African Goan story of the family of Angelo De Souza, son of Manuel de Souza, discoverer of Tanzanite.

[Jeanne Hromnik]

Dear Friends

I wrote to Zarina Patel of AwaaZ suggesting that the magazine publish this fascinating story (see below). She is equally intrigued and wonders why it has received so little attention and whether Goans are aware of it.

Does anyone have more information or know of anyone who might know more? There is an email address at the bottom of the account (below), the one that led to my previous message on the same subject. I had not thought of pursuing it, but Zarina is so enthusiastic that I am beginning to change my mind.

Any advice or contact numbers would be much appreciated.

Jeanne



In celebration of over 30 years of Beverly Hills Bakery, we decided to share with all our loyal customers, friends and supporters, the incredible personal story of our owner and head pastry chef, Rosa de Souza.

Rosa's story is one that gives hope and dreams to millions of migrants, refugees and people that have been displaced by political turmoil. 

Rosa was born in 1951 in Tanzania, East Africa at the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro, in a town called Arusha. Part of a large family of seven children, her parents were immigrants from Goa, India, who had left their home in search of a better life in Africa. They set up a grocery business in the centre of the town and her father supplemented their income with tailoring.

They lived in a simple house with very few luxuries but filled with laughter and a hub of activity. Her family believed in an open-door policy and food was offered to anyone who visited as is custom in her culture. 

Rosa’s love and passion for food started from a very early age by watching her mother cooking and baking with a three-legged charcoal oven placed outside the house. In Tanzania, most cooking occurred outside the house in the garden/covered terrace with different wood fired and charcoal ovens – traditional open fire cooking. Ovens were created from using hot sand on the bottom of a big drum that was placed above heated coals. The pot of cake batter was placed inside the sand in the drum and covered with a lid. Hot coals were placed on top of the pot and this was your baking! Money was sparce and everything was geared to providing the basic food elements. In the early morning, the older siblings would wake up first to make chapati (Indian flat bread), for all the children to take to school for snack. Coffee beans were roasted at home then ground for the daily coffee.

Rosa would help her mother bake an array of different cakes:  fruit, sponge, semolina and Goan traditional cakes.

She got he first job as a teenager in the local convenience store and this is where she met her future husband, Angelo de Souza, an event that completely transformed her life and took her on a journey she could never have envisaged.

Angelo’s family was also relatively poor, his father was a Goan immigrant, who worked as a tailor but had a passion for gem prospecting and would disappear months on end in the African bush looking for rubies and sapphires, leaving his family in economic constraints. His mother was the granddaughter of the Sukuma chief (largest tribe in Tanzania) and her Greek immigrant father.

In 1967, Angelo's father, Manuel de Souza, on one of his many prospecting expeditions, discovered a new gemstone, later to be named Tanzanite, his “impossible” dream fulfilled and the destinies of his family changed forever.

Following the discovery, delegates from the gemology field and journalists from leading international publications descended on Arusha, to view the new gemstone. Rosa found herself cooking and baking at the mine, using the method of earth cooking (cooking in the ground), for visitors in the mining camp including for Henry Platt, the then Director of Tiffany's jewellers and in wanting to impress him, she baked her first American brownies.

It was an incredibly exciting time for Rosa and Angelo who could now look forward to an economically secure and exhilarating future. However, this was not to last. In 1971, the Tanzanian government, following a socialist programme, nationalised the family’s Tanzanite mines, and took all their assets, forcing them to flee Tanzania. By this point, Rosa and Angelo had married and were proud parents of a little girl, Patricia.

They fled across the border to Malawi and then to neighbouring Mozambique, where they set up home in a wooden shack in the fisherman’s quarters of the capital, Lourenco Marques (now Maputo) and Rosa was introduced to a whole new cuisine and way of cooking. Angelo enrolled at the University to study geology and worked at the Geological Institute of Lourenco Marques. In 1973, their son Manuel was born.

The cuisine in Mozambique was very different from what Rosa was accustomed to in Tanzania. Being brought up far away from the ocean, by Kilimanjaro, this was the first time that she had access to the most amazing seafood that the vast Indian ocean had to offer. Suddenly, she found herself cooking dishes with prawns, crabs, lobsters, sardines and a host of other fish. Portuguese food relied heavily on the quality and freshness of its natural ingredients, adding simple spices to enhance its fresh taste.

Portuguese baking was also quite different with a heavy reliance on bread during meals. 

Here she learnt to bake traditional Portuguese custard and rice cakes and rice pudding desserts eg Pastéis de Nata, Pao de Deus, Bolo de Mel, Bolo de Arroz and Arroz Doce.

By the end of 1974, after ten years of fighting by the freedom fighters under FRELIMO who wanted independence from the rule of Portugal, Mozambique descended into the beginnings of a civil war. There was shootings and killings on the streets of the capital and all alleged sympathisers of the old regime were not welcome so once again, Rosa and Angelo, aged 23 and 25 respectively, had to flee.

A well-connected friend advised them to make their escape in the dead of night, Angelo shielding the children from the dead bodies strewn in the streets.  A double agent of the Portuguese government was hired to drive them as close to the border with South Africa as possible and Angelo’s work colleague dressed as a nurse to carry favour with the FRELIMO soldiers should they encounter them. The vehicle was stopped several times and thankfully the driver was well connected and used FRELIMO hand gestures as code to get them through the various check points until they reached a point where it was no longer safe to drive. The rest of the journey would have to be on foot. With nothing but the clothes on their backs, they crossed the final distance, surrounded by the smell of burning and destruction. Rather than surrender their possessions, many fleeing refugees simply set their homes and properties alight. Rosa recalls how in the still of the night, both her children under the age of three, sensing the danger, did not utter a word and after walking kilometres they arrived at the border with South Africa.

Once they were at the border post, they were picked up across the barbed wire fencing by South African border control and taken to the Komatipoort refugee camp. Most of the refugees fleeing the border were of Portuguese decent and this immediately posed a problem for Rosa and the family upon entering South Africa and its apartheid regime. How could a black African/Indian family be housed with white Portuguese people? The family needed to be transferred to a mixed camp in Cullinan but how would they be transported as the bus was ‘Whites Only’? The authorities’ solution was to stick them in a prisoner van for the five-hour road trip. Rosa with sadness, vividly remembers, that they had been without food and water for almost a day, and how the policemen stopped for a break and ordered ice cream for themselves. She recalls with anger, how the two officers ate their ice creams whilst her two children watched in hunger.

At the Cullinan refugee camp. Angelo’s linguistic skills of English and Portuguese were immediately recognised and he became a valuable asset for the management team of the camp.

They spent six months in the camp and Rosa very quickly assumed kitchen and cooking duties, learning how to feed the entire camp with very few resources. With his knowledge of English and Portuguese, Angelo was given a job in charge of a small Mozambican crew to dig and lay a road deep in the heart of Zululand, near Ulundi.

They were housed in a small caravan and Rosa would feed the workers from her small kitchen relying exclusively on local produce. She learnt to cook a host of Zulu food which had similarities with Tanzanian cuisine with a reliance on pap (ughali in East Africa), beans and meat.

Angelo, through his experiences of mining Tanzanite, coupled with his Geology diploma acquired in Mozambique and his knowledge of various languages (English, Swahili, Portuguese, Gujurati, Concanni), finally got a job with Anglo American, a major global player in the mining industry. This resulted in many years of travelling extensively throughout South Africa, Namibia and Botswana prospecting for uranium. The family of four lived for a lengthy time in the Kalahari Desert in a convoy of caravans and Rosa extended her knowledge and expertise of cooking and baking in challenging conditions within hostile environments. 

Rosa would use ant hills as ovens to grill fish and bake bread. It was about using what nature provided and making it work.

During this period, the team would set up camp for months in an area whilst the job of prospecting and mapping took place. At varying times, they would be joined by geologists from all over the world and it was here, for instance, that Rosa first learnt how to cook Italian food from a visiting Italian geologist.

Raising the children in this simple existence was a real life experience and an unique playground for them. Patricia and Manuel grew up with mongooses and ostriches as pets, learnt their acrobatic skills rolling down the sand dunes of Namibia and learnt to swim in crocodile infested lakes.  However, upon Patricia turning six years old, Angelo and Rosa realised that they needed to settle down and send their children to school. Angelo continued to travel around Southern Africa but the family based itself in Cape Town, a beautiful colonial city filled with infusions from Europe, India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and the Indonesian Archipelago.

It was an eye opener for Rosa in terms of culinary diversity and for the first time having access to a wide variety of baking ingredients. She learnt to make English scones and jam tarts, fruit cakes and trifles and Dutch rusks and biscuits.

They lived a peaceful, very social and fruitful existence, but with the backdrop of apartheid looming tall. The social and economic restrictions on their lives impacted them heavily and their fear for their children’s future life made them consider a new move.

In 1979, fearing that South Africa would become more unstable, they decided to join Angelo’s siblings in Denmark, where they had been granted asylum.

The next ten years in Copenhagen, Denmark were magical for the family. The children grew up in a society that valued everyone equally, and Rosa was finally able to officially recognise her love for baking and enrolled in a three-year internship programme to become a Konditor (Danish pâtissier). 

She was incredibly fortunate to work for one of Denmark’s leading Konditors, Jorgen Sygaard Jensen, who owned the Kransekage Huset in a very fashionable part of Copenhagen. She excelled throughout her training and after completing her diploma, went to work for the Sheraton Hotel and the SAS Royal Hotel. 

Rosa also became involved in exciting projects such as assisting in the design of a new menu for the grand opening of the Sheraton Café in Istanbul, Turkey. She taught the chefs how to make Danish pastries and in return was introduced to the fabulous and very traditional techniques of Middle Eastern baking including Baclava, Helva, Pistachio cakes, Fırın Sütlaç (Turkish baked rice pudding).

During her time at The Royal Hotel Copenhagen, she was fortunate to make cakes for Danish Royalty, Petit Fours for Queen Margrethe and the Crown Princess’ 18th Birthday celebrations.

In 1989, with both children finishing their studies in London, England, Rosa and Angelo decided to join them and start a new adventure.

Rosa missed baking so much she decided to try to start up a small bakery wholesale operation.  Finances at this point were extremely tight as the company Angelo was working for was going out of business so they needed to accelerate the plan and make the new baking venture a success.

Rosa decided to contact London’s leading luxury department stores and first approached Harrods, then Selfridges, followed by Fortnum and Mason and Harvey Nichols. They were all extremely receptive and before long, she was a daily supplier of her freshly baked handmade Danish pastries to all the major upmarket food halls in London.

On a shoe-string budget, they converted the garage of their house into a bakery and withheld two months mortgage payments so they could fund the purchase of a second-hand oven, a rolling pin and a second-hand car. Provers were an expensive item but a critical component in the production of pastries, so Angelo decided to create his own, utilising a kettle and a hair dryer to create humidity and heat in a chamber. This was the start of their business. Angelo, at this time, was without a job so decided to help Rosa build the new business, that over the next amazing few years continued to grow. Their son Manuel, whilst still at school, managed pricing, billing and all financial matters. 

Rosa began to also work with Nick Jones of now Soho House supplying him with a French range of cakes for Café Boheme. Excitedly, they could now just about afford to move into rented industrial premises.

They found a 50sq metre industrial unit in Shoreditch, East London, which was not fashionable at the time. Unfortunately, finances were still very tight and with the UK entering into a recession, mortgage payments were rising and for several months, they defaulted on their payments. Hardship does sometimes bring opportunities and on hearing that a Scandinavian catering company was in financial difficulties, an offer was made to purchase the business with some funds loaned from the family. The aim of this acquisition was to mainly share the overhead costs as the bakery would operate at night and the catering division during the day and therefore, become a 24 hours operation. The Danish Catering company specialised in Smorrebrod, supplying the Danish Embassy and Danish Club in London, which tied in well with our Danish bakery.

In the ensuing years, the business cemented itself as a high-quality patisserie partner and Rosa supplied and worked technically alongside chef Anton Mosimann, developing recipes for his Belgravia private dining club, as well as, developing a range of tea cakes for Le Meridien Hotel Piccadilly. Rosa started to vastly expand her baking experience moving away from traditional Danish baking and acquiring new knowledge from some of London’s top chefs. Her range of pastries and tea cakes were supplied to many London hotels including the Sydney House Hotel, Browns Hotel, Firmdale Boutique Hotels, the Waldorf Hotel, the Langham Hilton to name a few.

Rosa also created a new range of exotic fruit muffins and scones for Jamaica Blue coffee shop in London, incorporating the famous Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee, as one of its main ingredients.

In 1995, after completing his University degree in Economics, Rosa’s son Manuel, officially joined the business which was going through a growth boom in the mid-1990s.

During this strong growth period, Rosa was introduced to a dynamic couple - Scott and Ally Svenson. They had brought the novel concept of coffee bars to the UK and had opened Seattle Coffee Company which Rosa began to supply with her pastries. Within 2 years, they had grown to almost 70 outlets and at this juncture, the company was sold to Starbucks and a fundamental change in ethos occurred. Rosa recalls someone from Head Office being sent down to the bakery with a ruler to measure the bend on a croissant for tolerance!  

Largely due to the growth in the coffee shop chain phenomena, Rosa worked with start-ups including Seattle Coffee Company, Caffe Nero, Starbucks, Aroma, Coffee Republic who grew to become huge financial businesses. However, by the late 1990's, the market had begun to change. The notion of mass production and frozen bake off was introduced into the UK and the coffee chain market lapped it up.  No-one wanted to pay a higher price for a non-uniform, handmade product.

One of Rosa's customers was a Danish/ American coffee shop owner, Mark Pettersen, who was located right behind Harrods in Knightsbridge. Together with Mark, they were responsible for supplying the majority of Danish and American baked goods intake for both Seattle Coffee Company and Coffee Republic. Both the companies worked together, sharing ideas, recipes and the distribution chain.

Rosa quickly embraced American baking. It reminded her so much of her early days in Africa where good traditional cakes did not always require a wealth of baking expertise and knowledge could be shared with anyone who had an interest. She found it far less complex and intricate than European baking and felt she could marry the two styles by reducing sugar to create balance. 

In 2001, Mark left the UK to open a new store in Tokyo, Japan and Rosa took over the running of the UK operations of Beverly Hills Bakery, incorporating it with her own business. Manuel, Rosa and Angelo soon realised that they were too dependent on wholesale customers who showed very little loyalty and instead decided to shift the focus onto the retail trade, and in particular, use the internet as the forum to drive growth. The company’s sales exploded with the internet boom of the early 2000s and further growth was increased by adding to their product range and expanding their delivery service to worldwide.

Beverly Hills Bakery delivers handmade, daily freshly baked gifts across the world. It is a tasty alternative to flowers: a gift basket, gift tin or gift box filled with mini muffins, cookies, brownies, pastries, cupcakes, cakes & pies, perfect for many different occasions including, Birthdays, Baby Births, Anniversaries, Christmas, Valentines, Halloween, Housewarming etc.

 

The company is now a well-established, high quality London brand. Rosa has maintained her focus on ensuring exceptional quality in her products and has not deviated from all her goodies being handmade, daily freshly baked to her own secret recipes with no premixes or false additives and preservatives. 

Beverly Hills Bakery (BHB) has delivered gifts to all the UK prime ministers of the last 20 years, including most recently a new baby basket to current UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his partner. It has also been a pleasure to provide gifts for the Royal Family and Royal Births, as well as to music, film, TV and sports stars, not forgetting that we helped provide much needed energy bursts to the Prince’s Trust “Party in the Park”, Wimbledon, Capital Radio Summertime Ball, West End Shows and exhibitions at the O2. 

BHB are pleased to contribute to many charities and fundraisers throughout the UK and also support Food banks. Our products are delivered throughout Europe, Asia and North America to more far away destinations such as Japan, China, Nigeria, Bahamas and the Caribbean Islands. 

Rosa and Manuel are now joined in the business by Rosa’s daughter, Patricia. Rosa’s husband, Angelo, such a driving force throughout the years, unfortunately succumbed to liver cancer in 2013. His contribution immeasurable, his enthusiasm and courage, unparallel.

The family continues to be completely involved in the business. Rosa still goes to work every day and is an integral part of the production team. She manages all the training of new staff, develops new products and recipes, and remains in charge of quality control. This is not surprising, after all, Beverly Hills Bakery is her baby…an accomplishment she is incredibly proud of and a legacy she leaves to her children, grandchildren and future generations. 

For further information, please contact Lisa Segre on 0044 (207) 586 0070 or segred...@gmail.com

www.beverlyhillsbakery.com

facebook.com/BeverlyHillsBakery

instagram.com/beverlyhillsbakery

T: 0044 (0)20 7586 0070

[Selma Carvalho]

Angelo de Souza passed away some years ago. Before he passed away, I had the pleasure of recording his and his father's story for over an hour and it is archived at the British Library London for those interested. 

There were also photos of his family which he had donated to the Oral Histories project, which are in my personal archives. Sometimes, I really do fear that the wealth of material I have will vanish one day because I don't have a repository. Already, I have managed to lose a two hour recorded interview with Emma Gama Pinto, and several hours of recorded interviews with Edila Gaitonde.

All best wishes,

selma

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[Frederick Noronha]

Placing material in private, closed or non-public archives is a nice way to ensure their road to obscurity, or even vanishing comlpetly over time, because everyone simply forgets where they exist. For the rest of us, who believe in Google web bots, the same could happen as well, but the chances are significantly less. FN

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[Jeanne Hromnik]

Thanks, Selma. This is invaluable. Not only in terms of the story itself but the preservation of the story.

I think Zarina will be interested in both aspects. I'll ask her.

Would you be interested in writing something for AwaaZ along these lines?

Xxj

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[sandra lobo]

Dear Selma it is absolutely necessary to work towards creating a repository. We must speak about that. Best wishes. Sandra 

Sandra Ataíde Lobo

 

CHAM – Centro de Humanidades, FCSH/NOVA-UAC

https://giepcip.wordpress.com/

tmn. ++351 930690459

---

De: 'Selma Carvalho' via The Goa Book Club <goa-bo...@googlegroups.com>
Enviado: 15 de abril de 2022 16:19
Para: goa-bo...@googlegroups.com <goa-bo...@googlegroups.com>
Assunto: Re: [GOABOOKCLUB] African Goan story of the family of Angelo De Souza, son of Manuel de Souza, discoverer of Tanzanite.

 

To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/goa-book-club/1526309072.278670.1650035950013%40mail.yahoo.com.

[Frederick Noronha]

Sandra and all: The repositories already exist. Why not just agree to share via them? FN

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ᐧ

[Jeanne Hromnik]

Frederick

Do you mean repositories like hcommons.org? I'm afraid I'm woefully ignorant, but would like to deposit some of my writing, published and unpublished, in some such repository, as a unit, if possible, at some stage. Is the cloud intended as such?

Would archival items such as those relating to Manuel de Souza's family find a safe home and easy identification and access for researchers in such repositories?

Thanks

Jeanne

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[Frederick Noronha]

There are many. My favourites:

* archive.org

* Wikimedia Commons.

See also lists like: https://oedb.org/ilibrarian/250-plus-killer-digital-libraries-and-archives/

FN

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[sandra lobo]

Dear Fred,

I fully understand what you mean but building a coherent archive, even in one of those repositories, does not stop the need for curation and skills to do so. There are also other issues to consider namely due authorization from the persons or families to which these materials relate with.

With warmest wishes,

Sandra

Sandra Ataíde Lobo

 

CHAM – Centro de Humanidades, FCSH/NOVA-UAC

https://giepcip.wordpress.com/

tmn. ++351 930690459

---

De: goa-bo...@googlegroups.com <goa-bo...@googlegroups.com> em nome de Frederick Noronha <frederic...@gmail.com>
Enviado: 21 de abril de 2022 00:08
Para: goa-bo...@googlegroups.com <goa-bo...@googlegroups.com>
Assunto: Re: Responder: [GOABOOKCLUB] African Goan story of the family of Angelo De Souza, son of Manuel de Souza, discoverer of Tanzanite.

 

To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/goa-book-club/CAMCR53L7ML1y52RhhxJfdWGpFtfVVwFCiqGjH4Fw4PwVUGo-nw%40mail.gmail.com.

[Frederick Noronha]

That's true.

But, at the end of the day, we can adopt either a very formal or a non-formal approach.

What works is best.

Crowdsourcing and non-profit initiatives work well for me.

archive.org and its vision of documenting things online is about the most amazing!

What matters is how effectively the sharing is, rather than the format or the structure of the archive, I'd think.  FN

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On Thu, 21 Apr 2022 at 16:20, sandra lobo <sandr...@netcabo.pt> wrote:

Dear Fred,

I fully understand what you mean but building a coherent archive, even in one of those repositories, does not stop the need for curation and skills to do so. There are also other issues to consider namely due authorization from the persons or families to which these materials relate with.

With warmest wishes,

Sandra 

ᐧ

[Selma Carvalho]

Thank you, Sandra, that is exactly what I wanted to say. Safeguarding issues are paramount when creating archives. 

Warm wishes,

Selma

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[Frederick Noronha]

Yeah. In Goa, material from the libraries and archives, including those which have been scanned, have been "safeguarded" so well, that virtually nobody can access the same. FN

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[Cliff Pereira]

Dear Fred and Sandra.

So glad you raised the point of curation skills. This is one area that is often forgotten. As a curator and a researcher adhering to the appropriate legal, moral and physical curatorial practices is most important.

Regards

Cliff

---

From: goa-bo...@googlegroups.com <goa-bo...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of sandra lobo <sandr...@netcabo.pt>
Sent: April 21, 2022 3:34 PM
To: goa-bo...@googlegroups.com <goa-bo...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: Responder: [GOABOOKCLUB] African Goan story of the family of Angelo De Souza, son of Manuel de Souza, discoverer of Tanzanite.

 

To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/goa-book-club/AS8PR10MB629471178DD35D88988D608CA5F49%40AS8PR10MB6294.EURPRD10.PROD.OUTLOOK.COM.

[sandra lobo]

Dear Fred,

We are speaking about two very different realities but with several features in common. One is of institutions that guard collections of published and/or unpublished material who should use the technologies nowadays available to make it accessible to the public, preferably on free access basis. For that to happen, they need to have strong public/governmental support to turn such projects feasible. That is, they need to be funded and there needs to be a clear political culture regarding such policies. Most of such institutions opt to make the collections accessible in their repositories or/and others in which they participate. As these things demand huge efforts, they need to establish priorities. This is very important to these institutions, primordially for two reasons: one to measure and demonstrated near the funding agencies the beneficial impact of such policies; the other to mirror their collections. In any case, these same institutions must obey to copyrights and other rules, namely ethical, that are established by law.

The other situation is that of sources gathered by researcher individually or in group within one or more projects. Here the ethical issues become even more present as most times relations and trust are established in non-written basis. The interest of having these sources gathered and organized is returning their coherence and creating mechanisms of dedicated research thus allowing further exploration. They too must think about the sustainability of such ventures. They may opt to create their own repositories or to participate in others, be them institutional or not, but the problem of curation, ethical procedures and funding rests the same.

I find archive.org a marvellous repository and am happy to notice that there are increasingly more individuals and institutions willing to contribute to it. A situation that doesn't stop them of diversifying forms of access. But it is a repository interesting if one is looking for precise materials, not if he is looking for themes/fields of studies approached coherently. From that point of view the wikies are very interesting but in most cases they are not repositories but treated information that point to other repositories. Lets hope that both remain free access and not turn into a business at the cost of the trust deposited both by institutions and individuals. We have seen that happen.

Regarding the situation in Goa, my believe is that what is needed is that Goans pressure the political power to take a stand and invest in creating the conditions for good practices. Such policies have much to do with democratic culture and financial capacity. They also have to do with overcoming the institutional fears that with such step they may stop having a presential public. Public libraries and archives that are very demanded find it a relief to be less pressured by presential demand and know that counting of virtual visitors is good enough to evidence the positive impact of investing in having their materials accessible in good repositories.

 Warmest wishes,

Sandra

Sandra Ataíde Lobo

 

CHAM – Centro de Humanidades, FCSH/NOVA-UAC

https://giepcip.wordpress.com/

tmn. ++351 930690459

De: goa-bo...@googlegroups.com <goa-bo...@googlegroups.com> em nome de Frederick Noronha <frederic...@gmail.com>

Enviado: 21 de abril de 2022 20:26

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[Eugene Correia]

HI all,

I could not access the Goa University library, as I wanted to know if I can read online the bookm Goa Wins Freedom, by Sheikh Ali, but access denied as I wasn't an alumni of Goa University. The book is out of print. I wish I could get a copy. 

Eugene

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