Ghazala Waheed
Ghazala talks about some cultural differences

---

---

We couldn't detect the Flash plugin

You need the Flash plugin to hear the audio version of this piece of oral history. You can download the Flash plugin here.

I was born in Pakistan in 1968 in Rawalpindi. I came to Woking in 1989. There’s a huge difference. It’s a different country and I found it at that time very difficult to settle down but, at the same time, it was exciting too – it was a bit of both. When someone comes from Pakistan, you do face lots of problems and lots of difficulties but as far as adjusting culture-wise was concerned or the way of people and their behaviour and all that is concerned, it was very different. Because I could speak the language, so I think I didn’t find it very hard to communicate with people. Culturally, it was very very hard.

Earlier days, of course every single thing was different, down to just a small detail like if you were cooking in the kitchen, and also cleaning in the house was very different as well. You use obviously brushes and other kind of things to clean in Pakistan but here, you had to use a hoover. Although we had hoover in Pakistan as well but still it’s different here. The one interesting thing is that there are no drains in the toilets and in the kitchen and we are so used to cleaning your kitchen and toilet floor with water. I must say that I flooded the bathroom floor once, because I thought there’s got to be a drain here and also did exactly the same with the kitchen floor and my husband told me that, no, you have to mop everything up and suck the water with the help of this cloth and that was quite interesting and annoying, but that is what I found very different and quite annoying. How can you clean a kitchen floor and a toilet floor without having a drain there and really using lots of water instead of just using a mop, but now it makes sense.