United Nations Refugee Agency: Canada

Constant Headaches Dept: The decision haunted Mahamed long after she arrived in Vancouver. She slept fitfully, plagued by constant headaches and asthma flare-ups. She was also alone in a new country where she didn't speak the language and had no friends or family to help care for the children who were with her - or cope with the guilt about the one she left behind, according to Vancouver Sun. Mahamed, 38, fled the fighting in her native Ethiopia as a youth and spent 20 years living as a refugee in neighbouring Kenya. She registered with the United Nations refugee agency in 1999 and was told in April 2006 she had been selected to come to Canada. Mahamed's husband, Abdul, did not have the proper documentation to be in Kenya and was repeatedly thrown out of the country by authorities, rendering him unable to apply to come with his family to Canada. He has since rectified this, and is now hoping to join them and the day Zeynab Mahamed left Kenya for Canada after waiting in a refugee queue for nine years should have been one of the happiest days of her life. Instead, for Mahamed, June 10, 2008 is a date infused with heartache. It was the day she left her seven-week-old baby behind in Africa in order to secure a better future for her five other children. It would be almost four years before baby Nasteha and her mother would be reunited. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.