By Selma Carvalho
As the 20th century dawned, the idea of a township at Nairobi, Kenya, had just been birthed. It was a despairing location. Its roads were rutted dirt tracks, its wildlife roamed too close to the railway camps, and its swamps had yet to be drained to make human habitation sustainable. Yet by December, 1906, there arose a splendid stone-built club house, the envy of all of Nairobi. It was, in fact, built by Goans and inaugurated as the Goan Institute.
The Goan club is that identifiable marker wherever a sapling Goan community exists. It is a representation, a microcosm of our larger society, it is home to the peccadilloes of our eccentric characters, a gatekeeper of our inclusions and exclusions, and the fulcrum on which our history pivots. One such body, the Moira Club, recently celebrated its 100th anniversary, and to commemorate the occasion released a brief history of the club by Dempo College professor, Augusto Pinto.
Pinto tells us, the Associaçåo Académica de Moira was inaugurated in 1920, possibly on land claimed from the Communidade. Though the history of its founders is obscured, the two men likely to be its early benefactors were Abdon de Souza, Secretary of the Communidades of Bardez, and Fructuoso de Souza, to whom Abdon was closely related.
Goan Gymkhana Nairobi. c. 1940s. Credit: unknown.
Communal clubs were established to develop the physical, intellectual and moral timbre of its members. Pinto informs us, that the Moira Club had as is founding objectives the organisation of conferences and literary meetings; promoting the reading of books and newspapers; and enhancing physical development through sports and games. This promoting of books used to be an important aspect of all Goan club life wherever they existed. One of the earliest communal bodies to be established in East Africa was the Mombasa ‘Goan Reading Room.’ In 1901, they had no meeting room, but they met at the Mombasa Custom House godowns. What was important, was cultivating the cultured Goan individual, and soon the Goan Reading Room came to ‘possess a very valuable library.’
Pinto has rightly pointed out, that unlike earlier associations such as the gaunkari communidade seeped in patriarchal dominance, the club was a marginally more egalitarian space. For instance, from its inception, the club welcomed women as members. In Mombasa, in 1911, one Goan commentator J. C. D’Mello, remarked that, ‘the presence of ladies was the essential part of a society.’ That speaks profoundly to how the club in the early part of the 20th century became a channel to advance gender equality, education, health care and housing, within the Goan sphere. This is not to say, the club did not have its own strictly enforced prohibitions. It was blatantly anti-working class, ensuring that its members were white-collar workers. The history of Goan society pulsed through its clubs, and through the political leadership of its presidents, who were de facto governors of satellite Goan communities in the diaspora, and who, at times were designated by the Portuguese government to act as vice-consuls in East Africa.
Sundowner at the Goan Gymkhana Nairobi c. 1937. Copyright Mervyn Maciel. Loaned to the Oral Histories of British-Goans Project.
Entirely by co-incidence, the writer Armand Rodrigues also sent me a brief history of the Goan Overseas Association (G.O.A) Toronto, which commemorates 50 years of its existence, this year. It was 100 years ago, that men from Bardez villages travelled to East Africa in migratory waves, and it was 50 years ago that this settlement was displaced after de-colonisation, and they charted new lives for themselves in England, Canada and Australia.
Rodrigues traces the inception of the Toronto association to a hockey team. He writes, ‘word of mouth brought 24 people together for a general meeting, on April 5, 1970. The idea of a club under whose auspices a consolidated Goan hockey team could play, was unanimously endorsed, and morphed into the Goan Overseas Association (Toronto) on April 23, 1970. The rest is history. Before long, membership started escalating rapidly and the club gained momentum in the realm of sports and socials.’
Rodrigues makes an interesting observation about the G.O.A, which is analogous with Goan clubs and associations the world over. He writes, ‘Over the years, like clubs everywhere, membership that peaked some years back, has started to ebb somewhat. Population growth has not translated into a corresponding increase in membership. Societal factors such as fragmentation, diminishing community allegiance, inter-marriages and insularity, in our second generation Goans, are changing our physiognomy, and our clubs are gradually lapsing into a terminal mode.’
The decline of the club as a steadfast Goan institution is keenly felt, particularly amongst the generation who remember it with fondness. But does the club have a future at all? Its role as caretaker has been rendered obsolete. The welfare of the individual is now a matter for the state, and it is the state that new arrivals into the Goan diaspora turn to for help. The club, perhaps, still has a role to play as a cultural custodian, but our understanding of what Goan culture is must extend beyond dances and festivals. We must look back with admiration and awe at what our ancestors had hoped to achieve when they set up reading rooms and libraries and started literary journals and put up theatre productions, all under the auspices of the club, when the Goan individual was expected to be more than just a social animal; rather they were expected to be articulate, well read and respectable. Perhaps we can still save the club by returning to the original objectives of what a club was supposed to achieve.
Selma Carvalho is the editor at JRLJ. She is the author of Baker Butcher Doctor Diplomat: Goan Pioneers of East Africa. She is currently consulting for US production company on a Goa project. Her debut novella Sisterhood of Swans is forthcoming.
Banner image of G.O.A newsletter showing the G.O.A UK club house in Kent purchased in 1983. Some 160 volunteers came forward, mainly over the weekends, to give the association over 10,000 hours of their time to repair the property.
Click here for the GOA Toronto rebuttal to this article. The JRLJ takes feedback seriously and would like to clarify that this article is not directed at GOA Toronto but seeks to elicit a discussion about the Goan Club worldwide.