There were many Goans who had an illustrious life in East Africa, where they held positions of power and played a part in the countries’ growth
Photo Credits: EDIT main
The announcement that my book is nearing completion was met with an interesting question: does the East African Goan narrative hold any fascination with the current generation of Goans who have not lived in East Africa or have no connection to it?
My response to such questions is, do the British ever lose interest in the Romans, the Vikings, the Tudors, the Victorians, World War II, the Sixties and the Eighties? The particularising project allows us to focus on one aspect of history but when assimilated into our larger historical narrative, it gives us a keener appreciation of the collective.
The Goan stories that come out of East Africa don’t dwell on emperors who held sway over vast lands; they don’t speak of conquering heroes and marauding armies or of great oppression and the movements that countered it. Instead, they are stories finely entwined with the lives of ordinary people; they speak instead of an everyday heroism, of the spirit of perseverance and resilience in the face of hardship.
Quite apart from my own personal connection (my maternal grandfather worked in Kenya for nearly two decades in the early twentieth century) there is the eternal romanticism of the story; the pursuit of dreams larger than life. District Clerk Thomas J. Lobo who died at the age of 104, had told me that he left with nothing but his steel trunk, a violin and a hockey stick; a young lad accompanying relatives to Kenya, where he then spent most of his adult life.
My new book is an illustrated history of Goans in Zanzibar, Nairobi and Mombasa, covering roughly the period 1860 – 1920. Over the years, in the course of visiting families whose great-grandfathers had travelled to Africa on board dhows, listening to these fascinating stories, recording them and archiving them, I had collected a number of pictures pertaining to this era. Additionally, generous loans of images provided by Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies Winterton Collection, Northwestern University, The National Archives, Kew and the Evangelisch-Lutherisches Missionswerk have enabled me to curate and present a visual perspective on this period of history.
These pictures form the backdrop of the book which looks at the lives of pioneers and patriarchs of the Goan community who grew immensely wealthy on the port economies of Zanzibar and Mombasa; of women who accompanied their husbands to remote districts in Kenya, learnt to ride horses and go hunting, and some widowed at a young age learnt to independently manage businesses. It looks at doctors who were physicians to Sultans, who helped battle bubonic plagues, and represented Portugal in their capacity as vice-consuls. Not only did they survive the bleak and often perilous conditions in these new lands, but they eventually played a part in building the new townships, particularly of Nairobi.
These stories of migration remind us of the great richness of our traditional occupations. Whenever a new port emerged, Goan populations burgeoned there, largely because they could earn a profitable living as bakers and butchers providing provisions to the ships docked nearby. Flour was the most durable commodity stocked by ships in large quantities for the journey ahead, and Goan bakers, who also ran butcheries, provided ships with ‘fresh beef and bread’. Steadily they secured naval contracts for tailoring ship uniforms and their most lucrative trade was the sale of wines and spirits.
There were other occupations, Goans excelled at; the legacy of which is now almost forgotten. For instance, Goans played a critical role in running the government presses. The manager of the Zanzibar Gazette from 1893 until he retired in 1916 was Joaosinho Simao Figueira, possibly the first man to emigrate from Figueira vaddo in Guirim. His team within the printing press department consisted of Goan proof-readers, compositors and pressmen. This trend of having the government printing presses under the supervision of Goans, continued in Mombasa. The head compositor at the government printing press was Francis Xavier Fernandes and his assistant, Antonio Caetano Monteiro, had been hired as early as 1898. Goans were also employed in privately owned colonial newspapers such as the East African Standard. What is remarkable about these Goans is their proficiency in the English language. Doubtless, some of them might have been educated in British India, but English was at best a second language, after Portuguese.
It was in this environment where a culture of reading (the Goan Reading Room of Mombasa was established in 1901) was encouraged, and where efforts were made to start Goan journals such as the O Anglo-Goano, that the public Goan intellectual emerged and he combined this role with that of being a philanthropist. This band of men set up cultural clubs and charitable organisations to support education and mitigate the poverty of the working class. They played an important role in civic affairs, were active in church-fund raising, founding libraries, and other ad hoc organisations engaged in public service.
For a long time now I have been hoping to evoke interest in a museum which would honour the Goan diaspora history. This self-funded book is my small contribution towards preserving this legacy, in its visual form. Hopefully, we can take the conversation further from here.
Selma Carvalho is the author of A Railway Runs Through: Goans of British East Africa, 1865 - 1980. Between 2011 - 2014, she headed the Oral Histories of British Goans project in London
