My mother, Zahra Jama, who has died aged 80, was one of the first Somali women to come to Britain in the late 1950s, at a time when London’s Somali community was almost exclusively male. She was warmly acknowledged as a mother figure and her home was always a welcoming place for newly arrived Somalis.
In many ways a trailblazer for Muslim women in 1960s London, she was determined to integrate and to build a better life for her family in the East End. Her seven children were often the only people of colour in their class, and she made sure they were impeccably dressed and had a strong sense of self.
