Skip to main content

Early mentions of Goans in the 1800s in British Kenya civil service

 

From the edited letters of Francis Hall 1892-1901.   KIKUYU DISTRICT by Paul Sullivan (pub. Dar es Salaam - Mkuki na Nyota).    p.36:   

        “Kikuyu. Nov.24th ’95 … I am sorry to say that my Goanese [!] clerk is going to the coast as they have sent another in his place.   The poor beggar deserves to get away as he has now been 3 years up-country in the Coy’s service, but I shall be sorry to lose him as he thoroughly understands his work & is very willing & useful in many ways.   If the new man is half as good I shall be well satisfied….”

pp.47/8:

        “Kikuyu. Jany. 14th ’94 … [an engagement with Wakikuyu]   My men were all shot with poisoned arrows, but luckily I gave the clerk some ammonia & whiskey to take with them & told him how to use it & this no doubt saved their lives … The Sergt. Major got the only nasty wound through the inside of the upper arm, just missing the artery, & the fool of a Goan never took the arrow head out.   Directly they got here I attended to him [after poulticing his swollen arm and being very sick, he survived.]”

p.110:

        "Kikuyu.  Sept. 10th. ’96 … I must just scrawl a few lines to let you see I am all fit, but I have had a burst of work this month & to crown my bad luck had to dismiss my clerk, a Goanese, for dishonesty, so had all the work myself…”

        “….I have been writing hard for the best part of three days & nights, quarterly reports and goodness knows what & I’m about sick of it.   If they don’t send me a clerk shortly they get no more a/cs.   I’ll never dismiss another clerk as long as I live unless I’ve got a man to put in his place.”

p.127:

        “Kikuyu.  July 31st. ’97 … At 12.30 pm all the Europeans, together with the Goanese clerks & two native Officers sat down to a stupendous lunch, but just as we were about to sit down, someone reminded me that I had said the white men would pull the winners of the Tug-of-War.   So out we sailed…..”

p.145:

        "Kikuyu.  April 25th. 1899 … My Assistant Lloyd is at Machakos being prosecuted for ‘wrongful confinement’ of a Goanese who calls himself a Portuguese subject.   He & Lloyd had a few angry words & Lloyd told the police to take him into the Fort.   My men are so accustomed to collar a man & put him into the gaol that when they got the chance at a Goanese, whom they hate, they promptly chucked him in amongst the natives.  He was allowed out almost at once, but of course, seeing the chance of heavy damages, prosecuted Lloyd.   Ainsworth is quite non-plussed with an advocate arguing on each side.   The result is Lloyd has been away three weeks & likely to be some more yet…”

p.155:

        “Machakos.  Dec. 20th 1899 …Here I have no assistant, which is a nuisance as I can’t get away, but I have a European as cashier & a Goanese Clerk who is also Postmaster.   The administration here is a farce….”
========================

        That’s it Mervyn, perhaps only of scant interest to you but you did ask.   The booklet was a joy to read, particularly as I have perhaps the first Land Title in Kenya here (rescued from the Nairobi Railway Museum by Brian Yonge and purchased by me in 1980) - this document is signed by Francis Hall and also countersigned by Ryall who was taken from a railway carriage and eaten.

Frank.

 

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

MORE photos of cricketers in Kenya added

More cricket photos added! Asians v Europeans, v Tanganyika, v Uganda, v East Africa, Rhodesia, etc some names missing! Photo Gallery of Kenya Cricket 23 photos: CM Gracias, Blaise d'Cunha Johnny Lobo! Ramanbhai Patel, Mehboob Ali, Basharat Hassan and hundreds others.  
1 comment
Read more

Pinto: Blood on Western and Kenyan hands

  BOOK REVIEW   Pinto: Blood on Western and Kenyan hands   Review by Cyprian Fernandes     Pio Gama Pinto, Kenya’s Unsung Martyr 1927-1965 Edited by Shiraz Durrani [Vita Books, Kenya, 2018, 392 pp.   Pbk, £30, ISBN 978-9966-1890-0-4; distributed worldwide by African Books Collective, www.africanbookscollective.com ]   Less than two years after independence from the British, on 24 February 1965, the Kenyan nationalist Pio Gama Pinto was gunned down in the driveway of his Nairobi home.   His young daughter watched helplessly in the back seat of the family car.   Pinto, a Member of Parliament at the time, was Kenya’s first political martyr.   One man was wrongly accused of his death, served several years in prison and was later released and compensated.   Since then no one has been charged with the murder.   Now the long-awaited book on Pio Gama Pinto is finally here, launched in Nairobi on 16 October 2018....
Post a Comment
Read more

The sanctuaries trying to save birds of prey from extinction in Kenya

  The sanctuaries trying to save birds of prey from extinction in Kenya (Courtesy of Al Jazeera) Poison, deforestation and power lines have pushed the African raptor population to a 90 per cent decline in the last 40 years. Raptor technician John Kyalo Mwanzia rehabilitates a juvenile fish eagle to flight after it was treated for grounding injuries sustained in a territorial fight at the Lake Naivasha habitat, at Soysambu Raptor Centre. [Tony Karumba/AFP] Simon Thomsett tentatively removes a pink bandage from the wing of an injured bateleur, a short-tailed eagle from the African savannah, where birds of prey are increasingly at risk of extinction. “There is still a long way to go before healing,” Thomsett explains as he lifts up the bird’s dark feathers and examines the injury. “It was injured in the Maasai Mara national park, but we don’t know how,” says the 62-year-old vet who runs the Soysambu Raptor Centre in central Kenya. The 18-month-old eagle, with a dist...
Post a Comment
Read more