Amemoir can be a tricky little book to write. Who, after all, would care about an anonymous life? Its very ordinariness would make it insignificant. Yet, every year, hundreds of memoirs are published, so many in fact, that mainstream publishers, unless terribly noteworthy, refuse to publish
them, thus relegating them to the heap of self-publishing. But even memoirs, not quite weighty, can have their place in literary and
historical writing. They are that tiny microcosm of humanity which intimately informs of larger issues. In these small lives, hidden
beneath the minutiae of where one schooled or was nursed during an illness, is a wealth of information about cultures, societies, the
peccadilloes of everyday people, and the events that shape them.
This summer, London will see the release
of Mervyn Maciel’s ‘From Mtoto to Mzee’, the
Swahili loosely translated meaning ‘from
young boy to respected elder’. Maciel is no
stranger to the memoir genre; his earlier
book, ‘Bwana Karani’, recalled his work experiences
in East Africa as district clerk with
the British Civil Service, and has over the
years proved to be invaluable both to the
general reader with an interest in the continent
and to academic researchers.
The new release is a collaborative effort
between Maciel and the illustrator Mel
d’Souza of Canada. Drawing on his own familiarity
with the East African milieu, Mel
who grew up in Tanzania, has edited and produced
this slim volume of Maciel’s writings.
Although Maciel was born in Nairobi, Kenya
in 1929, as a young lad he schooled at the
Jesuit-run St. Paul’s High School in Belgaum,
and would return to Kenya in his teens following
the untimely death of his father.
There, he would spend almost a lifetime, until
the Africanisation of his job brought him
to Britain.
Any writing on East Africa is of immense
interest for it is in East Africa that the Goan
first turned into an explorer and budding anthropologist
with a curious interest in unfamiliar
people. It comes as no surprise that
when that flamboyant British explorer Sir
Richard Burton set out in 1857 with
Captain Hanning Speke to discover
the source of the Nile in Africa, he
had with him two Goan cooks,
Valentino Rodrigues and Caetano
Andrade who proved to be extremely
valuable and hardy. Not only
did Valentino often assume a leadership
role during the expedition having
picked up in no time a smattering of Swahili,
but also learnt to use the chronometer and
thermometer.
Mervyn Maciel’s knowledge of Africa is almost
encyclopaedic and his own anthropological
lens is obvious throughout the book,
as in this paragraph: ‘Very much on the same
pattern as Lodwar, and because our lives
lacked the variety of a safari, the Goan staff
was encouraged to go out into the interior
of the district to relax. We sometimes spent
times picnicking at Lake Paradise, home to
herds of elephant and
buffalo, and also further
afield to Loiyangalani
on the
lakeshore where we
had to cross the
Chalbi desert. I enjoyed
these trips immensely
as it gave me
an opportunity to explore
the outdoors,
meet local chiefs and
tribesmen and also
engage in some sandgrouse
shooting at the
oasis of North Horr.
The El Molo tribe live
along the shores of
the lake at Loiyangalani
and are reputed to be very poor, living
on the lake’s Nile perch and tilapia, and government
handouts.’
Sadly the instrumental role the Goan man
played in the development of Africa has
blurred with time, and today he is remembered
largely as the docile, trusting, dependable
and every-obliging workhorse of the
Colonial Service. More lamentable is the fact
that women in the East African narrative are
almost invisible. It is only from anecdotal
stories that we know they were a formidable
force and a whirlwind of activity: setting up
nurseries in their tiny verandahs which went
on to become renowned schools, taking over
the running of retail stores when their husbands
died prematurely, organising social
events and working closely with parish
priests. Regina Fernandes, for instance, set
up a women’s association in remote, rural
Katesh, Tanzania, and sheltered women from
tribal warfare. Having had some exposure to
western medicine, a crucial role which Goan
women frequently assumed was that of midwife
and first-aid nurse.
One such incident appears in Maciel’s
memoir relating to his wife Elsie: ‘While we
camped at Laisamis, a worried Rendille
mother with an ailing child approached Elsie
and asked if she could help the child who
was running a high temperature. Elsie
promptly gave her an aspirin and thought no
more of it…a surprise visitor to our house
some months before we left Marsabit, was
that Rendille woman who we’d first encountered
when on our honeymoon. She had
brought along her little boy who Elsie had
helped with that “miraculous” aspirin. In a
gesture obviously meant to convey her deep
gratitude for saving her boy’s life, she bowed
low several times to thank Elsie for her kindness.
We were left dumbfounded and humbled,
but happy to see her son looking well
and healthy.’
In this memoir, which is also a photo-essay
containing 176 pictures of Maciel’s life, we
can all delight in a bygone era, but more importantly,
the memoir will weather well and
in years to come become one of the few written
first-hand accounts we have of a Goan
life in East Africa.
