Manchi Bhikha, who came from Gujarat to join her husband in Wellington in 1950, encountered difficulties in adapting to a foreign and sometimes hostile culture. In the 1990s she recalled shopping for children’s clothing soon after she arrived: ‘All the English I really knew – that my husband had taught me – was, “How much?”. And then I wouldn’t understand the currency and the amounts, so I’d just hand over some money in good faith, and there was change given back. After a while of doing that sort of thing, I started to develop a bit of an understanding of the value of things.’
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Reference: Megan Hutching, New Zealanders by choice. Wellington: Identity Services, Department of Internal Affairs, 1998, p. 15.
by Annelies van der Poel
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