At The Exchange in Buncrana, an English class is under way.
About 20 people from a multiplicity of nationalities are grouped around the table. A babble of different languages fills the room as they practise the day’s lesson.
The community centre began supporting asylum seekers when the first International Protection Accommodation Service (Ipas) facility opened in the Co Donegal town two years ago; there are now two Ipas centres in Buncrana, which are home to about 150 people.
“We immediately opened up a weekly drop-in cafe, just to get to know people, then we soon saw the need for English classes,” says Ruth Garvey-Williams, a volunteer at The Exchange and chairperson of Insight Inishowen, one of the groups which operates the community centre where an international church also meets.
“We have gradually got to know the whole community,” says Garvey-Williams. “We have become very, very close.”
It was at The Exchange that Garvey-Williams met Emmanuel Familola and Matt Sibanda. Her face lights up as she speaks of the teenagers – 16-year-old Familola was “quite quiet, a lot of people have called him a gentle giant, because he’s a strapping lad, and a beautiful nature, such a trustworthy person”, she says.
Other families would “entrust their kids to them, like he would walk some of the girls down to the youth club ... he was a safe pair of hands who would take care of the other kids”, she said.
Sibanda was from Zimbabwe, had just turned 18 last month and was about to sit his Leaving Certificate next month.
“He was an exceptional student, was getting very excited about going off to college, he was a very good footballer, and just an exceptional young man,” she says.
He always had a “beaming smile” on his face.
Last Saturday, Familola and Sibanda were enjoying the sunshine at Ned’s Point, a well-known spot with a pier, slipway and beach. It is also the home of the Lough Swilly lifeboat. It is at the end of a scenic 10-minute walk along the lough shore from the centre of town.
The teenagers were playing football with friends when their ball went into the water. They went to retrieve it and got into difficulties. Sibanda’s body was recovered later that evening. Familola was taken to hospital but later died.
He had been brought to the shore in the water by a third friend. That friend is described as a “hero” by a local man who knew Familola but does not want to be identified because he works with residents in the Ipas centre where the 16-year-old lived.
“Emmanuel was a lovely boy,” he says.
Flowers and candles have been left at a spot overlooking the stretch of water where the two boys went into the water.
A message of condolence reads: “Thinking of your families and friends at this heartbreaking, tragic time. May your God be with you all.”
Familola and Sibanda were “both an oldest son, their [mother’s] first child, the light of their life, their world,” says Garvey-Williams.
“How do you even come to terms with that?”
Familola was from Nigeria. He came to Buncrana with his mother Glory and two younger brothers as international protection applicants in 2023. Sibanda, his mother Bonnie and younger sibling arrived from Zimbabwe a few months later.
“People sort of glibly talk about refugees and asylum seekers without stopping to think about what that actually means,” says Garvey-Williams.
“It’s somebody who’s been through such devastating trauma, such difficult circumstances that they have literally had to pick up and flee, often leaving homes, leaving jobs, leaving houses, cars.
“We’re not talking about economic migrants, we’re talking about people who have been pushed into a situation because of something that’s happened, huge hardship and huge trauma and very real fear for their safety.
“I’m aware that’s the case for these families. They have come here because they wanted to keep their children safe from harm, and which parent doesn‘t want to do that?”
In Buncrana, they built new lives. Familola was a pupil at Scoil Mhuire in the town, while Sibanda attended Crana College. After their deaths, principals Evelyn McLoughlin and Kevin Cooley spoke of the “devastation” in both schools at “this heartbreaking loss”.
“Emmanuel and Matt were deeply respected and valued members of our student bodies, and their passing has left us all in profound shock,” they said in a statement.
Fionán Bradley, a local Fianna Fáil councillor and teacher who taught Familola, described him as “a model student”.
“[He] did anything he was asked, never, ever spoke back, just impeccable manners – a real gentleman,” says Bradley.
Both boys volunteered at The Exchange. Familola “helped out with various things, like printing out certificates for the volunteer programme, and helping with the food pantry we had, even doing some nasty jobs,” says Garvey-Williams.
“We had to recycle some food that had gone off, and he got his hands dirty, he was willing to just muck in.”
She says Sibanda was “the oldest” and was “like a big brother to all the other children in the centre”.
“He would encourage them to study and do their homework; he was setting a great example because he was such a good student himself, but also just watching out for them.”
The day before the tragedy, Sibanda had been preparing for his part in a Shakespeare production the centre is to put on in June.
“He said: ‘Oh, I’d like to do that, and so we were taking measurements for his costume, and he was all excited,” says Garvey-Williams.
“That was Friday, and then Saturday, he was gone.”
Familola had just returned from Dublin where he had been on a week’s work experience at the Department of Foreign Affairs.
“He arrived back on Friday night, and his Mum has a load of photos on her phone of him meeting all these different ambassadors, and she was so proud of him, even as we were in the hospital she was showing us all these photos,” says Garvey-Williams.
“It’s that sense of: here is someone with such potential.”
Buncrana and the Swilly has known many tragedies.
In the week since the loss of Familola and Sibanda, many have spoken of other losses on the water, including the five family members who died when their car slipped off Buncrana pier in 2016.
There have been calls for initiatives such as a water safety campaign aimed at schools and Ipas centres and the return of a municipal swimming pool to the town.
In the wake of this latest tragedy, the town has again come together.
“This is one of the things I really love about Buncrana,” says Garvey-Williams. “I moved here from England and I fell in love with this community because it’s in times of trouble and hardship that Buncrana just seems to shine, everybody stands together and pulls together.
Hundreds attended a vigil in Familola and Sibanda’s memory at St Mary’s Oratory on Sunday.
“It afforded people an opportunity to do the only thing they could do, which was just to physically come and be present and show the refugee community that they are being supported and will continue to be supported,” says Bradley.
“It was so evident for the families at the vigil that they are very much a part of this community and very much welcome here.”
A fund to support their families has so far raised more than €38,000. Garvey-Williams says she has been “overwhelmed” by the number of people stopping her on the street to say: “Can you pass on my condolences?”
In the past, there have been attacks on centres used for refugee accommodation in the area. In 2023, a firework was thrown into one of the Buncrana Ipas centres in what the owners said was an attempt to set it on fire. Another building was set on fire the following year.
“The town has been very supportive [of the asylum seekers], silently supportive,” says the Ipas centre worker.
Social media, he says, is not reflective of reality. There is a right-wing element that is “very noisy”, he says, but it’s not a majority, as seen in multiple elections.
This tragedy displayed how the people came out to show their presence physically at the vigil.
“Tragic as this is, it has changed the hearts and mind of people who before may have wavering on the immigration question,” he says.
“Once the people saw, at the vigil, the mother and the child and the absolute despair, I believe it melted the hearts of Buncrana.”
Garvey-Williams says the grief of the families is “unimaginable”.
“The one comfort they have had is the outpouring of love from the local community,” she says.
This has shown that the boys were “part of our community. They weren‘t just outsiders; they weren’t ‘non-nationals’ – or whatever those horrible words are – they were part of our community.
“They were Buncrana sons.”
