Soon Kenya would be independent and her comfort-zone of the Goan railway community at Makupa on Mombasa Island would vaporise as more people would leave for Goa, or move inland into the formally 'White Highlands'. Her new family would end up across the country and 1700 meters (5,577 ft) up in the Western Highlands. Gone were her familiar Goan families, the social centres of the local Makupa church in Mombasa and the Goan Club that her father co-founded, the Star of the Sea School that her cousins taught at, and the local market. Gone were the pillion rides on her husband’s scooter as they crossed the floating pontoon Nyali Bridge to picnics on the white sand beaches of the north coast. Then communication with Goa was by Aerogram letters sent from the small five-street town of Kisii that took up to two weeks to get to Goa. This was Kisii “post-Maciel”. That is, shortly after the town described so vividly by Meryvn Maciel in his book Bwana Karani (Merlin; 1985). For mother there was no electricity, and food was cooked on a cast iron oven made in Newcastle that ran on firewood (kuni) cut from the surrounding forest by prisoners! Hurricane lamps provided light and food was kept in a meat safe. But, for a few years at least, there were some other Goans, a tiny red brick Catholic Church with Sunday English services in EkeGusii and Kiswahili, and the club that was for the few Goans, Seychellois and the Europeans - as all white people were called. Mombasa was recreated in miniature. Read full text here:https://selma-carvalho.squarespace.com/nonfiction-1/2017/6/27/memoir Joao Roque Literary Journal
