This piece by my friend John Kamau is worth another read
The place of Goans in building the
foundation of modern Kenya is actually downplayed.
A deeply religious group, the Goans in Nairobi had also built the Holy Family Basilica and St Theresa in Eastleigh and are actually credited as the bedrock of Catholic faith in the city. The Goans arrived in Nairobi, via Zanzibar and Mombasa, from the Portuguese colony of Goa – today the smallest State of India – at the time when the Kenya-Uganda railway was being laid. In its heyday 114-year-old, Goan Institute was the bastion of Kenyan politics, culture, sports and much more. The last time I was there was a few years back as they prepared their 100-year celebrations and I met a fine man, Vincent Azavedo, by then the chairman of the club, who showed me around. It is a small compound for a minority community with a rich background. Often, they get forgotten.
OLD CABINETS
I found that the old cabinets were
still overflowing with trophies of yesteryears but the story behind this
institute hides the secrets of a minority race that had arrived in East Africa
to look for fortune, work and progress. They came as tailors, clerks, doctors
and lawyers.
In this reclusive compound, near Parklands Police Station, you could chance upon stories of some of the best-known Goans in Kenya: Nairobi’s pioneer physician Dr Rosendo Ayres Ribeiro, Joachim Nazareth, Francis Xavier D’Silva better known as Baba Ndogo for his generosity for impoverished whites who lived in Baba Ndogo area, lawyers Fitz de Souza and John Nazareth, Pio Gama Pinto, who was political activist, and Joseph Zuzarte Murumbi, the half-Goan who was Kenya’s vice-president for a brief period before he was scared out of the position.
There was also Joe Rodrigues, a pioneer journalist, and another writer, Cyprian Fernandes.
Those who have seen early pictures of Nairobi must have noticed a man riding atop a Zebra. That was Dr Ribeiro in his escapades to attend to his patients.
He had bought the young Zebra in 1907
and tamed it. Ribeiro was instrumental in the founding of the first Goan
Institute and many other schools, including Parklands High School – which was
first named Dr Ribeiro Goan School in his honour when it opened its doors in
1931. In 2015, it reverted to Dr Ribeiro Parklands School – a great effort to honour
a doctor who had done so much for a country.
GOAN CLUB
With his brother Campos Ribeiro, they
became some of the famous names in colonial Nairobi and Campos was the first
President of the Goan Club.
There was something else about Dr
Ribeiro. He was said to have some magical anti-malaria tablets and he was everyone’s
doctor in the emerging township of Nairobi; especially during the days that
plague outbreaks were common. At one point, his clinic at Bazaar Street was
among those razed down as the administrators battled Nairobi rats. It is
claimed that Dr Ribeiro is the one who advised the medical officer for health
to burn the Indian shanties.
And now to Baba Ndogo, aka Xavier da
Silva. He had decided to help the impoverished whites who lived adjacent to his
40 acres in Ruaraka, where they were said to have kept mistresses. He built
several bungalows there to rent and planted lots of mango trees.. Most of the
trees can still be spotted in Ruaraka.
Having said that, the place of Goans
in building the foundation of modern Kenya is actually downplayed. Some of the
institutions they raised funds for, and built, have largely been forgotten
while most of those in public service were bundled out during the Kenyanisation
process. Today, it is hard to find any Goan in public service – a shame for the
country.
But the institutions they built still
stand as a reminder of the halcyon days. At the junction of Prof Wangari
Maathai Road (former Forest Road) and Limuru Road still stands St Francis
Xavier Catholic Church – the signature project for the Goan Catholic community
in Nairobi.
CRICKET CLUB
It was a celebration of Saint Francis
Xavier – the man who had built Kenya’s first chapel in Malindi in 1542 when he
landed there on his way to India. The small thatched Chapel still stands to
date! A deeply religious group, the Goans in Nairobi had also built the Holy Family
church. In its place stands Nairobi Basilica and St Teresa’s Church and schools
in Eastleigh and are actually credited as the bedrock of Catholic faith in the
city.
The Goans had arrived in Nairobi from
the Portuguese colony of Goa – today the smallest State of India – at the time
when the Kenya-Uganda railway was being laid. Together with the Indians, the
largely Catholic Goans got jobs as clerks while the less educated arrived in
Kenya as tailors, carpenters, shoemakers, etc. Actually, Goans are credited as
the original tailors in Kenya and they had formed Nairobi Tailor’s Society. One
of the best known was Alleluia Fernandes who at one-point stitched suits for
Jomo Kenyatta.
Like the Europeans, and being a
minority, the Goans started exclusive clubs and they – and the Indians – are
credited with bringing the popular game of cricket into Kenya. This was first
played at the modern-day ‘Kirigiti’ stadium in Kiambu, a corruption of the word
cricket.
The Goans had founded the Portuguese
Cricket Club in Nairobi in 1899 – just a few years after the railway had
reached this edge of the Kikuyu escarpment. Being a desolate, windy, and muddy
place when it rained, the only solace for the new settlers was in the clubs to
kill boredom in a new country. The Portuguese Cricket Club had evolved into
Goan Institute, which opened its doors in 1905. It was in the 1980s forced by
President Daniel Moi to drop its Goan Institute name and adopted Nairobi
Institute. It has since reverted to its original name.
COLONIAL GOVERNMENT
With mainly junior administrative
positions in the colonial government, they could not join the all-European
Nairobi Golf Club, which was in 1936 allowed to use the prefix “Royal” as a
mark of the Silver Jubilee of King George V’s reign. That is how Goans started
other clubs of their own, including the Goan Gymkhana and the exclusive Railway
Goan Institute.
But there was a split with the elite
Goans, employed by the railway — by then the best blue-chip employer — and the
low-ranked tailors.
That saw the emergence of the
Indo-Portuguese Institute (later Goan Institute), which was supposed to rival
the Railway Goan Institute, then located on the grounds of modern-day Pangani
Girls High School. There was also the Goan Union, whose members were once
dismissed by PX da Gama Rose as “illiterate servants not equipped to engage
socially or politically with the educated classes”. This is because the latter
conducted its meetings in Goan language of Konkani.
Goan Institute was the place of some
elite workers of the colony and when they built their dancing hall – they fixed
some springs to support the wooden floor, and apart from Charter Hall in
Nairobi, this was the only other dancing floor with such springs.
SPLENDID STARS
As the centre of sports, this was the
heart of soccer, cricket and hockey –
and in 1960s when the likes of Kipchoge Keino, Ben Jipcho and Naftali Temu
surprised the world of athletics, there is one other name that was a product of
Goan Institute: Mombasa-born Seraphino Antao - first Kenyan athlete to win double
gold medals on the international scene.
Antao, who died in 2011, was Kenya’s double
gold medallist in the 100m and 200m during the 1962 Commonwealth Olympic games.
As a result of the training they received, thanks to Goan Institute, Kenya was one-time
ranked number four in hockey, with the majority of Goan internationals coming
from two Nairobi Goan clubs.
It is interesting that the Goans are hardly
mentioned after they were thrown around after independence and most of them had
to leave for either UK or Canada. These silent pioneers have at best kept away
from local politics after one of their own, Pio Gama Pinto – the best bet on
Kenyan politics – was gunned down in Nairobi in 1965, the first politician to
be assassinated in independent Kenya.
No comments:
Post a Comment