Nobody tells you

Maria Eugenia Bravo

Maria Eugenia Bravo's Photo

Short Biography

Maria Eugenia came to the UK in September 1975 after the military coup in Chile. Formerly a lecturer in her home country, Maria received a grant from the World University Service to continue her studies at Oxford University. She is a highly regarded poet and has published several anthologies of her work.

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Q: Yes. And also I wanted to ask you, so after ten years you find a job in the Refugee Council?

Right.

Q: And that changed your life a lot I guess?

Changed my life a lot, yeah, because was a wonderful job, I could help other people, help them not to have such difficult [inaudible 45.11], yeah? To--, to make them--, to save time, because I lost a lot of time trying to find out how things were--, work out things just by myself. So we could explain each--, it was very happy teaching people how to look for a job and go and do things and understanding the labour market all that. But it's very very difficult when you come here, just… just to know what employers expect--, expect from you. And also the British culture, you have to know the British culture in order to work here. It's not possible just to come as a Latin American and think that you are going to fit perfectly into the British culture.

This culture… is--, it can be tricky, because appears people are very tolerant, they are very nice, they are very sweet and then you can think 'oh I'm doing everything fine' because nobody tells you the opposite, but everyone is watching you.

Q: Hmmm.

Everyone is looking at you. And nobody says anything, and if you commit a mistake, they are not going to come and tell you, "not you don't do this here," [both laughing] so you can be… putting your feet on, making big mistakes and nobody would say to you clearly, "no you don't do this in this country". So we--, we have to teach students a lot of things.