Today, I better learned how foreigners find home in England. It’s been hard living here. The weather is awful. The people aren’t friendly. Nor are they particularly helpful. They stick to themselves. The British food is bad ( Fish & Chips? Blood Pudding? Hagus? No thank you.) And the soymilk is hopless.
Thus, foreigners forge a new community containing streams from their past. Their communities provide care and comfort, love and happiness. Their communities are the most vital part for a quality life. Without a community, British life is just unbearable. Mind you, I’m not in London!
For instance, yesterday I had to go to the hospital, my landlord, Junita, and guyfriend took utmost care to my every need. When I came home, Junita sat up with me till 2 am, and we drank tea and chatted about Madonna and her feng shui practice
The point of this quick tale is that I was finally finding a reliable and caring network, but none were indigenous Brits. I’ve heard people say time and time again, the indigenous Brits are very reliable for fun at the pubs–and that’s that!
The next morning I woke up, and made an omelet for myself and Reza, and then went back to my room to read news online. Junita called me to see if I wanted to go for a walk with the dog (she knows the only reason I’m homesick is because I miss my dog) and I obviously said ‘Emphatic yes please’. I packed my stuff for the library and we went walking together in the rain. She if I would still be there at the barbeque and I assured her I would, pain or no pain. While we walked, I got lots of phone calls from people I had recently met to see if I was feeling well. Again, all non-indigenous Brits showing care and solidarity.
Later that evening, I went to Junita’s barbeque held for tenants to meet one another. There was an Indian from Hong Kong who speaks Cantonese and flawless English, a Greek girl doing a masters in drama and education, her Taiwanese boyfriend doing a masters in math, a Turkish IT technician, and her son, half Singaporean, half British. We ate Thai grilled chicken, Italian sausages, burgers with onions, modified Chinese friend rice, salad, rose wine, Indian sweets with Turkish coffee, and then hand picked raspberries from her garden. The bizarre medley of food was fantastic, the conversation was great, and everything about the ambiance was comfortably cheery.
The Greek girl had hated being in Britain. She desperately wanted to move back to Greece where the people were friendlier. That was until she met Junita this summer. Now, she’s reconsidering doing a second master’s as opposed to jetting back to Greece… much to the satisfaction of her boyfriend who does not want to live in Greece.
Apparently, she would once lament ‘The British people just have nothing meaningful to offer me. What’s a job if you’re not happy? What’s money if you have no where to use it? What do I want with all these pubs?’ But, I swear, after meeting Junita, and getting to know some of her tenants, she’s changed her mind. The community Junita helps her tenants build is so essential for their wellbeing and this showed me how essential a community is for immigrants well being. It all makes sense now why religious centers are the center of a community—religious centers bring together disparate communities and individuals.
Kavit, the Indian boy from Hong Kong, is in med school at Warwick. He confessed to me that he’s doing some soul-searching to figure out who exactly he is, but interestingly, he’s looking to the Indian region he’s from, not to the English culture he’s ultimately going to be a part of.
And this is a main way foreigners in England become part of England: by becoming part of a hybrid community that offers the basic structures of being British- the language, the laws, the etiquette- with the warmth and care that comes naturally from being a part of a non-western foreign country. The interior stays foreign while the exterior appears to be British.
Who are you in Britain? As Junita would say, ‘We become everything but English.’ While it’s not quite appropriate for me to say why, after living in a white working class neighborhood, and being able to compare it to a South Asian working class neighborhood, I can honestly say that I understand her, and I don’t think that’s good.
But thank God I’ve finally found a niche, one with Junita’s tenants and one with some people from the pub outing.
I was real lonely and felt more ‘foreign’ than ‘South Asian’. A Punjabi with an American accent is too much for people. ‘God, this is so weird seeing an Asian without a British accent’ they would say. The fact that I adore country music makes them slam their hands over their ears. ‘No more! Please! Asians aren’t like that. They listen to techno’. And I immediately stop being Asian in their eyes and turn foreign.
And as a foreigner, I find myself fitting snuggly into the grey areas. The areas that are ill defined and redefined daily. The areas that are neither South Asian nor British, but ‘foreign’ so as to enscapsulate everything else. These are the areas where other cultures which avoided systematic British discrimination fall into. It seems coming off as American means I no longer am in the Asian pool. I avoided the categorization and defined boundaries created by past discrimination. And perhaps, current too.
