From Sudan to Wells – mayor shares his remarkable story

IS truth sometimes stranger than fiction? Quite possibly. Could you write it? A ten-year-old boy from the Sudan, speaking no English, arrives in London in 1981. Forty-four years later he becomes the 651st Right Worshipful Mayor of a beautiful, quintessential tiny English city in the rural south-west of England. True or false? Totally true. We are talking about Councillor Louis Agabani and, of course, we are talking about Wells, and we are at the November meeting of Wells Civic Society, where Louis told his story.

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Louis pointed out that he did not arrive as a refugee; by no means. His father was a diplomat representing the then-government of Sudan and, initially, they lived in style in a grand house in fashionable London, his father’s posting being for an official four years. It was not planned that Louis would actually stay here for the four years but, in any event, the political situation changed drastically, and none of the family could go back. In fact, they lost everything, and in London the grand lifestyle had to metamorphose into existing in a pint-sized flat.

Nevertheless, in 1985 Louis obtained legal permission to stay in the UK and to work. In fact, he had been working anyway, if only doing a paper round. In 2001 he obtained a British passport and he no longer has a Sudanese one. So, he has British citizenship but he could not travel out of the country for his first ten years in England.