THE
PART-TIME GLORY MAKERS
Over the next several weeks and months I will post the whole of the book for you to read at your leisure... free of charge: ENJOY!!!!
IN CASE you did not know, I began my
journalistic life as a sports reporter before going on General News reporting:
Court, Local Government Affairs (councils), local and national politics,
Parliament, and the whole spectrum of life that abounded Kenya, Uganda,
Tanzania before spending considerable time investigating various aspects of
life wherever the story was to be found. However, most Goans still remember as
a sports reporter covering, as far as they were concerned, men’s and women’s
hockey (local and international), soccer (especially those involving the Goan
clubs) cricket, table tennis, tennis, golf, a little rugby union and whatever
else came my way.
Over the past 30 years or so, I have
hankered for someone to come along and write the complete anthology of the Goan
(both male and female) in sport in East Africa. I have always felt, like the
true histories of the Goans -- from the earliest migrations with the Omani
Arabs to the final exodus first in 1966, then in 1968 and then by dribs and
drabs after 1970 – which were never officially recorded in the written word and
much later with the advent of the electronic media (tape recordings), histories
of sport and musicians would go the same way, and it probably will.
This little offering does not any way
compensate for the loss of the histories of the Goan community in the African
diaspora. Like everything else, that too will be lost to the swirling sands of
time, carrying away memory into the depths of forgotten infinity.
I am ashamed to admit that this
effort is really very minor comparatively … it is not the academic tome I would
like it to have been. A lot of photographic evidence, no the majority, has been
lost to the sands of time for one reason or another. For example, I was
desperately looking for a photograph of one of the great Goans of our time,
school teacher and genius hockey coach Anthony D’Souza and I was about to give
up in a well of tears, each drop representing the depth of my disappointment,
when Silu Fernandes, hockey international and a student of D’Souza’s, came to
the rescue. In other instances, folks are well into their 80s and some are
approaching their 90s where memory recall is beginning to get difficult, let
alone putting it down on paper. Where photographs were available, they were
often unusable because in the 1950s and 1960s the little Kodak took little
pictures or little pictures were printed because larger ones were too
expensive. These were then scanned at 96 dpi rendering them almost unusable
because the required scanning for better reproduction is 300 dots per inch
(dpi). Others would have nothing to do with this project, perhaps imagining
some negative motivations.
All I ever wanted to do was put down
on paper so future generations can access this somewhere, sometime, and
probably say: “I didn’t know that”, “My parents never told me” as is the
reaction to my debut novel Yesterday in
Paradise.
The publication of this minor
anthology has been assisted in some way by a sports supporter in Mombasa. I
will remain forever grateful. Mike
Fernandes, also in Mombasa, did a fantastic job cataloguing much of the Goans Sports
history there.
The first few pages are dedicated
Seraphino Antao, without a doubt (until another double gold medallist at the
Olympics or the Commonwealth Games comes along) the great Goan athlete ever. I
was encouraged along the way by that penman doyen Vivek Menezes and
Seraphino’s brothers Rosario and Joe. They also provided great access to the
Antao family photographic albums.
I am also indebted to the
following:
Hartman D’Souza: John Noronha :
Hilary Fernandes: Silu Fernandes: The family of the late Alu Mendonca: Alu’s
sister Theresa Mandricks: Avtar Singh Sohal, Kenya’s legendary hockey captain:
Edgar Fernandes: Bertha Fernandes: Casimiro Joanes: Norman Da Costa, veteran
journalist: Delfine Da Costa: Jacinto Fernandes: Jason and Juliette D’Costa:
Donald Almeida: Ian Fernandes: Theo De Souza: The family of the late Joe Gonsalves:
Theresa Costabir: Edmund Silveira: Leo Rodrigues: Paulie De Souza: Philip De
Souza: Warren Mcmahon: Richard Rattos: Henry Braganza: Les Scott: Mona Dias and
her siblings: Max De Souza: Jessel Mandricks: George De Souza: Marq De Souza:
Jimmy Van Rosi
However, nothing would have been
achieved without the dedication and skills of our publisher FN Noronha and the
hundreds of well-wishers around the world.
Thank you.
Cyprian Fernandes, Sydney, Australia
skipfer@live.com.au
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