Bernard Ribeiro
“Every Action of our daily Life should be influenced by gentleness, temperance,
humility and purity” SFdS
Jambo
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THIS CITY CHURCH WAS BUILT BY GOANS OF KENYA
The renaming of Parklands Secondary School to Dr Ribeiro
Parklands School in 2015 was to pay homage to an Indian Goan who not only
donated the land on which it sits, but also as a salute to his community’s
contribution in Kenya.
Goans, unlike other Asians, did not come to Kenya to build
the Uganda Railway. Most came as doctors, lawyers, accountants, clerks and
businessmen, as Cyprian Fernandes informs us in his 2016 offering, Yesterday in
Paradise. He reveals that others came as chefs, tailors, carpenters, mechanics
and musicians.
Dr Rosendo Ayres Ribeiro was the first private medical
practitioner in 1899. He is famous for visiting patients atop a zebra, which
was more disease-resistant than the traditional horse. Dr Ribeiro operated
under a tent in the muddy tin shack that was Nairobi, where he invented a
malaria drug which was patented and sold to an international pharmaceutical.
Dr Ribeiro, the one-time Vice Consul of Portugal in Kenya,
was also instrumental in rebuilding Bazaar Street (today’s Biashara Street)
after it was burnt down in 1902 following an outbreak of bubonic plague.
Kenyan Goans were from Goa, which was a Portuguese province
for 450 years until 1961, when it was annexed by India, where it is the
smallest state.
Goa exhibits Portuguese cultural influence, the reason many
Goans have deep Catholic roots.
Many were endowed with a relatively high level of education.
This is why the British hired them as clerks.
Seeking more sophisticated labour for administrative and
professional work, the Imperial British East Africa (IBEA) company, which was
running Kenya on behalf of the British Empire, encouraged Goans to immigrate
here towards the end of the 19th century.
Being Christians and many having Portuguese ancestry (and
citizenship), Goans were accorded non-Indian status, which carried special
immigration and even tax benefits.
They came in droves and among the famous were Pio Gama Pinto,
Kenya’s first victim of permanent political elimination in 1965, Fitz de Souza,
one of the battery of lawyers representing Mzee Jomo Kenyatta at the Kapenguria
Trial and who later became Deputy Speaker, Seraphino Antao, an athlete who won
the Commonwealth Games gold medal for the 100 and 220 yards in 1962, Joe
Rodriques the journalist who became managing editor of Nation newspaper and
Henry Braganza, the musician. Nairobi’s Campos Ribeiro Avenue is named after
another notable Goan, Julius Campos.
Kenya’s second Vice President, Joseph Murumbi, had a Goan
father. For being reliable, hardworking and apolitical, many Goans also became
integral cogs in the Colonial Civil Service, like SR Rodrigues of the Treasury
and Leandro de Mello of the Provincial Administration.
But despite their special status, Goans were considered a
rung below Europeans. Due to racial segregation in Kenya at the time, Goans
built their schools, clubs and churches. For instance, the Parklands Secondary
School, Goan Gymkhana, the Goan Institute and St Francis Xavier Catholic Church
at the junction of Parklands and Limuru Road.
Indeed, this church, built in 1933 and funded largely by
Goans, is a silent reminder of the racial temper then. Designed to a neo-gothic
architectural style, its walls are made of butch stone buttressed at regular
intervals externally beneath a Mangalore tiled roof featuring a high, vaulted
ceiling.
Windows are glazed in steel casements supported in arched
openings with rose windows to the higher elevations. The walls are rusticated
to external elevations, giving the visual impression of an impenetrable
fortress. The statue of their patron saint Francis Xavier, stands in the
garden.
Today, St Francis Xavier Catholic Church-which had Goan
priests for many years is open to all races.
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