A Seychelles connection with Goa

[Frederick Noronha]

A Seychelles connection with Goa

Frederick Noronha

Goans have been all over the globe, done all kinds of things, and even written in so many different languages.  Okay,that's a bit of an exaggeration.  Yet, the fact is, there are many few pockets across the globe where you would not find some Goan connection.

Braz Menezes' 'Soul Searching in the Seychelles' (Matata Books, Toronto, 2022, ISBN 978-17-77438-61-6) is a slim, quick-and-easy and yet informative read.  It introduces you intensely to one part of the global that many in Goa might have heard of, but might not have a clear idea about.

This 120-page book had me confused for a while.  Braz Menezes, an ex-Kenya Goan architect now settled in Canada, is known for his works of fiction.  To be specific, the Matata trilogy.

'Just Matata' came out in 2011.  A year later, 'More Matata' emerged.  Then you had 'Beyond the Cape' (which, if one got it right, is the renamed and repackaged version of 'Just Matata').  'Among the Jacaranda' was published in 2018.

Braz writes in a lively and catchy style, though he only took to writing after a long and high-pressure (one guesses) career in architecture and urban planning.  His earlier books focus on Lando, his barely-disguised alter ego.  In the initial book, Lando is a young lad growing up in Kenya, and being sent for his studies at then prominent English-language school at Arpora, Bardez.  (Which he hated, incidentally.)

Reading those, you could think the works were almost autobiographical.  Menezes' writing tends to be filled with detail and a mix that makes for pleasurable reading.  He obviously takes his writing seriously as he did with his designs in concrete.

This book was also well written.  For a few pages, one got lured into thinking it was fiction.  It isn't.  Or is one wrong?

The story is set almost entirely in the Seychelles.  Africa's smallest but richest country and island-nation (an archipelago of 115 islands), this is indeed a scenic, history-filled and interesting place.  It is about 3052 km from Goa, and 1500 km from Mombasa in Kenya. It was uninhabited when the Portuguese first encountered it, centuries ago.

But there's something more that makes it particularly noteworthy from a Goa point of view.  A generation or two ago, many Goans then settled in East Africa, would stop by there during their long ship voyage to Mombasa or to other points of the East Africa coast.

So many of us would have heard stories of the stopover.  Once, in the storehouse of a rented home, we kids came across the oddly shaped something, which mum later explained was a coco-de-mer ("large double coconuts") from the Seychelles.

Menezes has a rather intense encounter with the nation of so many islands.  In Chapter 1, he and his sister Linda are children and encounter stories of the stop-over at the islands.  They also run into students who trace their roots there.  ("Their surnames gave indication to their European ancestry...", p.10)

Menezes writes: "Almost everyone from Goa, Bombay (Mumbai), or Karachi, who arrived at East African or South African ports during the late 19th century or in the 20th century, well into the late sixties, would have likely stopped at the Seychelles." (p.4)

He goes on to remind us of other memories from the world of Goan emigration.  Like, for instance, William Mackinnon and William Mackenzie, who started The Calcutta and Burma Steam Navigation Company in 1856, later to become the British India Steam Navigation Company (BI) in 1862.  At one point, in 1922, it had more than 160 steamships dominating eastern waters.

We encounter other Goans on these pages, like Manuel de Souza, who is credited with finding the precious gemstone (called Tanzanite, in East Africa) in 1967.

With this background set, we next move to the meat of the story.  It is 1976.  The narrator of the story (Menezes) has been in Kenya till then; not without challenges.  "Corruption at a high level seemed to be unstoppable and was now metastasizing across the land." (p.  12) He gets a chance to visit the Seychelles....  and goes.

But this is not a story of mindless travel, or just a holiday.  The writer is with his wife and three young daughters.  While the latter have a pleasant break, make friends and go swimming (with space for the missus to do shopping), a crucial decision is to be arrived at.

Writing in the first person, Menezes tells us that the architect who designed the famous Mahé Beach Hotel, a Graham McCullough, is looking for buyers of his architectural practice in the Seychelles.

There is plot, setting, character, theme, point of view, tone...  and even conflict in this story.  Menezes uses the style of creative non-fiction to make this an interesting and readable story.

You feel you're watching the family from close quarters, if not eavesdropping, as they embark on their travels.  The children's dialogues and reactions seem so real, that you are surprised with the detail.  Except that it is being narrated after almost five decades after the events.  So you can't help wondering if the author indeed kept a very detailed diary, or if one is totally misreading it.

On the one hand, the local hosts of the family are keeping the children entertained and busy.  At the same time, Menezes looks back at his career in Kenya, how things had suddenly changed, and the pressures of having a young family even while having no clear plan in sight.

He writes: "Our lives have been a roller-coaster ride for almost a decade since we returned to Kenya from the UK.  Shortly thereafter, I launched my own practice in 1967 and I wanted to give back something to the country [Kenya].  I would use my architectural and urban planning knowledge to improve African housing." (p 16)

The book contains images from the Seychelles, both recent and going five decades back, plus a great deal of information about the place, its people and its history.  This makes for interesting reading.  Together, an added bonus is the details and family drama thrown in, making you feel like you have a ring-side seat to the unfolding story.

This is a story filled with colour, a phenomenally scenic setting, conflict and uncertainty, interesting dialogue, the death of a luxury hotel, and even a coup.  Plus the political tragedy of a post-colonial country (despite its economic successes).

Without giving too much of the story-line away (we have already), one can suggest reading till the end of the short book to understand why it doesn't end on a 'happily ever after' route.  One could see this as a story of the road-not-taken.

There are also lighter moments and thought-provoking dialogues amidst this serious story.  Menezes gets told, before Seychelles' independence: "Britain has had much experience extricating itself from its former colonies, and somehow converting them into its prime trading partners, as in the case of Kenya."

Some words would trigger memories among those who were once based in East Africa -- dresses made of kanga cotton, white sands, small curio shops, and the like.  The personal profiles give a hint into not just Goan lives, but European and those of mixed marriages too.  Tony Dias from Ontario, in the comments' section (p.113) talks about the "most painful and not so happy memories" of colour bar in East Africa, and "not least, the racial slurs and taunts even within our own communities when one married outside of their heritage."

So, how does the story end?  What is the architect-protagonist's decision?  What is the fate of politics on the island?  How does its famed luxury hotel end up half a century later?

Our parents' generation, those who were young in the middle of the last century, or just after that, went through a roller-coaster in more ways then one.  The de-colonisation process of their times benefited many others; but it upset the apple-cart for the smaller, migration-oriented communities in the globe.  Like the migrant Goans.  They were, in a way, not Midnight's Children (awaiting a new dawn), but the Children of Dusk, seeing a lot of things change, oftentimes for the worse.  Uncertain sunsets.  Menezes' book does a good job of narrating one more little-known aspect of this reality.  Worth reading to understand Goan migration, especially the East Africa-Seychelles' side of it, and more. (The Navhind Times)

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[Jeanne Hromnik]

Frederick, this post to GBC was attached to your original post to GW (to which I responded).

Is it possible for you to adopt a different procedure? If I delete the duplicate post I delete the original, which is on the same thread. My inbox is overflowing and I'm obliged to delete posts that are duplicates and even those that are heavy with images.

Many thanks

Jeanne

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[Braz Menezes]

Dear Frederick (and NAVIND TIMES),

Thank you for writing such an encouraging review of ’Soul Searching in the Seychelles’. I’m doubly grateful as this review has come so quickly after 'Tsavo- The Money Eaters’.

Sadly, as you know, it has become increasingly difficult to get books published at an affordable price, so widespread accessibility is an issue. More seriously, most of our community (in Canada) seems to have given up reading (certainly the younger ones have other preoccupations). 

On a more cheerful note, I was honoured to launch my TSAVO book in Kenya last month, at the invitation of the Board of Registration of Architects and Quantity Surveyors (BORAQS).

I was able to talk to them about a brown tribe that once played a prominent role in Kenya’s history (including Dr. Rosendo Ribeiro, Pio Gama Pinto, Fitz DeSouza, among others). Almost all have sought relocation elsewhere. However the most important message in TSAVO was how corruption has destroyed the hopes and dreams of at least two generations of Kenyans. It was well received. Kenya’s new generation are young, better educated, but wired into a technology. The elephants of the national parks of Tsavo and Amboseli and Samburu, are sadly going to be dwarfed by the biggest element in the room: population growth, poverty and the ever-widening income gap.

Thank you again, and please keep up the great work you are doing.

Braz Menezes