As a refugee is stabbed to death in a racially motivated attack in Sunderland, a young African tells Adrian Worsley about the institutional racism he has endured in the North East since he fled here four years ago.

TO take his mind off the back-breaking work he had to wade through before dawn, Feston would fantasise about a better life. He dreamt of the West - a vague glossy advert featuring Coca Cola, liberty for all and two point four shopping channels per household.

He would fantasise about becoming a journalist one day, perhaps in Britain. But most of all he just wanted out. Spending three hours working in the fields before breakfast, followed by an eight mile walk to school every day, persuaded him there was more to life.

So, seduced by images of a prosperous West glistening with possibilities, he left his family behind in the southern African state of Malawi and sought asylum in the UK.

Now, almost four years after arriving on Teesside, the 25-year-old's dreams of a better life have been punctured. HIV positive, strapped for cash and with no real prospects of work, Feston is finding life on Teesside very hard.

And what he finds hardest of all is the intolerance he says he faces every day. A black belt in karate, Feston is more than capable of fighting back against the physical abuse he has received, but he turns the other cheek, safe in the knowledge that there are other asylum seekers in a much worse position. Now determined to tell his story, Feston - who didn't want to be fully identified for fear of reprisals - says Britain is far from the civilised nation he imagined while tending crops under the baking African sun.

"The worst thing that's happened so far was when my friends were attacked in a Middlesbrough pub," he explains. "It was because they were black and for no other reason.

WE were sitting there talking in the corner when a shaven-headed man came up to us and said something we didn't quite catch. Then he started laying into my friend. When the manager saw what was happening, he just locked the doors. Then eight to ten men surrounded us and came in with fists and feet - it was a horrible scene. We got out of the corner and smashed a window in the back room to get away. We told the police but nothing was ever done."

Since his arrival on Teesside in November 1998, Feston has tried his best to ingratiate himself with the natives. He would scrape together some of what little money the state would allow - in his case £27 a week benefits - and head into town, hoping to ease into the fabric of a bustling northern town. But the brutal and consistent nature of the racism he and his African friends have encountered have made integration impossible.

"I have been in nightclubs with one black friend and we have been attacked for the colour of our skin. In one case the manager arrived and held me by the neck while my friend was kicked in the head on the dancefloor," he recalls.

That was in the early days when he could actually get into nightclubs. Now, he says, he doesn't bother because he wouldn't get in anyway.

"I went to Stockton, where no-one knows my face, and a bouncer refused to let me in. I asked him why and he told me I just wasn't coming in. I've been to a pub with a white friend and he's been let in and I've been left out in the cold. It is humiliating, but I can live without the nightlife - I know what it is really like now."

Four years on Teesside has taught Feston that the best way to survive is to not draw attention to yourself. He now achieves this by never going out.

"I am thousands of miles away from my family in Malawi and I have no social-life whatsoever," he says. "I cannot work because my asylum application hasn't been processed yet and I do not feel secure when I leave my house.

"I never know what is going to happen if I leave the house. One day I could be spat on my teenagers at the bus stop, the next I could have yoghurt thrown at me by ten-year-old boys while their drunk and stoned parents look on laughing.

"All this has happened to me. So you see, why should I go out?"

Not that he has nothing to do. Like all asylum seekers, Feston is a slave to the postman, so every morning he goes through the same ritual.

"Do you know the first thing every asylum seeker does every morning? He goes to the front door to check the post. It becomes a burden, but we need news of any kind. What's happened to my application, or am I being deported tomorrow? You can never plan anything - second-by-second, never mind day-to-day - because you don't know what's going to happen that day."

Feston left Malawi, a formerly prosperous southern African nation now experiencing the start of a catastrophic drought, with a vague ambition to study journalism at one of Britain's universities. Promised an education and a good standard of living by a British acquaintance he met in the Malawian capital Lilongwe, he arrived on these shores to discover his 'friend' had sexual motives for paying for his transit to Europe.

He was told by his British 'friend' to claim asylum on the grounds that he was gay - despite not knowing what the word meant - and he went along with it because, he says, in rural African culture there was 'no such thing'.

Feston immediately realised he'd been conned into coming to the UK. His friend, who apparently had powerful connections, made no attempt to get Feston a job or a place on a journalism course. Instead, claims Feston, the only thing he gave him was HIV. He hasn't seen him since several weeks after he arrived in Britain.

He has now dropped his asylum application - because he doesn't want to live in the UK under false pretences - and is expecting to be deported at any moment.

He says: "What does Britain say to the rest of the world? It says we respect human rights, we welcome everyone, we are tolerant. Believe me, the brochure that the West sells to the developing world is full of lies.

"The West believes they can offer us anything and we will take it because we aren't in a position to turn it down. In a way, what's happened to me - with the promise of a better future and the reality of life here - is symptomatic of the West's relationship with Africa in general."

Diagnosed with HIV in December, Feston is now on a course of medication it would be impossible to obtain back in Malawi. But because he dropped his asylum application he knows a knock on the door could mean a one-way ticket back home at any moment.

This is a prospect even worse than the life he leads in Middlesbrough. He says: "If I went home I would not get any of the medication I need. But I am no longer pursuing an application so I will probably be deported sooner rather than later."

Asked if he regretted leaving his homeland for the UK, his answer was surprising. He said: "I don't regret any of it for one minute. I wouldn't know what I know now if I hadn't come here. And, after all, I did come here to increase my knowledge."