Fina Marime left her home in a poverty-stricken area in Mozambique 14 years ago when she fell in love with a Dungannon man, Thomas Muldoon.
She swapped the southeast African country for life in Co Tyrone and, today, runs a small business there, part of a large number of immigrants who have helped to change Dungannon beyond measure.
Immigrants number more than one in 10 of the town’s population – up from just 1 per cent in 2001.
The changes have even prompted Mid-Ulster Council to consider foreign language street signs, such as Portuguese. English is not the first language of more than 600 pupils at St Patrick’s Primary School.
Having settled into the town, Ms Marime decided to start her own hair extensions business on Irish Street: “I am open nine years, business is going okay. People had no internet when I first opened. Now people buy my products on the internet and come see me. This is a very busy street, a super street for a business, and it is getting busier.”
Immigrants have added to the life of Dungannon, says former House of Commons MP Bernadette McAliskey who points out that the 16,000-strong Tyrone town has grown more strongly than anywhere else in Northern Ireland. Immigrants, she says, are not people who come to “steal our jobs, houses, hospital beds and our women”.
Factory workers
Between 2000 and 2010, 122,000 immigrants arrived in the North, though 97,000 left. Many of the post-2000 arrivals were Portuguese factory workers and nurses from India and Philippines.
However, the expansion of the European Union into eastern Europe brought flows from there. Since 2004, the North has welcomed a larger share of eastern Europeans than any other part of the United Kingdom.
The majority of the eastern European arrivals – many of whom are now concerned about the impacts of Brexit – are concentrated around Dungannon, Newry and Mourne, Craigavon, but also in Belfast.
Noting immigration’s benefits, a Northern Ireland Assembly paper five years ago warned that it had created additional pressures on maternity services, healthcare, housing and education”, though migrants are “young, male and better educated”.
The number of people living in Northern Ireland who were born outside the UK and the Republic tripled in a decade, according to the Oxford Migration Observatory.
Nearly 20,000 of those living in Belfast are foreign-born, followed by 6,712 in Craigavon. However, Dungannon had the biggest percentage change, with a 10-fold jump from 484 in 2001.
Brexit could change everything. However, immigration policy is a Westminster matter, not one in the control of Stormont. Even if Stormont wanted responsibility, it has zero chance of getting it.
Critics
The majority of Dungannon locals are broadly positive about the changes, but not everyone is. In 2014 loyalist paramilitaries sent letter threats, with bullets included to foreign nationals. Landlords were threatened, too.
Equally, there have been street fights involving immigrants, though, usually, the strongest critics of such conduct come from among other immigrants, not locals.
Portuguese-born Sara Tabares is a living, breathing example of integration. She has lived in the North for 17 years, first in Cookstown, now in Dungannon. She speaks with a Tyrone accent, wears a Gaelic jersey and says “aye” a lot.
“It wasn’t my choice to live here, it was my parents’ choice. [But] I couldn’t picture ever living in Portugal again. When I visit my family over there they don’t understand English.
“They know I have some sort of accent because they say my English is different from on the TV,” she said, “I’ve never had any problems here,” said Ms Tabares. “If you speak the language then it’s easier, I think. This is home to me.”
When the local soccer club, Dungannon Swifts is fundraising, Janurieo Moniz is one of the first to support them: “Sometimes I buy one or two tickets because I like supporting [them]. I like them because I live in Dungannon.”
Mr Moniz has worked for Moy Park, the largest poultry meat producer in the North, for 14 years. His wife joined him eight years ago and their seven-year-old son Malerio is a pupil at St Patrick’s.
Close friendships
“In Portugal there was no job and my children needed to be in school. It was very difficult life, it was difficult looking for job,” says Mr Moniz, who has struck up close friendships with neighbours.
Brazilian-born Vania Miai hopes her rugby-mad 15-year-old son Vincent will play for Ulster: “I know, it must be step by step by step,” laughed the hairdresser.
She came to Dungannon 14 years ago in search of a new opportunity. Her husband also works for Moy Park; she runs a salon in the town. “When you have an opportunity, an opening, you take it,” she said.
“In my country you could never open a salon, there was no money, but here I opened my salon in 2014. I very happy, my salon is in a small place, I need a bigger place, maybe in another year.”
She has two employees, a Pole and an African: “I am the boss,” she says, with a smile.
Immigrants to Dungannon must pay their way: “If you are not productive, you go back home. But if you work everyday, are quiet, pay tax and rates it’s no problem, it’s perfect, it’s fair. You have to be honest, you have no problem in court. You have to be active, you have to help your country.”
The East Timorese are the latest in a long line of nationalities to make the journey to the Tyrone town.
Marito Pereire worked as a security guard for the United Nations in East Timor for 15 years. With peace, he lost his job. With a wife and eight children, the youngest aged 10, however, he needed a plan.
His brother had already moved to Dungannon to work at a local meat-processing factory, Dunbia, and encouraged him to follow suit. A year and a half later, he came.
Living expenses
“You are married, you have the children, you have to look after the family,” said Mr Pereire. Every penny he earns, bar modest living expenses, he sends back home he sends it back to support his wife Rita and their children.
The separation hurts, he says, adding: “I am here on my own because there are so many procedures to follow, I wish they were here too. I miss them. I remember them and one day I’ll be back.”
“I keep in contact, always contact. Sometimes there is no connection on the internet so I buy the Sim card and we talk for a few hours. I tell them I miss them, they say, ‘Father you stay safe.’ I always send money, nothing else,” he said.
Rita, his wife of 20 years also encouraged him to make the move: “She was the one who told me to come here. She said, ‘If you stay in East Timor there is nothing, you go there.”
The locals are friendly, says Mr Pereire, who believes in making friends: “collaboration is good,” he said. “Sometimes you can talk to them, they are polite. They are good people. You have to talk to people.”
He plans to stay here until he has made enough money: “I will go back home eventually, yes. Father has to go home and see my children and laugh with my children, I love them,” he said.
With his two-year-old daughter in a pushchair, Arcarnto Soares is enjoying a break from the Dunbia factory as he browses the shops on Irish Street with his youngest child.
Children come first
Like a lot of immigrants, he has not only set up home but has a family too. Little Ranytha was born two months early in Belfast’s Royal Victoria Hospital. She is not old enough yet for school. When she is, she will go to St Patrick’s.
For the East Timorese father of three, his children come first. A return home would be difficult because he could never earn as much there as he does at the meat factory.
However, the issue of return is ever present since many of his friends are going back: “That is a problem, when friends move back home. I miss them, I miss the rest of my family. Maybe I will go back one day,” he said.
Student Gorja Jonor (22) is learning English at South West College in the town. He believes when you move to Northern Ireland from another country “you need to know more English”.
In his spare time he plays soccer with his friends and follows Dungannon Swifts. “I have fun with my friends, we like the football here. I don’t want
to go back to East Timor, I want to stay here for too many years,” he said.
Like so many others, for the Mozambican-born Fina Marime, Dungannon is home: “When you live in Tyrone you are a Tyrone person, a good person, you support others,” she said.