Fozia – ‘Everyone is Trying to Make the Best of their own Situation’ by Julia Hall

(Somalia, arr. September 1985)

Fozia was born in Kuwait to Somalian parents, the seventh of nine children. Her parents had lived under surveillance in Somaliland where there was a large police presence. When their marriage failed, Fozia’s uncle told her mother she shouldn’t return and paid for their flight to the UK. She arrived in September 1985, aged 5. Her memory of moving is just of one day playing in the sand and the next being on a plane. She couldn’t believe how green England was, she had never seen green like that. Her mother had grown up in a nomadic lifestyle, so moving to the high rise buildings of inner city London was a difficult adjustment.

The family applied for asylum, but they had no papers. Her mother’s birthday is listed as 1 January, which is common for asylum seekers – her birth date had never been recorded. The process took years, and Fozia didn’t get indefinite leave to remain until 1997.

There is a whole generation of Somali women who just had to get on with life, and never spoke about their experiences. They are nomadic women with amazing skill sets, but they blocked the trauma of moving in order to build a life for their families. Fozia notices that when her mother visits Somalia, she is more relaxed and less anxious, she becomes a person that Fozia hasn’t really known. She refers to Somalia as her “homeland” although it is not her home. Her mother made a conscious effort to keep them in touch with their roots, through food and storytelling. At 18, Fozia finally had a UK passport and was able to visit Somaliland and experience the nomadic lifestyle. More recently she has co-founded the Dhaqan Collective – an art collective of Somali women – and created a project based around the recordings on cassette tapes which families would send back and forth instead of letters. In a pre-internet world, these tapes contained family news, local gossip, songs and folk tales shared between those who remained in Somalia and those in the wider diaspora, including her own family in England. They were a fun and vital part of maintaining Somali culture across oceans – and always arrived with packs of dried camel meat, which was covered in sheep fat and had its own very distinctive flavour!

Fozia strongly feels a benefit from being from two cultures – it gives an empathy about other people’s perspectives. She definitely feels a survivor’s guilt – her cousin died at the age of 16 from a broken leg due to the lack of health infrastructure in Somaliland. There is an anxiety passed down from her mother, around instability and the future, but her advice to other refugees is to try and find the joy in every day life. Everyone is just trying to make the best of their own situation.

The dress is a traditional Guntiino dress, it was a gift from her mother.