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Meet Mrs Chaudry

This last item introduces you to a long-serving member of the Watford community, Sharifa Chaudry, or Mrs Chaudry as she is more commonly known, who migrated to Watford from Pakistan in 1965. As chair of the local Multi-Cultural Community Centre, she has been heavily involved in various projects in Watford for a long time, making particular efforts to record the experiences of other female migrants in Watford.

Newspaper Archive - Oral History.jpeg

This newspaper article above, published in the Watford Observer on the 2nd of May 2014, celebrates the publication of the Oral History Reminiscence Project booklet, which was spearheaded by Mrs Chaudry. The booklet (cover on the left left) explores the narratives of women who migrated from all over the Indian Subcontinent to Watford in the 60s and 70s, addressing the gap in records of South Asian females' migrant experiences.

Mrs Chaudry Photographed With Her Husband

Not only has Mrs Chaudry dedicated time to empowering others to tell their migration stories, but she also settled in Watford as a migrant from Pakistan and worked hard to serve her local community, recently being labelled one of the ‘100 People Who Made Watford’ to celebrate Watford’s centenary. Among many of her achievements, Mrs Chaudry was the first person from an ethnic minority background in Watford to qualify as a social worker and, in 1976, became one of the first Muslim women in Watford to pass her driving test.

And there you have it – you made it to the end of the exhibition!

Here's to hoping that it made you think a little more about your own family history, your community, and perhaps even your views on migrants in general. Maybe it made you realise that history doesn't just have to be memorising a bunch of dates and reading from a textbook. And I mostly hope that you've been able to pick up a bit of Urdu lingo, even if it just comes in handy for eavesdropping on the Pakistani family next door when khala is dissing maamu.

If you have any thoughts on what you've read or heard, I'd love to hear them (provided you didn't come here just to share some very un-politically correct views on Pakistanis-slash-migrants-slash-Pakistani migrants).

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