Title: Who the Bleep cares about Colonial clerks and Goan honour? By Selma Carvalho. Source: Goan Voice Daily Newsletter 15 Feb. 2010 at www.goanvoice.org.uk
Full text: I have an image of him in my mind, snatched from a black and white photograph. A tall, feeble-looking man, holding a glass of wine at my mothers wedding, edging towards the side as if embarrassed to be in the picture. I never met the man; he died before I was born. I know very little about the life of Conceição Miguel Gomes, my grand-father. Yet his presence looms large in our house. Stories of him permeate my mothers conversations as she resuscitates him with her memories. He had arrived in Kenya as a young man of 17 in the early 1920s and worked as a clerk at a bank in Nairobi. Of his life in Africa, we dont know much; an empty space in our family history filled now with a reconstructed memory of suppositions. At the age of 38 he returned to Goa with a smattering of Swahili in his repertoire and not much else. As was the custom in those days, he took a young bride of sixteen. He never went back to Kenya; instead he worked in Poona as a stores clerk in the British Indian army. His life as a colonial clerk is the life of so many Goan men of the early 20th century. Despite the confines that race wrought upon them, the lack of advancement in employment after a certain level, the racial inequality in the working relationship, it was still a relationship anchored in mutual respect and in the best British tradition marked by a certain paternalistic benevolence. There were deprivations, terrible deprivations especially in the early days and the remote outposts of East Africa, such as Kitui or Isiolo, where they served so loyally. The cotton-trousered clerk endured water scarcity, sitting snakes in the outhouses and other reptilian surprises on the way to work, lions who hunted near-by and thatched houses with decrepit ant-eaten roofs dissolving into their evening meals. Yet they persevered, unfailingly described by Colonial officers as the backbone of the administration and very high-quality people. Young English officers just entering the service were entirely dependent on their district clerks to teach them the ropes; how, to write a letter, to address people, to handle situations without causing too much embarrassment or making undue enemies. The District Commissioner seldom had time to train his district officers in these rudimentary tasks. Perhaps one of most noteworthy accolades paid to the Goan community in Kenya is by Sir Noel Anthony Scaven-Lytton, 4th Earl of Lytton, a descendant of Byron and an author of some note himself. Between 1922-26 he served in the Kings African Rifles, in Kenya. In a taped interview he says: They (Goans) occupy in Africa the small places, the places of respect; a first-class cook, a care-taker on whom you can absolutely rely, a bank cashier upon whom you can absolutely rely .that is the mark of a not ambitious but rather humble status in life, nevertheless one of complete integrity and respect a very good community. They served Kenya very well. The relationship between the Goan and British in Africa was marked not just by a utilitarian, symbiotic co-dependence. It was that rare relationship based on the sort of unquestioning trust shared between a parent and favourite child, diminished only by the child forever being an unequal in the partnership. Michael George Power, who served as a District Officer at Kilifi and Taita Hills, talks of how the Secretariat in Kenya would have collapsed without Goan clerks. Why? Because they were meticulous and they were honest. And because the British couldnt bring themselves to trust Africans with their money, their land and their lives. Ultimately Goans were the buffer between Africans and the British and between Indians and the British. My grandfather returned from Africa in no way prosperous. My mother tells me he had an unwavering belief in the virtue of righteousness. Like so many men of his generation, he upheld that Goan tradition of firm loyalty, integrity and honesty in his dealings at work. Words which are disappearing from our Goan vocabularies. Do leave your feedback at [email protected]
