Born in 1945 on the shores of Lake Victoria in Western Kenya, Shariffa was raised in a world of stark contrasts that could only be endured by accepting and embracing uncertainty, and in it finding her identity.

Shariffa is married and has three children. She is an early childhood educator and an artist in different media. Her service orientation is manifested in many ways. She has been an active Girl Guide. Currently she is a Trustee of The Kenya Girl Guides Association. There are 350,000 Girl Guides in Kenya. She is an Honarary Associate of the World Association. As a Founder Member of the Hawkers Market Girls centre, in Naribi, she continues to impact women from the informal sectors of Nairobi. Her love for nature manifests itself in watching birds, stars and landscaping.

Encouraging tree planting Speaking a mixture of Luo, a version of the Queen's English, Gujerati and, of course, the National language, Kiswahili, Shariffa became aware, at an early age, that the path to belonging is in recording oral history.

Shariffa was born into this intrepid family who, in a single generation, had uprooted themselves from a deeply established way of life, into a new continent they didn't know the culture or language, yet managed to integrate into this new world, and built a life for themselves, deeply entwined with the people whose lives and culture they decided to coexist with. The climate around her birth was an era peace after a long war. The Second World War was finally over.

Shariffa found her identity in the moving and changing history of her community, Kenyan Civil Society and her family within it. She was from a people who courageously moved across oceans and settled in East Africa. They adapted to the environment where they lived and always stood for service to the larger community in which they lived - no matter where. This value she carries with her and has embedded it in her own family.

Spectacled and buried in books, Shariffa made her way through life and in her diaries, she carefully wove the story of her ancestors from India, to East Africa. She grasped the threads to make a fabric of long and dangerous voyages, ships and rail tracks and the dust left by carts of her ancestors, to allow her own children and grandchildren to understand who they are and where they come from.

In this society, where history was not recorded, the spoken word transmits the memories. Through her book Bwana Mzuri, a tribute to her grandfather Hasham Jamal, Shariffa captures these memories for future generations so they may remember their history, and what makes them who they are today.