MELVYN FERNANDES Sun, 29 Oct 2017
15:22:41 -0700
Nairobikars: The Memory
Just Sharing
Have you read this one?
02/10/2017 10:14:15: W lobo:
This is NOT SHORT .... but do read it when you have
a few minutes spare...it has
been written by someone else...not me.
P***** Sept
7th 2017.
In case some of you did not
see this on the Nairobi Asians site, gone a bit
viral!!!
Soft, sweet, gentle things,
kisses from a whispering Nairobi breeze on any
evening, I remember the
other love of my life: Nairobi.
My friends, many colours,
many thoughts, many dreams, trust, loyalty, poverty
and riches, you don't count as money or wealth...
Watching the world go by in
Nairobi National Park or fishing somewhere,
anywhere!
Tea with a pretty girl at
the Tea House of the August Moon opposite the Kenya
cinema.
What is it that
psychologically tricks our taste buds into thinking that fruit
and veg grown anywhere else
other than Kenya lacks taste, and aroma, that just
plucked freshness, and just
does taste that Kenya sweetness? And why is this
particularly true of those
gorgeous matundas that I used to eat by the kikapuful
at one sitting topped off
with a couple of slices of pineapple? And what about
the madafu? What is it about
the Kenyan coast that makes them so different? And
all those mitai sweets ...
why do the laddoos and jelebies seem so different,
the sweetness just right in
the syrup, and laddoos moist but firm. Was it the
water? Was it the air?
Green mangoes with salt and
chilli powder, red paw paws and yellow papaya. Days
when Coke was a drink and
Fanta orange was the prize. When girls smashed ripened
pomegranate seeds on their
lips or drank Vimto make their lips red, centuries
before they were emboldened
to wear the "devil's colours" lipstick. They looked
great au naturel!
Grams and jugus (groundnuts)
cooked in hot sand ... delicious also charcoal
grilled corn (maize) and yam
chips (muhogo), packets of papetas and pocket-fuls
of jamlums (jamuns) guavas
(more salt and chilli), thick KKC milk cream with a
a little bit of sugar or
joggery, sweet potato cooked in the hot charcoal ashes,
avocado with a little sugar
or smashed in milk (or with icecream, like faluda),
thick masala tea, banana
fritters and pancakes to die for ... so soft you never
felt you actually ate them,
sweetened balls of popcorn and white sugared grams,
syrupy dried nut crunches,
sugar and butter on hot chappattis, diwali sweets,
Idd sweets, Christmas
sweets, wedding sweets, Nirmala's halwa (who can ever
forget that) sweet sweet
mandaasi, irio, maharagwe, skinny muchusi (curry) and
the king of foods: ugali.
Roasted bananas and delish banana fritters. Like
kisses, soft, sweet pancakes
with honey or fillings of grated coconut and
joggery! The fruit and veggie
carts outside our homes each morning followed by
the lullaby of the “chupa na
debe” (bottles and cans) men! The happy-go-lucky
wabenzi tiffin carriers who
took warm, daily cooked food for the bwanas in town.
Stern fathers who rarely
spoke to their children and mums who fussed worse than
mother hens and you only
learnt to miss all that when they were gone but you
loved them every minute of
your life.
Music: Fadhili Williams and
Malaika opened a new world of music to the
uninitiated. Bata Shoe Shine
Boys and Inspector Gideon and the Police Band.
showed us a new kind of music
with Kenya soul. Henry Braganza and the Supersonics,
The Bandits, the Rhythm
Kings, Cooty's bands, The Wheelers, Max Alphonso's
unforgettable harmonica
playing, Steve Alvares and his band and the talented
Alvares family, classical,
jazz, dance and pop.
Escape to India at the Shan
or Odeon or the wonderful family musical parties or
those boisterous but
wonderful Sikh weddings.
And just for Aftab Jevanjee:
basking in the midday sun, not too far from the
hustle and bustle of the
city, in then beautiful gardens where children ran wild
like butterflies on
Saturdays and Sundays where the family gathered for an
Indian picnic made in heaven.
My nostrils are still filled with the rich aromas!
Dinner at too many Singh's
restaurants, or Punjabi snacks at tiny bars in the
suburbs or roast chicken at
the Sikh Union accompanied by four fingers of scotch
paraded as two fingers, the
forefinger and the little finger. The gentle advice
from my many Sikh uncles!
Puberty and growing up at
all the social clubs, especially the Goan clubs, the
music, the dances, the
girls, the friends, the sports, the laughter and
carefree, the happiest times
of my life.
Working at the Nation: the
greatest moments of my life!
Lunch and drinks any
Saturday at the Tropicana and their brilliant salad tray!
Faluda at Keby's.
The world's best samosas and
aloo bajjias at the Ismalia Café opposite the Khoja
Mosque.
Maru's Cafe in Reata Road.
Kheema-mayaii chapatis,
delicious kebabs cooked fresh every where ,the likes of
which I have never seen or
tasted again.
Quiet contemplation in the
grounds of the Jamia Islamia Mosque or Holy Family
Cathedral.
Lunch, a snack, or a drink at
the Thorntree restaurant, a drink at the historic long bar of the New Stanley
Hotel with its historic bullet holes. Drinking expensive stuff, especially
champagne in the Norfolk Hotel sauna. Magic at the Starlight Club, great music,
drinks in the huge garden, and an even larger array of nymachoma (barbecued meat).
Barbecued or fried chicken,
better than the American stuff, just opposite the Nairobi Uni.
Pan Afric Hotel for the music
and the place for dinner dates.
The Kenyatta Conference
Centre … we were honoured with an invitation when Prince Charles and Princess
Anne were guests of the Foreign Minister, the late Njoroge Mungai.
Coffee with lawyers at
Nairobi Town Hall
Coffee and snacks at
Snocream
Midnight rendezvous at
Embakasi Airport.
The drives to anywhere
outside of Nairobi .... Karen, Nairobi National Park,
Thika, Kiambu, Liumuru,
Naivasha, Gilgil, Nakuru anywhere, a million dreams.
World's greatest breakfasts
at the Wagon Wheel Hotel Eldoret, Kericho Tea Hotel,
Nakuru Hotel.
The sweet scent of the Jacaranda, watch your step.
The dread of the locust scourge.
The long-awaited long rains, smile when the short rains brought some rescue from the heat.
Learning to swim at the Salisbury.
Watching cricket and tennis at the Nairobi Club.
Dining at the Nairobi Railway Station, even better at the Railway Club.
Corner House Steaks, did I mention that already?
Dancing at the Equator Inn, and loving jiving even more at the Kontiki (Paloma Hotel).
Waiting with glee for the South African Coon (pardone moi) Carnival.
The sheer joy of the Coronation Safari (later the East African Safari, Kenya Safari).
Oh those days without a care and the joy of silence in Nairobi National Park.
Fishing along the Athi River for the mighty bass.
Drinks, chatter and lots of laughs at Dambusters and the sheer pleasure of boarding a single prop or a twin prop at Wilson Airport.
Quiet evenings at the Nairobi Dam, or a walk along the graves at Langata Cemetry, and an even more joyous time at Nairobi City Park and all its history.
A walk along the delightful streets of Nairobi, when a traffic jam was something of a shock if ever there was one.
Driving to the other paradise, Mombasa, Malindi, Watamu Beach, Silver Sands, Nyali Beach, Diani Beach, and one of my greatest joys was spending some time in Lamu, in the days when it was unspoilt and the only vehicle was the DC's Land Rover. He took great pride it in driving it back and forth to the Whispering Palms hotel.
Trips to Gilgil, Naivasha, Nakuru, Eldoret, Kitale, Kericho, Kisumu, all the way to the mighty shores of Lake Victoria. Will never forget, the Aberdares, Meru, Embu, Sir Isaac Walton Inn, just glorious, especially nights at the bar (trout fishing), Nyeri, Nanyuki (more trout fishing).
Will never forget the times and huge fish at Lake Rudolf ... Isiolo, Marsabit and all of the Northern Frontier District and all its wild, wild country and absolutely gorgeous tribespeople.
The bathing of the mind at
any game lodge: Watching that magical moment, the
last nanosecond when day
morphs into the night. The first chorus of the night
orchestra mixed with the
grunting sighs of the animal kingdom going to lala.
Eastleigh, Pangani, Juja
Road, River Road. Starehe. Kariokor. Dagoretti.
Killeshwa, Mincing Lane,
Nairobi markets, the churches, the temples, a million
smiles.
Kariokor Market: The world's
greatest nyama choma (barbecued meat) served with
onions tomatoes, green
coriander, pinch of salt, drop of vinegar and on the rare
occasion a slice of lemon.
The bands, the music, the
dancing, Swiss Grill, Topaz Grill Room, Equator Club,
Sombrero, Starlight, Equator
Inn, Jeans Bar, Caiados Bar, Indian Bazaar, Museum,
Ngong racecourse,
Waited with panting nostrils
each Easter to cover the East African Safari. I
will treasure every single
moment I spent in each and every game lodge, one of
the greatest experiences of
my life and everyone should do it at least once. If
you need any help my mate
Lewis De Souza will set it up for you!
I am sure you guys have your
own special memories
Hey, hey they told us: don't
fall in love. Everything will be arranged. And for
many so it was. We
brownskins had to stick to our respective communities and
assimilation was out of the
question. We had been conditioned into accepting
that to the point it had
become part of our DNA. A few broke the taboos and were
instantly marooned in a
world far from the rest of us. We did not see anything
wrong with that. It was the
time, it was the place, and it was the custom.
We were many religions, many
faiths, many customs, and many traditions and we each
kept firm with that which we
honoured our fathers and mothers for. We respected
each other's boundaries and
did our own individual thing. Yet, we got along,
played sports together, and even
socialised in small proportions and we were no
strangers to each other’s
houses when we were children and growing up. We had
little or nothing to do with
the white socially. For one thing, they lived on the
other side of town and we
were really familiar with their airs and graces or
thought mistakenly perhaps
that we may not do the right thing. Anyway, they were
not a part of our world and
we did not even think about them. It was the same with
Africans. Although we did
not know it at the time, this was the British
conspiracy of separate
development at work. It did not bother us.
There were no suicide
bombers tearing people to shreds, no inter-communal riots,
great marches of protests,
boycotts, blackmail, street brawls and all that is
ugly and all around us
today. We have known what it is to be alive and free, free
enough to feel the wind in
our hair, hope in our hearts and love in our souls
where really the human for
the most part could be as calm, cool and gentle as
the climate itself. You will
gather by now that I have treasured the friends I
made all my life. For an
investigative journalist, you might think naïve with a
head full of some light gas
considering the pain and death were all around us for
some of the time. I prayed
for them then and I pray for them now. So I will ask
your forgiveness and ask you
to allow me my moments of yesterday's exhilaration.
Life is beautiful. In the
end, you really only remember the good.
Yesterday in Paradise 1956
to 1974 – Cyprian Fernandes (Sydney Australia)
An appreciation by the late Melvyn
Fernandes (Thornton Heath, England)
Never judge a book by its
cover when I first came across Yesterday In Paradise
on Social Media the cover
could easily have been a painting by
David Shepherd
or the Late Caje Fernandes
even Andrew Dias whose photographs of Wildlife used
to adorn Kenya Tourism
brochures. There was also Alex Fernandes from Sapra
Studios Nairobi.
The scene could have been
from the safari lodge Tree Tops where
the late
Manuel Fernandes from
Colvale is accredited as being chef to (now the late) Princess
Elizabeth who is now 91 years old Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth of
the United
Kingdom and the
Commonwealth.
Credits must go to Bina
Nayak a Goan Independent Graphic Designer and
Communication specialist
from Sir JJ School of Art Bombay for putting a thousand
words into one picture, she
also works from Pune and Goa.
Goa Book Club for
Distribution ISBN:978-93-80739-92-2 not forgetting GOA 1556
(Goa first printing press)
the publishers of this second edition coordinated by
Frederick Noronha, Saligao
403511 Goa India http://goa1556.in.
In this age of the instant,
I never got around to reading the first edition. My
thanks to Greg Carvalho at a
recent London Reunion of St. Theresa’s and Catholic
Parochial schools managed to
acquire a copy of the paperback second edition for
a nominal sum.
This book is one you can
open wide and say aaah. Cyprian’s story is also our
Story, especially the
Eastleighkars. Although garnished with history it covers the
two houses named Romulus and
Remus built by their parents whose children
drowned in the quarry in
their memory a place forbidden to us teenagers we made
do by playing in the stream
at Mathare valley. There are some lines
on what I
think was Milango Kuba at
Pangani and the Poltergeist. If you
were ill there
was always Dr Charlie Paes
and his clinic. Not forgetting Dr Abel Carrasco.
The achievements of our
Olympic sportsmen are brilliantly recorded in several
Chapters, one all-rounder
Sister Trifa De Souza representing Kenya was
disqualified from the 1958
British Empire and Commonwealth Games at Cardiff
because she held a
Portuguese Passport. Today marks over 50 years as a Catholic
Nun in the service of
Children especially very young and abandoned girls in
Kenya and thanks to all ex-students
and friends of Dr Ribeiro Goan School from
around the world for their
support of her work at Edelvale Women’s
Complex In
Nairobi.
Hockey Legends like Hilary
Fernandes, Silu Fernandes, Anthony Vaz,
Egbert
Fernandes, Edgar Fernandes,
Alu Mendonca and Athletics Seraphino Antao,Kipchoge
Keino started the Olympic
Gold rush for Kenya. There is also a mention of Aires
and Josephine Fernandes,
Aires was one of the best Goan Snooker and Billiard players in East Africa. In
London, Aires used to give us a lift from Tooting in his red
Renault to join 149
volunteers pulling together at any one time for the
refurbishment of the Goan
Association Clubhouse at Ravensbourne under the
supervision of Building
Engineers Trewin Pinto & Leslie Mendonca.
The development and segregation
of our people by our people at the Goan Institute,
the Railway Institute and
the Goan Gymkhana in Nairobi are very diplomatically
explained. Sports Day is
when we all met in competition with each other and
other communities. At
Catholic Parochial School Sister Gertrude our music
teacher could not get me to
sing the right notes, bless her soul, unlike my
Aunties Euphemia Mary,
Rosie, Helen and Saturina who were in the Choir at Holy
Family every Sunday with
Oboe Noronha the choirmaster.
I became a Roadie hanging
out with musicians Polly, Andrew, Vallent, Johnny,
Sparky, Polly Drummer,
Violinist Lobo having mastered the maracas just about
played the Rhythm guitar
with the band Les Typhoons.
You see music, like sports,
conquered all barriers and even today at the sounds
of music like puppets on
strings our people love a dance cast or no cast. I
fondly remember Henry
Braganza of the Scorpions and his carving from a bamboo
cane for sound effects also
the introduction of the infrared mike, no more
cables Magic my thanks also
to the late Cooty of All Stars, Amigos to name a few.
There was an upcoming band called the Bongo Boys
Band.
We even played at the
Freemasons Lodge, visited the Swiss Grill, the Pan Africa
and starlight to name a few.
Not much has changed amongst
our people today in October 1960 the vice premier
of Portugal Pedro Teotonio
Pereira at the invitation of the British Colonial
Government visited Kenya.
Pereira arranged for the financing of the Fort Jesus
Museum and a sum of GBP
30,000 was made available through the
Guibenkian
Foundation. Fort Jesus was hijacked and forced into
celebrations marking 555th
anniversary of the death
of Prince Henry the Navigator. Today, it
is said Goans
say one thing and do
another.
Cyprian defends the East
African Goan labelled as dodderer. The Hijacked Goan
Festival in London over ten
years ago was like the clubhouse an East African
Goan initiative where
families of all generations met under one sky some even
displayed and showcased
their villages in Goa with pride.
On page175 he wrote” You
have to be a contemporary of the dodderer to appreciate
that he was once a warrior,
a pioneer who was forced out of the comfort of his
family home for nearly a
century and transported to an alien country where he
found no welcome but racist
abuse and taunts. Worse he was called a
Paki while
skinheads and white
supremacists bashed him. He was for a long time a “Black
Bastard” at work or on the
streets of England. Whatever the pain and suffering
the dodderer persevered for
the sake of the children. Some could not take it and
packed their bags for Goa
only to return a short time later. Being blessed with
a good command of English
the dodderer found it fairly easy to slip into
mainstream English life both
in the Public and Private Sectors. It was not long
before the dodderers were
commanding high salaries and high positions.
It was
also not long before the
poms were able to discern the different Brown skinned
citizens. In Parliament, the
dodderer and his tribe were recognised for their
former colonial service”
There is bitterness between
the newly arrived GPPH (Goan Portuguese Passport
Holders from Goa.) Our
community has never been in so much trouble with the
Police in the last forty
years like today these GPPH have no manners, are also
known as the Khoito Head as
like the Khoito they are sharp bent and given the
opportunity will eat you out
of house and home and even your job in Breadline
Britain.
In Eastleigh life revolved
around St Theresa’s Church , everyone knew everyone
and walked everywhere. Voluntary work was introduced at the Legion
of Mary
weekly meetings where an
insight of Committee structure and duties of President,
Secretary and Treasurer
along with the attendance register gained valuable
booking keeping and minute
taking was learnt some took to shorthand either Gregs
or Pitmans which assisted in
Employment.
Cyprian’s book is an insight
into his first job application and career.
His
experience can be mirrored
by many of us. Some years ago, I attended a crowded
seminar at Ibis Earls Court
London England organised by an American the theme
was how to make money with
the bottom line –Write a Book. The room was full of
cheers I must be from a
different generation as I could not understand what the
cheering was about.
Having read Cyprian’s book
with shed loads of information I found it a sincere
Down-to-earth story and life
experience and take this opportunity to appreciate
his work and sharing with us
condensed into a paperback with bite-size chapters.
The views expressed in this
article are personal and should not be regarded as
any authority to purchase a
copy of the book.
Thanks for the Memory.
Melvyn Fernandes
Thornton Heath
Surrey, England
8 October 2017
CYPRIAN: Then one day our worst fears were realised. Uhuru was here and not long after Jomo Kenyatta told us that there was no room for us in a free Kenya. "Kwenda{, get out, no work permits! The clever ones had already got their money out, and British passports got them out quickly until Enoch Powell promised us rivers of blood. Towns in the UK begged us to stay away. My folks were among the lucky ones, I got a passport issued in London and was considered a resident. It was not long before we were out of the UK ... to Australia to restore our waning skin tans and an unforgettable life ... not like Kenya we knew but pretty close. Thank God, every day.
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