A moment that changed me: I arrived in London as a child refugee — and discovered a strange new world
The city sometimes felt achingly lonely. But after seeing my first escalator, trying salt and vinegar crisps and watching an East 17 video on repeat, I began to find my way
A few days after Christmas 1994, aged 10, I arrived in London as a refugee from Somalia. At Heathrow airport, I stood staring in awe at the escalators. I had heard about these “walking machines” from an elderly Somali woman in Addis Ababa who sat on a corner selling sweets, biscuits and cold Fanta in glass bottles. She had painted a picture of London, a city she had never been to, as a place of wonders.
“You won’t need to use your legs to walk there – they have machines that move for you,” she said. My eyes bulged with excitement. I had never seen such machines on the streets of Addis Ababa. In my area, Bole Mikael, there were no pavements, just puddles of dirty water.
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