Source 3b: Oral history - Chandrika Keshavlal Joshi

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My first impressions of UK were looking through the window of the sort of bus which was taking us to the train station from Heathrow airport. We arrived in Tonfanau Refugee camp. You know we really had no idea of what to expect and we were all taken to a cinema there which was a hall and we were allocated these little rooms which had these small uhm small one-bedders with these khaki blankets on top, a tiny electric heater was wall mounted and there were lots of beds in a tiny area…  

In Uganda, you know we had our own fashion sense! And when you are fourteen you are very conscious of how you dress etc. So, you know … you dress etc. So I still went around in my sandals, in my little Ugandan dress even though it was freezing cold because I’d rather look nice, than sort of wear these old-fashioned clothes! 

Food options were limited. So it was mainly English food. And for vegetarians which were predominantly – a lot of Ugandan Asians, Gujaratis, were vegetarian – so there were not enough vegetarian options. And, you know, toast, milk, cornflakes, beans and after a couple of weeks, people complained and said there wasn’t enough variety of foods for vegetarians and also people, you know, were missing their own food to an extent, you know. So after I would say a few weeks, they invited some of the Ugandan Asians who were already there to help with the cooking, and a stage came when they started making parathas and stuff like that and offering that which was much nicer. And much later, they actually gave us little electric plates, …, you know homecooked. 

I would say the early five years of our lives were really tough. And unlike a lot of Asian people who went and settled in places like Leicester, Birmingham – where other Asian social support is there, where other Asian people were there, we were housed in a small estate in South Wales and my father accepted the house because my mother was in a hospital there and we just didn’t want to be too far away from my mum. We were housed in a little, little place called Penrhys which is a small village in South Wales. There were ten families who were housed in the Rhondda because a call out had gone to all the councils to say how many Ugandan Asians they can house and South Wales had said we would take ten. The nice thing was that we used to visit each other, so socialise with each other – take a bus and go over to their house and socialise there and make samosas and eat, and you know, and they came over…. 

I didn’t get any of my A Levels. I went through a really traumatic period, so for me at fourteen, the five years were really hard. I couldn’t… I am on top of a village, living in a– which was fine – initially trying really hard to integrate and the only Asian girl in my class etc – but the school was Ferndale Comprehensive School, so I would have to change buses in order to go to school because we were on top of the mountain. Only one shop and there was nothing else there. And although the school children, the headmaster, etc, the children were lovely – I could have made close friends from my class – the fact that it was so far away left me out. So I felt really isolated and lonely so the five years were very hard for me and I didn’t get my A levels. But then I got a job in a hospital, as I had twelve to thirteen GCSE’s – 13 O Levels, good grades. Right? So that meant that I worked in the hospital for two years and then got a qualification and got distinctions and decided to do dentistry.  

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