop, if I needed African stuff. Now I don’t have to, I’m shopping here. I used to take my son to Belfast to cut his hair – now I don’t, we do it here.
Political structures in Northern Ireland will need to change completely for immigrants to feel comfortable to engage in politics
“Northern Ireland is now a multicultural society.”
A recent “turning point” was the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020; Seenoi-Barr organised the Derry rally. “I think that’s when people started looking at what actually is racism.”
Previously, in the Northern context, people “never thought about institutional racism and what that means ... people talked about sectarianism, but they didn’t realise because of sectarianism everything else had been forgotten about.”
This is another of the legacies Northern Ireland struggles with. “Political structures in Northern Ireland will need to change completely for immigrants to feel comfortable to engage in politics.
“We don’t have a hate crime legislation. There are no processes put in place to encourage underrepresented communities – it’s not just immigrants who are not represented [in politics], it’s people with disabilities, women, young people, the LGBTQ community.”
Seenoi-Barr faced death threats and racist abuse after she was selected as mayor; the American far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones – who claimed the Sandy Hook shootings were a hoax – was among those who targeted her on social media.
She describes it as “quite a distressing time” for those around her, not least her family, but credits the “overwhelming” support she received, especially from her own party, and her own decision not to engage – “I don’t look at social media” – for helping her get through it.
“I have never had so much support – I got a letter from the Taoiseach, the First Minister [Michelle O’Neill of Sinn Féin] contacted me, I got an invitation to go and meet the King.
“All this happened because people want to see progress in Northern Ireland, but not everybody can handle that.”
Separately, fellow councillors Jason Barr and Shauna Cusack criticised how Seenoi-Barr’s selection took place, with no voting process among party members. They both resigned from the party to go Independent.
Seenoi-Barr said “the process that was put in place wasn’t my process, it was the political party process and I engaged with it fully.”
The SDLP subsequently apologised for “the failures in communicating the process to members, the upset this has caused, and that it has reflected poorly on a positive selection.”
She hopes her year as mayor will encourage more immigrants to get involved in politics. “I feel like I have to carry that flag and show people that you can do it, you can succeed.
“Northern Ireland needs immigrants to get into politics for the sake of progress,” she says. “They have no Northern Ireland political baggage ... we are thinking about how we address the real issues, the bread-and-butter issues.”
In the last council election, only a handful of people from ethnic minorities stood as candidates; though they are few in number, they are “creating a pathway for people,” she says.
“Yesterday walking on the streets, so many young girls were coming up to me telling me they see themselves in me.
“They were black young girls, inspired to participate in politics because they see me, but even young girls from this community who are white, who say ‘if Lilian can do it, and she was not born here, I can do it’.”
As Hume promised, Derry has become her home. Now a self-proclaimed Derry Girl, Seenoi-Barr is a big fan of the hit Channel 4 series.
“We have a TV upstairs, and I tell everyone who comes here [to the NWMF office], if you want to know about Derry, you have to watch Derry Girls.
“I think now Derry Girls needs to feature me, the new Derry Girl!”
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