Gospel Choir sings at the asylum centre

You might have heard of the Oakington Immigration Reception Centre on the news. A few weeks ago there was a major incident there. This week there was a minor incident when the Ridley Hall Gospel Choir (of which I am a member) visited to give a short concert. The Gospel Choir meets every Friday lunchtime for an hour, and we've given three or four concerts, usually in churches, as well as a couple of shorter performances in shopping centres. Our last major concert was on Saturday night in the village of Comberton, but before term finishes there are three smaller events, of which Oakington was the first.

For such a notorious place it's really hard to find. It didn't help that we hadn't been given a precise address to head for, nor that the roadsigns to it have recently been removed. So a 15 minute journey took us an hour. And I had to take my passport - as Oakington houses asylum seekers I guess it's useful to be able to prove that you are a UK resident to be able to get out to go home!

It's quite a depressing place. It's an old military airfield, so it has the look and feel of such places, but drained of any personality. It's more secure than some prisons, surrounded by high barbed wire topped fences and heavy gates, but the area where people actually 'live' is a very small enclosure. I now have a sense of how animals feel in the zoo - they can see all that space outside but they can't get out. A grassy area has been converted into a sports field but that seems to be about all that's going on. It feels like this might have been a lively place once, but it just seems oppressive now.

We are shown into the canteen, which is to be our performance space. Rows of fixed plastic tables and chairs reinforce that this is not a particularly comfortable place to live. We start off with a small audience, but soon the sound of our singing filters out and more come in. We face rows and rows of men (women are kept at a different centre) of many colours and faiths. We are here at the invitation of the chaplain, but are instructed that we shouldn't preach, so our normal song introductions which explain the meaning and background to each song are out, and we have to let the songs speak for themselves. Much of our repertoire is based around old slave songs, and it's bizarre to be singing songs about being captive, wanting to be free, finding freedom in Christ, in such a place. We sing 'Rescue Me' and 'Take the shackles off my feet so I can dance' and these send shivers down my spine. After an hour the depressed faces of our audience have been transformed to ones of smiling and laughter - even if the God we're singing of is not their god.

Afterwards we meet and chat with the residents. I talk with 'Jim' who is from Albania, and has just received his place ticket home. He's in his mid twenties and since leaving Albania he's worked across Europe, spending the last five years in England. I can't get him to explain how he ended up in Oakington, so I suspect he's been working illegally, and the authorities finally caught up with him. But with his flight in sight he's happy that he only has to spend another three nights here. By now he'll be home, but others can stay there for months if they don't accept the Queen's kind offer of a free flight. Two hours there was enough for me.