Dear Eddie
I too echo what others have written on goanet, this matter was well and truly
closed. Selma had written an article on the Goan Festival 2012 which was
published
in the OHeraldo in Goa, a number of readers took issue at what she had written
about our community from East Africa and this gauntlet was taken up by Cyprian
from Australia who, with a fully loaded gold tip parker pen (with ink to spare)
gave her a justifiable slap on her writer's wrist. In a rare display of
humility, Selma
apologised, we all breathed a sigh of relief and therein the matter closed. She
then bade us all a fond farewell from goanet, but she bades us so many fond
farewells, that we have all developed a great fondness for her in our hearts.
In your goanet posting, you have written that she has been sitting in the
National Archives for long hours doing her research, I have to ask did our
community
live in the National Archives or did they live in East Africa? The story of our
lives there is in the streets, the churches, the club houses, the sports
grounds, the
beaches, the schools, the colonial offices, the private companies, the
railways, and in the hearts and minds of those who lived there, not in the
National Archives,
we are not some lost tribe yet.
You have also reminded us for the past one year, she has been travelling
relentlessly the length and breadth of London to record these stories, recruit
interviewees, transcribe, edit and produce videos. Let me take this
opportunity to refresh your memory, how you announced with great pride of huge
interest
shown in every training session that it was fully booked even before it was
advertised. There were 20 dedicated volunteers that took training on 29 October
2011
and 15 dedicated volunteers that took training on 26 November 2011 both
sessions at the Indian YMCA in London, all were trained on how to handle video
and
audio equipment and interviewing techniques, as shown on
http://www.britishgoanproject.com/event/ Did these dedicated volunteers pass or
fail their training?
Or were these training sessions a tick box exercise as part of the grant
requirements? Could you advise us why you now feel that we should be giving a
thank
you vote to Miss Lonesome when she would have had enough trained-up, dedicated
volunteers to assist her with this project?
Like a mystery move on undir papa's game board, it is incredulous that you have
resurrected this matter on goanet. As editor of Goan Voice and PR Director of
The Histories of British Goans Project, you will be familiar with these types
of clashes which have a tendency to die down after a while. In my opinion, the
behaviour of my best friend mirrors a child standing on a pram because all her
favourite toys have been thrown on the floor. Rather than an adult continually
picking them up, in time this child will need to learn she has to pick the toys
up by herself without any assistance.
Rose Fernandes
Thornton Heath, Surrey, United Kingdom
17 September 2012
