From: "Gabe Menezes" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Having been born and brought up in Nairobi, Kenya I was made to feel we were > special. ===================================================
Folks, Gabe is so right regarding the East African context in the mid 20th century but do the concepts have universal validity today? I was brought up in Mombasa, Kenya and my own experience was not much different from Gabe's. I went to a Goan School, relaxed at the Goan Institute and went to the Catholic Church which had a predominantly Goan congregation. Life revolved around the three. The reason we excelled in sports was because we had excellent facilities. At the Goan School, English was the medium of instruction and we specialised in English history and geography. The Principal introduced fines if any pupil was caught talking Konkani whilst on school premises. In most other respects, the Principal was excellent and incidentally went to Goa after retirement - Parrikar, Goa's CM, remembers him fondly as his Maths teacher! I submit that it was largely religious teaching that was responsible for brainwashing us to believe we were a special breed. We were also conditioned to accept white supremacy whist believing that we were a breed apart from the blacks and the other Asians. When I then went to St Xavier's College, Mumbai, it came as quite a shock to the system to realize that "Indians" who were "heathens", did not drink alcohol or eat meat or waltz and spoke a "funny" language were able to speak English more fluently than me and excelled academically, socially, intellectually and even spiritually! I lived at the College hostel and benefitted enormously by friendship with them. So perhaps we ought to sympathise with the ilk of Vivek who are still cloistered in the East Africa context. Pity is all that he deserves! The key question is how do we react in the Western environment. If we believe in Goan superiority to the other Asians it means we accept our inferiority to the whites. How do we react to the discrimination and racial attacks? BTW. News has just come in that Denis Lobo, (aged 53, ex-Nairobi), has been the victim of repeated racial attacks in the UK, Hillingdon Times of 27 Feb 2004 has a 517 words article about it. I have the full text and have just spoken to him. However the website http://www.hillingdontimes.co.uk/ is currently down and I am unable to give you the url. Cheers Eddie Fernandes ########################################################################## # Send submissions for Goanet to [EMAIL PROTECTED] # # PLEASE remember to stay on-topic (related to Goa), and avoid top-posts # # More details on Goanet at http://joingoanet.shorturl.com/ # # Please keep your discussion/tone polite, to reflect respect to others # ##########################################################################
