Fawzia Anwari was born in Kabul, Afghanistan. She came to London with her husband, two sons and her brother's fiancée in 1991. Their stay was initially supposed to be temporary, as they had left as if to go on holiday but due to the worsening situation in Afghanistan they never returned. A teacher back home, Fawzia found herself working in a tailor factory in London. She then took a course in hairdressing, and began working as a hairdresser. She is now a senior stylist at the salon.
I was not working for the first five months when I came here, but life was very boring as all I had to do was to attend the language courses for two hours a day. After five months I started work in a clothes factory, though I was a teacher in Afghanistan, but I had a good taste for clothes and loved to wear nice dresses. I used to make my own clothes by using different catalogues and different designs. Therefore, I started work in a clothes factory, but the work I was doing there was very basic: all I was doing was to check that the clothes were in good condition, and when they were perfect, wrapping them up in plastic coverings for delivery.
In this job we had to stand regularly on our feet from eight in the morning till six o'clock in evening, except one hour that we were allowed to sit, of which 30 minutes were for a lunch break and there were two 15 minute tea breaks. From morning until 6pm I was standing and only checked the clothes and wrapped them with plastic and then they were ready for delivery.
I did this job almost for one year. For the first three months they trained me with all the machinery there, and when I learned all the machinery, after a year I was appointed as quality controller where I used to work with all of the machines. I used to work there as a replacement to anyone who could not turn up to work for sickness or other reasons, I managed to learn all of the machinery in a very short time. I think I worked there for three years as quality controller but then I realised noticed that I really didn't want to do this work anymore, because we used to work in a factory without any windows, or proper ventilation systems, and the people we used to work with were from different cultures.
While I was working in the factory I also studied. I used to go to Southall college as well, I had 15 minutes tea breaks twice, that added up to half an hour and I had half an hour lunch break as well, which added up to one hour.
I had decided to take all of these breaks at one time and told the person I worked with that I will not take the two tea breaks and lunch break, but please allow me only one hour so I can go to English courses. Then in the one hour break -- I think it was from 12pm to 1pm, or I think it was 1pm to 2pm -- there was an English course in Pathway in old Southhall. The distance between the Pathway and the factory was about ten minutes, so I had to run all the way to the college while having a sandwich on the way there, study for one hour, and then run all the way back to the factory to be back on time at work. During the three years I not only worked but studied for an hour a day as well.
One of our English language teachers was called Jill Thomas, she was one of the people who encouraged me to become a hair dresser or a designer because she noticed the potential in me, and because I had already worked in the factory for three to four years, I knew that I didn't want to work as a designer, therefore I decided to give hairdressing a try.
For three months I took a private hairdressing course to see if I would like to become a hairdresser, which I found very interesting and also the teacher who was teaching me both the theory and practical side was happy with me and said that she saw the potential in me to become a successful hairdresser if I wanted.
After three months I liked the course, and I think I in 19… 95.. I think it was 1995, I went to West Thames College which is in Isleworth, I enrolled there as a hairdresser. The course that I should have studied was GNQ2, which was for two years. After I enrolled in there I should have studied for a year and then moved to the second year, but after the first two months of the first year I was encouraged to do level two, because they noticed that I had some experience as I had already done the private course.
It was very difficult for me to learn the theory of level one and level two together, because my English still was not good enough, besides that, the rest of my classmates were between the age of 16 to 20 and I was the eldest student in the class. Nowadays there are some older students in hairdressing classes, but then there weren't many older students.
My other problem was that my English wasn't good, and the rest of class humiliated and treated badly those who couldn't speak English very well. But, because I was determined to finish my studies their action didn't have any effect on me. After finishing the first two months of the level one, my teachers encouraged me to start level two and they promised to help me with covering the theory of level one at the same time.
This was the time that I had a lot of problems. When I came home from work I used to do housekeeping duties until 10pm, when I came back from college -- actually while I was studying in the college -- I also used to work two days a week for free in a hairdressing salon to gain work experience. Once I had taken the children to bed and had finished with the house work at ten o'clock, I used to do my college studies until four in the morning, which included the theories of level one and level two.
My other problem was that I still had problems with my English, so when I wanted to do my projects, I had to look up every word from each sentence in the dictionary, and then I used to put all those words together to make a sentence. This was my hardest time of my life, the first year of my hairdressing course was the hardest time in my life, because I studied from 10pm till 4am, I used to do same project ten times, I was ripping it up and I was doing it again until I was getting it done. And finally when I reached the 2nd year of my study, the end of 2nd year, I mean the end of first year, studying the second year.
At the end of the second year of my hair dressing course, our teacher used to show my projects as a sample to the rest of the class, as they were very good. The first project I did was about health and safety, it was so good that my teacher couldn't believe that I had done on my own, so she asked me if anyone helped me with the project? I told her that there is no one in our house who would speak English well.
During those three days that I was studying in college, I used to go to the learning support centre for one hour to get help with my studies, so that was the hardest part of my life. So I studied a two year course in one year though I had a very hard time, but I'm very happy to have done it.
After finishing this course I should have taken another course for a year which was related to men's hairdressing. As I mentioned earlier, I was still working two days a week to gain more experience and this course was from six to nine pm. After studying for three months there, I was awarded a certificate, as I had good work experience and knew how to do it, whereas the course was for a year.
From 1995, I started to study, till 1997 I studied, plus the work experience that I did, and in 1997 I started my fulltime job. I mean the two year that I studied in college, gender I mean cutting men's hair the practice part, and the college was my two years of study. As soon as I started work in 1997, I was straight away appointed as a senior stylist, so I never worked as a junior stylist, either in 1997 or now. I have been working in that hairdressing salon ever since. Before I started my work with this salon in 1997, the one and half year of my study cutting men's hair and GNVQ, I also worked in a salon twice a week during daytime.
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