by Richard Edwards
A SUPERPOWER'S bureaucracy stood against her – but a young Leeds poet has ripped through red tape to secure a dream Big Apple performance.
Bridget Mbabazi, a Rwandan refugee whose parents were slaughtered in the 1994 genocide, helps cope with her trauma by writing and performing poetry.
The 16-year-old, of Cookridge, writes so well that her talents caught the eye of local and national judges.
She was picked to travel to New York with the UK poetry 'slam' team, to perform on stage in front of a live audience.
She described the opportunity as "a dream come true."
But Bridget's refugee status led to problems securing a travel visa, with the US embassy in London offering an appointment two days after she was due to fly.
Her story triggered a public outpouring of support after it was featured in the Yorkshire Evening Post earlier this month.
Dozens of people contacted the YEP and the embassy in support of the teenager, while her MP, Greg Mulholland, intervened to try and speed the case up.
Eventually, after a nailbiting wait, the visa was dramatically delivered by motorcyle courier – half-an-hour before she was due to set off.
The City of Leeds School pupil said: "I got out of bed at 6am to wait for the post to come. Every time a car stopped I went outside, thinking it was my visa, but nothing was happening.
"I had accepted I wasn't going and was ready to travel to the airport anyway, to see everyone off, then there was a knock at the door. I was so happy to see it was the courier."
Bridget said she is already well on the way to writing a new poem about her struggle to go Stateside.
She added: "As soon as I can I will be putting it all together into a poem. I have already started, it was the only way to deal with the situation. It means so much to me to be going and I want to thank everyone who helped me."
The genocide in Rwanda saw members of the Tutsi ethnic group slaughtered by people of Hutu ethnicity. It was sparked by the death of the Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu, when his plane was shot down.
richard.edwards@ypn.co.uk