I happen to meet Justiniano da Costa, (quite a formidable footballer in his younger days), on a visit to my brother in law. As we get talking about football, he reminisces “The match began with Guirdolim as obvious underdogs against Salgaoncar SC. Our team included a quick footed Kenya Goan, home on holidays. Our strategy was to kick the ball up-field and rely on the newcomer to outpace the Salgaoncar defenders, which he did with ease, scoring twice in ten minutes. Stunned, Salgaoncar reorganised themselves, bottled up the speedster and went on to win 6-2”.
A few years previously, I was talking with late Edmundo Cardozo a retired school teacher from Nairobi who narrates: “It was in the year 1962 that Kenya won its first gold medal at the Commonwealth Games in Perth when its athlete emerged tops in the 100 and 220 yards race. He was given a rousing welcome on his return. But it was for the first time that all Goans and in particular the Goan Institute, acknowledged the hero as our own. Goans even in East Africa carried their prejudices and membership of the Goan Institute was restricted to the elite. The other Goans who were mostly tailors, were looked down upon and had to form their own association ‘The Goan Tailors Society’”.
It was Seraphino Antao (whose father was not eligible for membership of Goan Institute) who blazed the track and went on to become gold medal winning hero of Kenya. He was also the first person to be honoured by the Kenya Athletic Association at its 50th anniversary celebrations in 2003. And it was he, who stunned Salgaocar, with those two early strikes. Seraphino died in England September 2011.
If it is athletics in Kenya, it is the national dress in Uganda, as a report in The Daily Monitor shows:
Anton Gloria Gomes came to Uganda in 1905 and started a tailoring business in the corner of a store in Mengo. In 1908, his brother Caetano Milagres joined him and the two brothers opened a shop under the sign-board AG Gomes & Brother.
The gomesi is the de-facto national dress of women in Uganda. All that was known of its origin was that it was created between 1905 and 1915 by a man called Gomes.
The story starts at the birth of Gayaza High School in 1905. The Headmistress, Miss Alfreda Allen, asked AG Gomes to design a uniform for her girls. Gayaza had first used a suuka made of bark-cloth as the school dress. Ms Allen asked AG to make a suuka of cotton as it would be more durable. However, the suuka unravelled during manual work, so AG added a yoke. That was the prototype gomesi. Around 1914, the Kabaka’s future wife, Irene Drusilla Namaganda, came to AG Gomes & Brother Company to stitch her wedding dress.
Kabaka Chwa’s coronation took place in 1914 and hence it is this year that should be marked as the birth-year of the modern gomesi. It incorporates aspects of Victorian/Edwardian dresses (the puffed sleeves) and the sari from Gomes’ homeland, Goa. The name gomesi is obviously associated with the name of its designer.”
Uganda issued a postage stamp to celebrate the Gomesi in 1967. Antonio died in Uganda 1928, Caetano in Canada 1981, where their families now live.
Now, let us sail down Lake Victoria for the exploits of another Goan.
The New York Times, reports: “When Tiffany & Company introduced Tanzanite in 1968, the company was sure the semi precious stone would be successful. (Tanzanite is the first transparent deep blue gemstone to be discovered in more than two thousand years.) … Tanzanite’s allure lies in its colours, including green, red, purple and blue, “depending on which angle who look at it” said Meldyn Kairtley Tiffany’s, Chief Gemologist”.
But who discovered Tanzanite? Well, a Goan tailor, after all. From news reports, the following can be gathered about the find: Born in the isle of Sao Jacinto, Goa in 1913, Manuel de Souza moved to Tanganika at the age of 20, where he qualified as a master tailor. Adventurous by nature, his trade suffered as he began his life as a prospector.
Around the Easter weekend of 1967, what he describes as ‘itchy feet’ drove him to hire a pickup truck to proceed to the highlands of Arusha. Destiny intervened as the vehicle broke down at Merelani, so he hired four Masai tribesmen as his porters and set off to explore. On July 7, he came across a transparent blue stone, which he first believed to be a sapphire but turned out different. Souza took the stone back to Arusha with him where he tried to identify it by referring to his personal volume on mineralogy. As he mistook his find to be olivine the same was duly registered in his name on July 25, 1967 as an olivine claim.
Finally the gems were sent to the Gemological Institute of America which accurately identified the stone as zoisite. The gem has been named tanzanite after the country of its origin, by Tiffany. The Souza family continued to operate their tanzanite claim till the mines were nationalised in 1971.
Manuel died in Tanzania following an automobile accident, two years after the discovery. His descendants are now scattered over Tanzania, Denmark, Malta and the UK.
Thus, the Goan tailor has given Kenya its first athletic gold, Uganda its national dress and the world, a glittering gem. Today, descendants of these tailors are found the world over, well qualified, well settled. And honored members of every Goan Institute!
(Radharao F.Gracias is a senior Trial Court Advocate, a former Independent MLA and a political activist)
