Pino Aina
Pino talks about coming from Sicily to Woking

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I was born in a very remote area of Sicily called Mussomeli which is where most of the Italian people in Woking are from, and I’m 45 years old.  I came here when I was about 16 – 15-and-a-half. I got here, I had about six months in English schools and then I left school. I started working in the Lion Works factory, Maybury Hill, four or five weeks; then I went to a firm who was building swimming pools - I stayed there for two years. I was about 19 and I started my own business in building.

Mainly the Italians, when they first got here, they were working in farms, because obviously we come from a farming place in Sicily, or hospitals as cleaners and anything else. For me it was new, good because the life here - obviously we’re near London and coming from a very small town in Sicily - it’s great, like going out every night and clubbing, things like that. My parents unfortunately didn’t find it so fun, so they did - after six years, they just went back, they didn’t like it.

It was so nice here because we could go out with girls which, at that time in Italy – now it’s okay – but at that time, where I came from, there’s no way you could take a girl out at night-time. Apart from there wasn’t anywhere to go, it’s so small a town and you basically wouldn’t - her parents wouldn’t have allowed you to do so anyway, that was a big thing there.

The climate – that’s one of the things that we missed and obviously the friends, you know, the youth friends, and that’s another thing you kind of miss. But I think, at the time, I was missing the sort of lifestyle to not worry about anything. But that came across more when I grew older, when I started – I mean at 19 I had my own business and you have to go around and always working. Where I come from, it doesn’t work like that – okay, all the people that work, so if something happens, if there’s a wedding, they just don’t go to work. They phone the boss and say, I’m not coming today. It’s a completely - that’s the different style of life that’s there. That’s the only thing but other than that…  I miss more Sicily than when I was young.

From Mussomeli, we have the Virgin Mary that - basically the town of Mussomeli was made on this rock and there’s a story of the Virgin Mary and miracles. Now the Italian community, they decide to bring the Virgin, make a statue and bring it to Woking and every year in May, they have an outing. We do it at St Dunstan’s School for all the Italians and they have a mass and then they have games and stuff like that. There’s a missionary priest in Brixton called Scalabrini and they have a house in Woking and that’s where they keep it until the feast comes up.  Then they bring it to the church and they have a little procession as well from the priest’s house to the church and then back to the priest’s house.