Olympic boxer Cindy Ngamba: ‘I want to show the world that refugees can do anything’

“The crowd went crazy when I stepped onto the podium,” boxer Cindy Ngamba says, picturing the moment she made history this year as the first athlete in the Refugee Olympic Team to win an Olympic medal. “They were all cheering for me. They were supporting me and giving me love. I can still visualise it. I felt: ‘Wow, this is crazy. These are people who don’t know me, but they’re all happy for me.’ I will cherish that for the rest of my life.”

This sense of total acceptance was unfamiliar to the Cameroonian-born refugee who arrived in Bolton aged 11. She has fought off worse throughout her life than opponents in the boxing ring – teenage bullies, the Home Office who repeatedly refused to give her refugee status and had her arrested in 2019, and her own mental health struggles.

“Boxing saved me,” Ngamba says. Her family came to the UK looking for a better life, but she spoke no English and she missed the weather in Cameroon. It took time to make friends and, when she did, she never felt like she fit in.

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Ngamba was 15 when she first stepped in a boxing gym, peering in after football training at her youth club. Captivated, she asked to join the next session, and soon discovered a steely determination to become a fighter, taking on and beating local boys in the ring.

“I used to be very shy and not know what I wanted in life,” she says. “Boxing gave me a place of peace. I met amazing people who wanted to support me, who saw my future before I saw it myself. It put me in a spot where I was able to meet new people and get help. I was able to create a family and find friends that will be there for the rest of my life.”

Cindy Ngamba faced deeper struggles than most teenagers. She was a migrant and knew the Home Office could deport her, despite having family in the UK and calling it her home. She was unable to go on holidays or to university with her friends. “It was like my life was slowed down. My life was put on pause, while theirs was put on play,” she says. 

There was also fear she could be forced back to Cameroon. “I was trying to sort out my paper situation with the Home Office, applying my case over and over again, and it was challenging. You could be kicked out of the country. I had it in the back of my mind that I could be arrested any moment, whether I’m going to work, to school, college, training, coming back home, walking the street. I don’t think I would wish it on my worst enemy.”

And then it happened. Ngamba was arrested in 2019 at a routine immigration appointment. She was handcuffed and then taken to a detention centre, where she was caged alongside others who were set to be sent back to countries from which they had fled.

“Anything I’m going to go through now is never going to be that challenging. Any moment when my mind starts thinking negatively or a negative thought comes in, I think: ‘Man, me being able to handle this negative thought and these deep emotions will never be as hard as that moment when I was arrested,’” Ngamba recalls.

The boxer is openly gay, and same-sex conduct is criminalised in Cameroon, with a maximum penalty of five years’ imprisonment and a fine. Human rights groups have warned that LGBTQ+ people face mass arrests, arbitrary detention and torture while in custody in Cameroon. It means Ngamba cannot return, and she was terrified for her future.

With the help of her family who got the right paperwork to the government, she was released, and was finally given refugee status that same year. It meant she could go to the University of Bolton, where she studied crime and criminal justice, while travelling internationally to box.

Ngamba started training regularly with the GB boxing team in Sheffield and became a three-time English national champion. The squad helped her apply for citizenship with the Home Office, but she has been continually refused. 

Still, she is no longer afraid of being sent back to Cameroon. She is now 26 and has grown from a child into a woman in Britain, throughout all of secondary school, through university and throughout her boxing career, which has taken her to the Olympics. 

“I feel like I’ve benefited the country in many ways,” she says, “and all I know is the UK.”

Cindy Ngamba is still hopeful that she will get her citizenship, but she says: “I had to wait five years until I got my refugee status. I’m not in a rush. You can’t rush things because, once you rush things, everything will flash before your eyes.”

And so, while she was unable to fight as part of the GB Olympic squad, she had the opportunity to join the Refugee Olympic Team with 36 other refugee athletes in Paris. The team was created in 2016 for the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, with just 10 athletes, and Ngamba hopes it keeps growing – with her success this year just the start of medals.

“It meant the world to me. It was an honour to represent the refugee team,” she says. “It was an honour to qualify for the Olympics and be the first ever refugee to have won a medal for the refugee team.

“Most of them have gone through the worst thing, having to flee their country for a better life, for shelter from danger. But before we went to the Olympics, they always had a smile on their face. They were always happy. They were just grateful for just little things.”

Ngamba lost out in the women’s 75kg semi-final in a split decision against Panama’s Atheyna Bylon, and she was visibly upset with the result. “It really hurt. I’m an athlete and I’m a human. When you work so hard for something that you have your mind set on that goal, and for it to not go your way that day, it’s a hard one to swallow,” she admits.

The boxer says she wishes she had been more open this year about the mental health of an athlete on the big stage. She says athletes too have thoughts that can eat them up. They have to try not to dwell too much on negative thoughts – or they could “crumble to pieces”.

Ngamba may not have won that semi-final fight, but she did make history by taking home a bronze. “Everything happens for a reason,” she says. “I didn’t achieve a gold medal, but at least I achieved a medal, not only for myself, not only for the refugee team, but for my own conscience, because I went for myself and to prove to the world what I was capable of.”

As she stood on the podium, embraced by applause, she realised how much she had achieved, and how much it meant to be a refugee accepting an Olympic medal in front of the world.

In a year in which far-right riots rippled through the UK with targeted attacks on asylum seekers, and as refugees are often scapegoated by politicians and the media, Cindy Ngamba’s story is all the more extraordinary. She is hopeful for a better world, where refugees are welcomed.

“I am just one of billions out there, and I was given the opportunity for having the skills and believing in myself and being dedicated to the sport,” Ngamba says. “I’ve always wanted to go out there and show the world that refugees can do anything. They can overcome anything. 

“They have gone through so many barriers in their lives to achieve their goals and their aims. Even though we have that label of a refugee, we are athletes. We are hungry and we have goals. I’m just one of the refugees around the world and if I can do it, many others can.”

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