Celebrating 100 years of life
Laura Anderson, North Shore News, Published: Sunday, August 17, 2008
In the last one hundred years, our world has changed profoundly but the values that form our characters do not change. Of that, North Vancouver’s most recent centenarian is living proof.
Tall and straight backed, his face unlined and eyes clear, his handshake firm, Mohamedalli Nuraney — who turned 100 on July 14 — is a testament to a life well lived.
Accompanied by his son, Salim, I visited Nuraney to find out what achieving his century means to him and to his family. At the door of the apartment where he lives resolutely on his own, I am greeted with a smile and the information that he is the proud patriarch of five children, eleven grandchildren, thirteen great grandchildren and one great great grandchild, a resident of Dallas, Texas.
Nuraney’s passage to Canada was both lengthy and indirect. He was born in India in the province of Gujarat in 1908. The family emigrated to Uganda where Nuraney married in 1929, and eventually to Mombasa, Kenya, where he established a thriving perfume wholesale business.
In his Indian homeland and in the home he made in Africa, his character and the habits of a lifetime were formed. As carefully and thoroughly as he tended his family and his business, Nuraney tended his health. Already proficient in the art of tossing Indian clubs, bodybuilding and swims in the ocean soon became incorporated into his daily routine. As his family and his business grew and thrived, so did Nuraney’s work in the community. In the 1960s, as Chairman of Mombasa’s Aga Khan Hospital, he was instrumental in the establishment of a mobile dispensary that served the coastal Kenyan villages.
Ismailimail 
Mr. Mohammedali Nuraney,
With all the prayers and the best wishes for many more healthy and happy years of living. May Hazar Imam bless you more. – Aamin
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Hello Mohamedali mama,
It was a great news to hear that you have turned 100 and healthy.
Our most sincere and warm birthday greetings to you and pray to Allah that he may grant you many more healthy years.
We will always remember you and all your family members for the warm hospitality when we visited you in Mombasa. I remember still the having Kahawa that Badrubhai and yourself bought from the vendors in those narrow alleys and of course we never went home to Moshi without plenty of perfume.
God bless you.
Bashir Kothari and family
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