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Tuesday, November 29, 2022

GEORGIA FERNANDES debuts as a movie scriptwriter





My name is Georgia Fernandes- I am 21 years old, I want to write stories-stories that make people think, feel, believe and imagine . I want to make an impact.

I have always wanted to tell stories, and so I started writing movie scripts. Most of my scripts surround strong women and put women in the main spotlight. Whereas some create feel-good experiences, others are more of a raw insight into what it means to be a woman living in this world.

‘Mercy' is possibly the most special script I've written because it represents the bravery, resilience, and perseverance that thousands of young girls around Africa possess. 'Mercy' is a combination of hundreds of different real-life stories affecting girls below the age of 15.

'Mercy' is not a film that begs for sympathy- it strives for change; in the hope that everyone who watches the short film will see how one wrong decision can affect multiple lives. I think stories like this that describe the courage that young African girls show- should not be kept secret, instead they should be shared with the world.

My hope for this film is that it would launch the 'Think Twice Movement,' which would push for men to 'Think Twice' before they even touch a girl. To stray away from that film- I suppose as a woman, I am also pretty tired of constantly seeing men in the main spotlight in all films- as the hero.

I want everyone to see women in a new light- and for once instead of constantly portraying them as wives and mothers- portray them as many actually are: CEOs, MDs, Police, Special Agents, Athletes, Doctors, and so much more.

Mercy is more than a movie, it is a movement with a purpose.




 Georgia Fernandes  (fourth from right) with the MERCY crew.


GEORGIA FERNANDES AT THE PREMIERE OF “MERCY”

IN NAIROBI ON NOV. 24

 

To be standing here right now is surreal, and I want to start by thanking you all for coming here today- and for being a part of this dream.

For those of you who do not know, my name is Georgia Fernandes; I am 21 years old- and I am one of the co-writers of Mercy.

Many of you may be surprised to know that I am studying architecture; however, I have always wanted to tell stories; I have always wanted to make people think, feel, and imagine; I wanted to make an impact, and so I started writing scripts.

Most of my scripts are about strong women, and I always want to put women in the spotlight. Whereas some scripts create feel-good experiences- others are more of an insight into what it means to be a woman living in this world.

'Mercy' is possibly the most special script I've written because it represents the bravery, resilience, and perseverance that thousands of young girls around Kenya possess, each having gone through their own journey, and this is just one.

I am hoping the film has moved you- just as writing the script moved me. Today I am hoping that you watched this film not just as an audience but as individuals who have the ability to help, as individuals who have the ability to make an impact.

'Mercy' is not a film that begs for sympathy- it strives for change; in the hope that everyone who watches the short film will see how one wrong decision can affect multiple lives.

Stories like this that describe the courage that young Kenyan girls posses - should not be kept secret and instead be shared with the world. My hope for this film is that it would launch the 'Think Twice Movement,' which would make men Think Twice' before they even touch a girl.

Producing a film is no easy feat- but telling a story that is aimed to move millions is even more challenging, and it takes a team that is passionate, hardworking, and devoted to not just making a film- but serving a cause.

Mercy is a film that we hope is going to make an impact on so many people's lives, and when we created each character, we knew that the opportunity to play that role could possibly change someone's life- but choosing the right person for the role would change millions of lives. Casting Mercy was no easy task, but to my leading ladies, Tana, Mariam, Shandra, Selestine, and Martina, YOU made this dream come true, and you nailed it.

Today I would like to thank the entire cast and crew for making this a reality- From the many nights we stayed up late  - only to wake up two hours later to start a new day, to standing in the cold of the night and getting sprayed by fake rainwater - thank you for not just your endurance but for doing it all with a smile.

 

A special thank you to

Imani and Ntinyari for the Soundtrack,

Githogoro Community       

Earth Angles Welfare Team

Vishal Sharma

Evasha Homes          

Julius Kilonzi

Engage Burson Cohn & Wolfe

 

...  without you, this wouldn't have come together.

 

In 2019, when I first came up with the idea of 'Mercy,' I was just a girl who wanted to tell a story- and seeing how that story has grown has been one of the most incredible experiences of my life. I knew what I wanted to say, but what I needed was someone who knew how to make that possible, someone who could match my passion and help turn it into a film, and that's when Zippy Kimundu walked in. Without her guidance and support, this film would not be possible. Zippy, this is our first film, and I cannot wait for us, and everyone here to see what the future holds.

For Ian Fernandes and Justus Tharao, who have spent sleepless nights making sure that this film was everything I had ever dreamed of, and to Desiree Gomes for giving me the first stepping stone to make this more than just an idea. Thank you.

Lastly, I wanted to say thank you to someone who inspired this entire film and this cause. Someone who changes the world every day and never expects anything in return. Someone who inspires me in every way and someone I am so honored to dedicate this film to you. So, to Ruth Adhiambo, thank you for everything.

As you can see from the numbers, over 5000 girls were impregnated in one month alone, and over 10 million girls have experienced some form of sexual abuse over the last fifteen years. That is why this cause is something that means so much to me; although this is the end of this film, it is just the beginning of this movement, and I can't wait for you all to join in.




Monday, November 28, 2022

100 Years of the Irish in Kenya

 




100 years of the Irish in Kenya

2016 marked the 100th anniversary of the ‘1916 Rising’ in Ireland, a milestone on the country’s road to achieving independence in 1922. To commemorate that event, the Embassy of Ireland in Kenya organised an exhibition chronicling the presence and contribution of Irish people in Kenya since 1916. This article draws on the themes of that exhibition. (Kenya Past and Present, a publication of the Kenya Museum Society, which continues to do a sterling job)

 

 

The Irish have a long tradition of travel and emigration. Today, an estimated 70 million people worldwide claim Irish ancestry and heritage — among them former US President, Barack Obama, whose other heritage is Kenyan. The Irish came to Kenya as entrepreneurs, teachers, doctors, coaches, aviators, farming and motoring pioneers, workers in nongovernmental organisations, and especially as missionaries, both religious and lay. The Kenya they encountered mirrored in many ways their own experience of home: agricultural, traditional, poor in material wealth, but rich in culture. They stayed to become an integral part of the development of a newly emerging African state which, like the country of their birth, had a strong desire for independence.

This history of the Irish in Kenya since 1916 outlines the stories of some of the Irish who travelled from a small island nation on the edge of Europe to contribute to and be a strong presence in the development of present-day Kenya. Coffee and the Holy Ghost Fathers Irish missionaries grew the first commercially viable coffee plants in Kenya and launched its coffee industry. In 1899 the Holy Ghost Fathers (today known as the Spiritans) from Ireland and France arrived in present-day Nairobi and settled in the then Kikuyuland, now Muthangari. They named their mission St Austin’s. One hundred coffee seedlings arrived with them, the plan being to grow coffee commercially to finance the mission. An Irish Spiritan, Father Tom Burke, was head of the mission. He was a young energetic Limerick man from a rural background. In 1905, Fathers Burke and Hemery tasted the first commercially viable coffee in Kenya. In 1906, the coffee appeared in a Nairobi shop and was soon being exported.

The coffee, an Arabica mocha blend, was quickly recognised as a commercial crop suited to the Kenyan climate. Farmers who had failed with other commercial crops set up large coffee plantations using seed from St Austin’s. Karen Blixen bought some of her seedlings from the mission. It was almost fifty years before a competitor would rival the mission plants. Motoring pioneer John Joseph Hughes was a visionary who contributed to farming, business and industry in Kenya in the first half of the 20th century. Hughes came to Kenya in 1920 as an advisor for the world’s largest buyer of flax. He quickly realised that a mixed farming policy, rather than monoculture, would suit local conditions better. He moved to the Agricultural Department of the government to develop this policy successfully. When his two-year contract ended Hughes joined forces with another Irishman, Tom O’Shea, a general outfitter in Eldoret, and travelled through western Kenya supplying farmers with goods.

In the 1920s Hughes secured the rights to import Model T Fords into Kenya. In this era of the Great Depression, he devised a modified form of barter whereby Model T Fords were sold in exchange for crops. It was a resounding success. In 1928 he set up Hughes Ltd. in Nakuru, which soon became the largest motor company in the country, capturing 52% of the motor market in Kenya. J.J. Hughes had a deep sense of responsibility towards his adopted country and set up a fully equipped training school for Kenyan mechanics.

After independence he became the Republic of Ireland’s first Honorary Consul to Kenya. In the 1920s Hughes secured the rights to import Model T Fords into Kenya. In this era of the Great Depression he devised a modified form of barter whereby Model T Fords were sold in exchange for crops. It was a resounding success. In 1928 he set up Hughes Ltd. in Nakuru, which soon became the largest motor company in the country, capturing 52% of the motor market in Kenya. J.J. Hughes had a deep sense of responsibility towards his adopted country and set up a fully equipped training school for Kenyan mechanics.  The Irish were central to the birth of aviation in Kenya. A Cork man, John Evans Carberry, formerly the 10th Baron Carbery [sic], came to Kenya in 1920 and brought his passion for flying with him. In 1928 he imported the country’s first registered aeroplane, christened ‘Miss Kenya’. Seeing the commercial potential in aviation he registered a new company, Kenya Aircraft Company Ltd. His second plane, ‘Miss Africa’, made the first civilian flight from Kenya to Croydon, England. Mrs Florence Wilson, a passenger on that flight, established Wilson Airport on her return. Carberry loaned his custom-built Percival Vega Gull to Beryl Markham, the first woman to fly solo east-west across the Atlantic in 1936. He also financed that flight. It is reported that Beryl Markham undertook the flight in response to Carberry's challenge.

Kenya Airways was founded in 1977 with technical and management support from Aer Lingus, Ireland’s national airline. Dublin man, Brendan Donohoe, seconded from Aer Lingus, was finance director of Kenya Airways in Nairobi in the 1990s. In 1994 he became general manager and part owner of Air East Africa, a successful cargo operation in the east and central African regions.

Retired Irish Honorary Consul, Joe O’Brien, is an engineer and licensed aerobatic flight instructor. He has trained people from all walks of life in aerobatic flying, from missionaries to the chair of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). From 1998 Joe was a volunteer aerobatics instructor for the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS). Over 14 years he trained eight pilots for the KWS Airwing, most of whom went on to become professional pilots. Joe O’Brien, in his eighties now, is still active as an engineer.

The Kenya Irish Society Originally the East African Irish Society, the Kenya Irish Society was co-founded in 1924 by Dublin man, Edward Keane Figgis. Figgis was a partner in the Nairobi-based Daly and Figgis law firm, the oldest law practice in Kenya and today known as Daly and Inamdar Advocates. In 1972, reflecting political changes in East Africa, the society became the Kenya Irish Society (KIS).

Ruth Hogan, a past president of the society, wrote a history of the many members and past presidents who contributed greatly to their adopted country. Among these: • Dublin man, John Clark Stronach, was the engineer for the building of Nairobi State House in the 1920s and became the country’s Director of Public Works in the 1940s. • Mayo man, Sir Joseph Sheridan, was Chief Justice in the 1930s and presided over the infamous Broughton Trial in 1941, where Sir Jock Delves Broughton was controversially acquitted of the murder of Josslyn Hay, 22nd Earl of Erroll. • Another Dublin man, Archibald Thomas Ayres Ritchie, a graduate zoologist, arrived in the country after World War I and was Kenya’s Chief Game Warden from 1923 until 1950. • Sir Joseph Aloysius Byrne was the first Irishman to be appointed Governor of Kenya in 1931. He was a keen golfer, and the Sir Joseph Byrne Cup was awarded at the Royal Nairobi Golf Club for many years. • Mr Justice Bourke, later Sir Paget Bourke, was a senior Kenyan judge in the early 1950s. He was also an uncle to the first female president of the Republic of Ireland, Mary Robinson. • Cork man, Alfred (Fred) Dalton, was appointed first general manager of the newly formed East African Railways and Harbours Administration in 1948, a post he held until his retirement in 1953. He went on to become chairman of the Maize and Produce Control Board and also sat on the local civil service selection board.

Government and administration Prominent in the East Africa Power and Lighting Company (EAPL), Wexford man, Paddy Deacon, came to Kenya in the late 1940s. Paddy was head of personnel and management for EAPL. He recruited and trained Kenyan employees and established a residential training school. He ran management training courses for organisations such as Securicor, Mumias Sugar, KCB Bank, John Mowlem & Co. and the Nation Media Group. He was a governor of the Kenya Polytechnic and, together with Shell and British American Tobacco, founded the Federation of Kenya Employers. Among other things, he was also a member of the Industrial Court and served on the Board of Trustees of Gertrude’s Children’s Hospital for 27 years. In recognition of his contribution to his adopted country, then President Moi appointed him a Member of the Order of the Burning Spear in 1999.

St Patrick’s High School, Iten, was founded by Irish Patrician Bothers in 1961. It became the third secondary school for Kenyan boys north of Naivasha. In 1989, the school was one of the first in Kenya to start using computers. It is widely regarded as the best distance-running high school in the world. Coaching Kenya's champions The last two world recordholders of the 800 metres  — Wilson Kipketer and David Rudisha — were coached by former St Patrick’s High School principal, Brother Colm O’Connell. A Cork man, Brother Colm came to Kenya in 1976 for a few months and has stayed 40 years. Initially with no formal training in athletics, he has coached almost 30 Kenyan World and Olympic medallists. He is equally encouraging of girls and is credited with starting the influx of female athletes to Iten in the 1990s. The small high-altitude town in the Rift Valley is now a major centre of athletic excellence. Athletes from Kenya and around the globe live and train there. Today, Brother Colm, the ‘godfather of Kenyan running’, is still training champions. There are an estimated 120 athletics training camps in Kenya basing their approach on Brother Colm’s style of coaching. 

Missionaries By far the greatest number of Irish people to come to Kenya were missionaries, both lay and religious. Irish missionaries first arrived in the mid-19th century and passed on not only the gospel message but also many skills as a means of contributing to the social, technical and economic advancement of the Kenyans among whom they lived. Many hundreds came and stayed to work in a wide variety of pastoral and development activities, particularly in the areas of health care and education. They worked in every (then) province in Kenya. Forty Catholic missionary congregations and orders, either founded in Ireland or with Irish members, have worked, and are still working, in Kenya. Their contribution is manifest today in institutions such as the Mater Misericordiae Hospital, which was Nairobi’s first Catholic interracial hospital. The Church of Ireland, through the Church Missionary Society of Ireland (CMSI), and earlier as part of the Church Mission Society, has been present in Kenya since the mid-19th century. Irish Presbyterian missionaries, through Presbyterian Global Mission, have also been a presence in Kenya for many years. Their work continues today in areas such as Kajiado, Narok and Nairobi. One lay missionary was the Venerable Edel Quinn who established the Legion of Mary (a movement for lay missionaries) in Kenya in 1936. She broke new ground for missionaries by bringing together people of different races and ethnicities in mixed Legion branches. Travelling with her Islamic driver in an old 1932 Ford, she established branches in Uganda, Tanzania and Malawi. Motivations have changed since these early missionaries came to Kenya, but their commitment to the Kenyan people is as strong as ever. Today their focus includes justice and peace, ecology and working with the poorest of the poor.

Education — The quiet revolution  It was notably in the area of education that the Irish, in particular the missionaries, contributed to their new country. Irish missionaries established primary and secondary schools in every province in Kenya. Wangari Maathai, Kenya’s Nobel Peace Prize winner, was taught by an Irish nun who had fought in Ireland’s War of Independence before becoming a nun. Sister Teresa Joseph O’Sullivan established the first Catholic high school for Kenyan girls in Limuru in 1936. Maathai acknowledged the nun’s influence in her memoir, Unbowed, saying Sister Teresa had aroused and encouraged her lifelong interest in science.

In 1983 Sr Teresa received an award from the National Council of Women in Kenya in recognition of her contribution to Kenyan women. St Mary’s School, Nairobi, is the Alma Mater of President Uhuru Kenyatta. It was founded by the Irish Holy Ghost Fathers in 1939. In the same area as St Mary’s is the prestigious Loreto Girls School, founded in 1921 by Irish Loreto nuns. In 2013, the Loreto Sisters were awarded the Kenyan Golden Jubilee Award for Excellence in Education.

Perhaps the most unusual Irish involvement with Kenyan health care was that of the so-called Flying Nuns of Turkana. In the early 1960s, the Irish Medical Missionaries of Mary (MMM) sent young nuns to northwest Kenya to provide a mobile medical clinic. The young Sisters piloted flimsy two-seater aircraft, whose wings and fuselage were wrapped in Irish linen and spray-painted for durability. They flew over a desert of 51,000 sq. km, doing their own refuelling and basic maintenance, bringing the only available medical assistance to famine-stricken areas, their supplies usually samples from Ireland and the USA. Their work continued through the 1960s. A hospital and training centre was subsequently set up in Kakuma, which continues today under the supervision of the local diocese.

Dr Roland Burkitt had a practice in Nairobi in the 1920s with other Irish doctors. He was among the first to understand that, in cases of fever, lowering temperature quickly was necessary. A somewhat eccentric man, he was known to have driven a patient naked around Nairobi to this end! When found pouring water into the radiator of his car, after it boiled over coming up the escarpment, an old patient passed by and shouted, “Giving your car a spot of your own famous treatment, Burkitt?”

The better-known of the Burkitts was Professor Dr Denis Parsons Burkitt, surgeon, scientist and clinician, who came to Mombasa in 1943. He learned Kiswahili and trekked to equatorial Africa to establish his medical research. Denis Burkitt had an outstanding ability to observe disease patterns, identify their peculiarities and develop concepts and hypotheses. He won the Canada Gairdner International Award for outstanding discoveries or contributions to medical science in 1973, one among many awards. He was the first to describe a common and lethal form of childhood cancer in Africa and the first to discover its cure. African lymphoma, now known as Burkitt’s lymphoma, is a form of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma recognised as the fastest-growing human tumour, associated with impaired immunity. Burkitt first described the disease in 1958. He studied it in children with malaria and with the Epstein-Barr virus. Burkitt’s lymphoma is studied by medical students across the globe.

He was also the first medical researcher, thanks to his observations in Africa, connect a high fibre diet with better health. He was fond of saying, “If you have an enemy, give him your frying pan”. His pioneer book on the topic is The Fibre Man. He died in 1993. Gerald Edward Nevill was an Irish surgeon who made a major contribution to Gertrude’s Children’s Hospital, Nairobi, helping it become a modern paediatric institution, the first in sub-Saharan Africa. The chair of its Board of Management for 42 years, his contribution is recognised in a wing named after him at the hospital. In more recent times, Carmelite priest Dr Fr Robert McCabe’s research in Turkana into tropical diseases resulted in Desert Nomads, a book outlining solutions for providing healthcare in remote rural areas. It has become a recognised handbook for all those working in tropical medicine. These pictures and snippets illustrate but some of the stories of the Irish in Kenya. Today there is still a strong Irish presence in Kenya — almost 1,500 strong. Irish people work in the areas of business, education, non-governmental organisations, sport and in the United Nations, to name but a few. The deepening business relationships and the re-establishment of an official embassy in 2014 will inform future relations between Ireland and Kenya so that they can be strengthened by mutual understanding, respect and opportunity.

 

ABOUT THE Author Bróna Ní Mhuirí is the wife of the Ambassador of Ireland in Kenya. A former teacher of history and Gaelic language and teacher trainer, she has taught in a number of African countries. Photographs provided by the author.


(This article does not mention the evil some Irish priests did or the brutality of  Irish nuns as teachers)

 

Friday, November 25, 2022

Des Fortes flies the flag for Tanzania in Goa

 In October 2022, India hosted the FIFA Women's under 17 World Cup in India and Goa was one of the three venues. Tanzania was one of the teams taking part and I was able to meet with the Tanzanian officials. They gave me a complimentary ticket to sit with them in the VIP stand at the Fatorda Stadium. For an old Tanzanian it was an excellent experience.






Monday, November 7, 2022

Why I celebrate East African exiles, past and present








 

WHY DID I DO IT?

 

That is a question that most East African Goans would like to ask me about writing my books but never do. The answer is quite simple, really. Two years after I lost my wife Ruffy (2007) I was lost. I desperately needed to find myself again. After several visits to a psychiatrist and a psychologist who, after a month, told me “There was nothing wrong” with me. Their advice was: just do what you love best. That was quite simple, from a very early agency, even before I was eight years old, I love to write and tell stories, even yarns that I used to make up. At the age of 11, my classmate Bill D’Silva and I wrote a one-word play for the school presentation. It was called Rumour which began with the line: Have you heard, Father Hannon, the parish priest and principal, tripped at the gates and did a bit of dance to save himself from falling (or words to that effect)? Everyone in the room was asked to contribute their version of the rumour and it ended up with Hannon falling from the roof of the Empire State Building.

I became a sports reporter at the age of 16 and never looked back. However, in 2009 while looking back on my career I felt a certain amount of regret for having failed to record the histories of the Goans communities in East Africa while we were all there. I had made one or two attempts to interview folks I had known well and respected utterly. However, most other Goans declined with the usual grace.

One of the Goans I admired most was the Goan karani (clerk) Mervyn Maciel. In Nairobi, I had known his brother Wilfrid well and had shared a lot of beers with him. I had read Mervyn’s anthology as a Goan civil servant in the British colonial service in Kenya. I only met him and his wife Elsie on a visit to the UK. However, we began emailing much before that and my admiration for the man grew with each episode of correspondence. What I celebrated about MM was that he wrote and dealt with the truth, he lived what he wrote about, as did his (late) wife. I am not particularly enamoured of fact disguised as fiction but I like the books by Braz Menezes who also lived in Kenya.

One of my biggest regrets was that not many parents spoke to their children and grandchildren about their lives in Goa and Africa. By the time most children reached adulthood, they knew next to nothing about their parents’ lives.

I was disturbed that I had written about most subjects in Africa but not about the Goan families. As a sports reporter, I got to know most Goan sports people. I had also known a lot of the musicians.

One of the first lessons I was taught as a young journalist was to “write only what you know” and then only if it will stack up in court: the truth and the nothing but the truth. In my life, I have never veered from that advice.

Yesterday in Paradise was my humble attempt at recording my life, my family’s life, the events of my, adulthood and the tomorrow that followed our departure from Kenya. It also gave me a chance to celebrate the country of my birth and pay tribute to some of the people that played some part in my life or featured in the tapestry of independent East Africa.

Stars Next Door was also special to me. The book was a personal tribute to all the people who were sports stars of my life in East Africa, from a little boy who carried a football player’s boots and walked with the play from home to the ground. Oscar D’Souza debated hockey with me at his home until the very early mornings and Irene (late) never shooed us. Hilary Fernandes was always ready to impart his vast knowledge as was Edgar Fernandes, Surjeet Singh Jnr (late) and a host of other people. The book also gave me a chance to celebrate all the musicians and dancers who made our lives that much more beautiful. I was involved in a band as a so-called manager from the age of 12. I had produced four variety shows with casts of as many as 150. I loved them all.

Yesterday at the Nation gave me a chance to celebrate everyone there and pay tribute to an institution that gave a 16-year-old kid a break, a kid who had been forced to leave school at 12 and soar to the giddy heights of journalism, most aspects of it from sports reporting, investigative reporting, writing features, investigative reporting, feature writing, reviewing shows, movies etc, laying out pages ….

Twilight of the Exiles was my continuing effort to celebrate Goans and friends.

Is there another book, my last? Perhaps, Inshallah!

I also celebrate all those writers from Africa who have lived the “life” and told their stories firsthand.

My prayer is that parents will create a human library by sharing lives and histories with their children and grandchildren.

I also celebrate the achievers in sport because I doubt if any Goan community will ever achieve the glories we Goans did in East Africa … there is hope, Canada is making some big strides.

I have been assisted in my efforts by former Nation Sports Reporter and Editor Norman da Costa and a whole host of other wonderful people have aided me. I Love ‘em all, especially everyone who has ever allowed me to write their stories and share them with readers around the world. Fred Noronha, in Goa, is also a very big help. He published two of my books. He remains one of the great Goans of his times. Vivek Menezes remains an inspiration. He is a brilliant writer as well as a terrific photographer.

 

Suella Braverman has a serious problem

 



Suella Braverman is an English/British politician full stop.

 

 

1.      Will there always be a Goa in infinity OR will there be few or no Goan Roman Catholics, so much so that the Indian Government will return the country to its pre-Portuguese name? Some will this at some point, but it was the Roman Catholic Goans who made Goa what it became: A tourists’ paradise for all.

2.      Oldies like me, nearing their 80s and others who are past that, may cling on to their “Goanness” but our children and their children and subsequent new members of the clan will surely be thoroughbred Brits, Aussies, Canadians, Yanks, etc if they are not that already? It matters very little or not at all in mixed marriages, which is common as ice and snow and sun and rain. A good thing too, by all accounts!

3.      If you are a member of the parliament (in any country) you can forget about your ethnic origins, which must not and should not be part of any decision-making.

4.      I suspect that “Goaness” will be celebrated by those Goans who have migrated recently from Goa, other parts of India and the Gulf States. In 10, 20 or 30 years there won’t be many Goans who migrated to parts unknown 40, 50 or 60 years ago.

5.      As Home Secretary, Suella Braverman is an English/British politician whose allegiance is only to the King and the Parliament. The fact that she is the daughter of migrants does not matter a hoot. Her decision-making is purely for the greater good of the English and Welsh people.

6.      The fact that she is of Tamil/Goan mix is of no consequence. She is British, love it or hate it, she cannot be anything but that. She cannot be criticised for deciding against Indian, Pakistani, Sri Lankan, Goan or any other migrant. She cannot and must not be biased on any grounds, ethnic or otherwise.

She answers to Parliament and her Conservative Party in all things, through these instruments the English and Welsh people will hold her accountable



Suella Braverman has a problem to solve:

Let in refugees or Indian migrants?

Or none of the above?

AS A young journalist in Kenya, after having made my name as a tough young sports journalist who went beyond match reports and investigated the under-belly of corrupt sports administration, I moved into General News reporting and later into investigative reporting both at home and abroad. I was lauded as a political reporter by the Jomo Kenyatta regime as long as I kept my nose clean and did not write about what I should not have seen. Still, I did some pretty hard-hitting stuff. However, as soon as my investigations were uncomfortable for some high-ranking politicians, the faceless ones got a message to my wife that “she should get me out of Kenya because there was a bullet waiting for Mr. Fernandes”.

Right from the very first day, I started work as a sports journalist at the newly launched Aga Khan newspaper the Daily Nation, I knew one day my family and I would have to leave Kenya. I had spent a considerable amount of time with budding politicians in the late 1950s and they often discussed how they would get rid of non-Africans once the country gained its freedom from Britain.

On one of my many forays into the UK as a guest of the Foreign Office, I managed to get a passport that would allow me automatic entry into Britain. The new passport was a replacement for my then-current passport which had run out of pages. The death threats became louder, and my wife wanted us to leave there and then. When we flew into London, the Immigration Officer welcomed me: “Welcome home Mr. Fernandes.” However, my wife had to stay behind because she had a “B” passport and would have to be examined by an English doctor (even though we had all the clearances from our doctor in Kenya). The doctor in question was out playing golf and we were stuck there for four hours. When the doctor did turn up, he merely glanced at my wife, asked her a couple of questions, and told her she was fine. Bar that minor hiccup, entry into Britain was like starting a holiday.

Other Asians were not so lucky, and they had to spend hours in airports, mothers clinging on to children, some of them very young babies. A lot of the Asian immigrants were traumatised, temporarily or for much longer periods in a country they knew little or nothing about. If they came in late autumn or winter the cold tortured them even more. Most of them had lived in the welcoming genteel temperate climes of Africa or the heat of the Subcontinent.

A few of the Asian immigrants returned to the countries of their birth, thinking that they would not be allowed into the UK. If they were allowed in, British MP Enoch Powell had promised them “rivers of blood” and those that waited in Kenya to join the queues for the UK, received letters from friends and relatives about how so many of them were being beaten and attacked by right-wing bovver boys. They would enter Britain at a later date when their children or family members or friends had settled in the UK. My family and I migrated in 1974 and bar a few hiccups we continue to enjoy our lives there until a certain senior journalist from the Sydney Morning Herald invited us to come and replenish our tans in Australia.

I have never allowed myself to think what kind of a nightmare it might have been if the British Government had blocked the Asian exodus from entering the UK having first declared British passports issued in Africa as illegal. There was another option. On one of my travels to Canada, I was interviewed by the Editor of the Toronto Globe and Mail and I had a job waiting. However, ice and snow melted that idea away.

I wonder what would have happened if Priti Patel and Suella Braverman were in charge then. Would they have blocked their parents and siblings from entering the UK? Would they have considered their families’ attempts to enter Britain “an invasion?”

As Britain’s multi-cultural experiment is under fire from so many quarters, is a Goan woman who should know better be allowed to continue considering the use of the word “invasion” to describe desperate asylum seekers (most of them genuine, I think?) What this woman is doing is fuelling extreme right-wingers in the UK and there were always loads of them around, silent until now. Could all hell break loose, however unthinkable that is?

The question is: How can we be racists when the not "white" minister in charge of home affairs is talking about an invasion?  They will say: “We are the real patriots fighting for the soul and survival of the British people and Braverman is our champion.” Others might say “Enoch Powell has come back from the dead as a woman.”

The sad thing about it all is that I think that both Priti Patel and Suella Braverman have their hearts in the right place, they both mean well. Mrs Braverman needs to consult a communications specialist she is probably living a nightmare. She can see many more thousands of refugees from all around the world attempting to get into Britain, do or die along the way. How does one stop the human stampede, if at all? What’s more how does one  compound the nightmare by allowing Indian immigration at the same time? Is it a case of she is damned if she does and damned if she does not?

However, the nightmare is: “Some say there are too many foreigners in the UK. True or false? And what should Britain do about that?"

 

There are 48,000 (one newspaper said 28,000-plus) asylum seekers waiting to be processed in Kent with very few professionally trained people to handle the overload. Should the UK adopt the Australian “stop the boat people” naval plan?

 

Asians were brought to East Africa by the British. First to build the Kenya-Uganda Railway. They set up some of the first shops and went on to dominate that aspect of life. Sikhs were mainly builders. Others were shoemakers, tailors, carpenters, cooks, stewards, and waiters. The Colonial Civil Service was the realm of Goan clerks. They have been credited by people like Winston Churchill for keeping the wheels of the whites administered colonial government in ship shape.

Racist, they scream!

Let us look at ourselves first. The African Goans I mean.  Are those of us who migrated to various parts of the world still Goan? I suspect everyone would scream “Yes”. Really? Those who have ancestral homes, living family connections or money in India, Persons of Indian Origin, etc may have a case to make. Others whose only connection to Goa is that of the annual tourists may be just that. If the current state of Goa was at war, how many Goans would rush to its aid? Most of us are too old, and most of our children, grandchildren and daughters-in-law and sons-in-law have little or no connection with the land of our mothers and fathers. I think there is a general disgust that the Goa of parents is now overrun by filthy rich Indians. That is racist in itself. I might suggest with the majority of Roman Catholic Goans having left Goa for other shores, Indians prop up the local economy.

Where do your loyalties lie? The country of your ancestors’ (and your parents’) or the country of your adoption. I wonder if Dual Citizenship is a curse rather than a blessing. A foot each in two countries is neither here nor there. Perhaps, single citizenship is the answer. I wonder where the Australian Government stands on this and would I even get a response should I ask?

How much are we, the migrant Goans, truly Goan? Does singing and dancing to Konkani songs, listening to the unforgettable Lorna, eating traditional Goan cuisine or the sub-standard, poor imitation that is often served in the countries of our adoption, make us truly Goan? Does Catholicism make us truly Goan? Our belief in the sanctity of St Francis Xavier? I have often said we African Goans are a vanishing tribe, death does that to tribes. So, what does that make our children? Aussie full-bloods, Kiwis, Europeans, Americans, or this and that?

I have written before that I am a man of many parts: Goa, Kenya, UK, Australia … Goa, UK, Kenya are all fading with my short-term memory loss. I guess I will be buried in Australia, or my ashes whisked away by a Sydney wind. An Aussie, who left his children no links with Goa which they have never visited.

I do not think that is the same for Indians who call various parts of the world a temporary home. For them, and other sub-continentals their real home will always be that which was founded by generations of their kin going back many, many hundreds of years. For example, if there was another war between India and Pakistan, the nationals of the two countries strewn all over the globe will drop everything and race to their country of origin. If they can’t do it in person, then they will send billions in aid.

Unlike a Goan, an Indian, a Pakistani, a Sri Lankan will never be a true Aussie, a Brit, a Yank, or a European … true many have lived decades and have died in foreign lands, but they always remained the sons and daughters of the land of their birth (except those born in Africa, Africa was never their land).

However, I have no idea how the Goans who have migrated directly to Britain (and Europe) or via Portuguese Passports, thanks to their “Portuguese ancestry”, would react. From the negative view, friends tell me some of their behaviours force other Goans to make chuuk, chuuk sounds at their Konkani expletives and their general bad behaviour but then again, these are reactions of the Goan Brits from Africa.

England has a refugee problem. How many should they let in? How many and who should they turn back? Should they sacrifice Indian immigration to facilitate asylum seekers and other refugees? Suella Braverman has a serious problem to solve.

A friend wrote: This is precisely because the Home Office never got their act together.  Border control was almost non-existent. They were conveniently blaming the French while not tightening their borders.

 Can you believe it is costing us, the taxpayers £7million a day to house these asylum seekers in hotels because their (the Home Office’s) vetting process is so slow and inefficient.


By the way, Thank God, for Canada, US, Australia, NZ, where they are more considerate to some migrants. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Saturday, November 5, 2022

Buffalo in Amboseli National Park, Kenya

 





Buffalo in Amboseli National Park, Kenya

 

In August, I sent out a Bing Image of Amboseli National Park and its link to Ernest Hemingway. Here is another photograph taken in Amboseli with a splendid view of Kilimanjaro and Cape buffalo in the foreground. Buffalos are usually listed among "The Big Five". An African buffalo is a dangerous animal, mean and unpredictable. A pride of lions will attack a lone buffalo but if a herd happens to be nearby, they will rush to the defence of their beleaguered comrade, Lions have great respect for the strength and power of these powerful beasts and their lethal horns that can gore and toss full-grown lion several feet away. More often than not, the pride decides that discretion is the better part of valour and retreats to a safe distance to lick its wounds and wait for safer prey.

 

An adult African buffalo is slightly smaller than his cousin, the American Bison. Both are about 11' long and about 2000 lbs. in weight. Bison are heavier at the shoulder and have a more massive skull but Cape buffalos are more aggressive. My most memorable encounter with a buffalo was in the Mara Game Reserve, Kenya, in the mid-sixties. My friends Felix, Victor and I were guests of Mr. Ole Tipis (brother of Mr. Justus Ole Tipis, Kenya's Defence Minister), the Chief Warden for the Reserve at the time. We had an early barbecue with a few bottles of Tusker (the preferred libation with steaks), and then made an early night of it. We were comfortably settled in the Warden's house whereas Mr. Tipis preferred to sleep in his tent as he felt cooped inside a house. He invited us to accompany him at seven in the morning next day as he wanted to investigate a report of a rogue buffalo that was making a nuisance of itself to tourist vehicles in its vicinity.

 

Dawn had already broken when we set off in Mr. Tipis's Land Rover with Mr. Tipis driving, Felix riding shotgun, and Victor and I bouncing merrily in the open back of the Land Rover. Within half an hour, Mr. Tipis had located the errant bull and began to circle it warily. It wasn't long before the buffalo decided that it had had enough of our presence and before we knew it the chase was on. Cape buffalos have stumpy legs but are capable of short bursts of over 60 m.p.h. As we bumped our way over the grassland, Mr. Tipis was more than equal to the task of keeping a safe distance from the 2,000 lb. battering ram charging behind us. I could feel the pounding of the hooves on the dry earth as I clung on to the frame of our Land Rover for dear life and looked at the red-eyed beast a spitting distance behind us. Within a few seconds (but what seemed like an eternity to me), the buffalo gave up the chase and we returned to the camp for a hearty breakfast. Victor admitted that he too was scared by the single-minded monster thundering behind us. 

 

Later that day, Mr. Tipis told us that he had gone and shot the buffalo as it was too much of a menace to tourists without the skills required to race and swerve on the bumpy terrain trying to outrun a buffalo hell-bent on pulverizing any intruder in its field of vision. Now take another look at the Bing image and remind yourself that you are not looking at a herd of cattle being rounded up for tomorrow's cattle auction at Perlich Bros... Each of those meanies could demolish your car in seconds for no reason at all and with no personal hard feelings about you.

 

RIEP Carlito Mascarenhas

    CARLOS (CARLITO) MASCARENHAS   MAY 24, 1937 - JULY 16, 2024 Carlito pictured between the two Sikhs at the top It is with a sad heart and...