ROOTS: TRACKING DOWN LONG-LOST FAMILY IN AFRICA AND EUROPE Braz Menezes matatabo...@gmail.com
A recent poster announcing the 'Exhibition of the Histories of British Goans Project', which opens in London at the Nehru Centre, London, on June 5, 2013, includes, among other images, the cover of a booklet entitled 'Goans-Abroad and in British Lands (A Study), Mombasa-Kenya 1944', authored by D.J. Soares-Rebelo, B.A. (Hons). I was about 14 years old, when I first saw a photograph Domingos Jose Soares Rebelo; but it took half a century to finally meet in him person. It was 1953, my parents had just returned to Kenya from Mozambique. My older sister Linda and I had been left behind, because we could not miss school. We were poring over black-and-white photos of their trip. I picked up one that showed two strangers flanking Mum and Dad, with my three younger siblings and two other children between them. "Who's this?" I asked, pointing to a handsome man with sparkling eyes, staring back at me. He looked to be in his mid 30s, sturdily built, with a dark crop of hair, a distinctive goatee beard and well-groomed moustache. "That's Primo Soares Rebelo," Dad replied, and that's Rosalina Filomena, his wife." Linda leaned forward. "She's so beautiful." "Intelligent and graceful as well," Dad added. "I wish you both could have met her." "Isn't this Primo you said was special?" I asked. "Special contact," Dad corrected me. Domingos Jose Soares Rebelo, poet, economist and writer, was born in Margao in 1916, to lawyer and writer Joaquim Filipe Neri Soares Rebelo and Adilia Eufregina Ernestina Clotilde Gomes. After completing primary school in Margao, he continued his studies at the Seminary of Rachol. From there he was admitted to St. Xavier's College, Bombay, where he won a number of awards and scholarships standing First Class First in P.E. Final Examinations before graduating with a B.A. (Hons.) in English. On his twentyfifth birthday, he married Rosalina Filomena da Cunha. World War II was raging in Europe, and although Portugal stayed neutral and traded with both the Axis and the Allies, life was hard in Goa. Like many of his fellow Goans, Soares Rebelo left to seek a better life in the fabled (in Goa at least) job-heaven of British East Africa. In Mombasa, he landed a teaching job preparing students for the Senior Cambridge Examination Certificate. Because of the low salaries, and to fully absorb his intellectual energy, he taught Portuguese to British Navy and Army personnel, and was also offered a job, censoring Portuguese and Konkani mail. I recently asked Primo about this. "I was appointed Reader in Portuguese and Konkani at the Deputy Censor's Office, Mombasa, committed with the task of censoring all books, official and public from Mozambique to Goa and the Far East, in these two languages, as well as letters in Portuguese and Konkani from British East African countries and from Mozambique to Goa, India and elsewhere. It was an Intelligence Service maintained during the World War II period. I had contact with high British Officers of the Armed Forces, including a large Camp of Army Forces around my home. The main purpose was to keep the Personnel quite busy learning Portuguese and French. On one occasion, even an Arab-speaking Individual approached me for the purpose with the full backing of the British Armed Forces." "Why censor letters from Goa?" I asked. "In Goa, there were many people who supported the Germans against the Allied Forces; at the time four merchant ships (three German and one Italian) were stationed off Mormugao Harbour and the British were worried about spies favoring the Axis Forces. It was a Japanese submarine which sent a torpedo that sank the SS Tilawa on 23rd of November 1942, killing hundreds of peoples including Goan families coming back to East Africa. The vessel was carrying lots of gold from India and the Far East to UK. We discovered the pro-German tip about the gold cargo originated from a highly-placed Goan officer friendly to Germany, where he was educated." In October 1945, Soares-Rebelo proceeded to Lisbon to undertake a teaching diploma, but left soon after for Mozambique, where he landed a job immediately as economist at the US consular offices in Lourenço Marques. His work kept him very busy, and saw him in addition, contributing to various journals and publications, on issues of trade, socio-economic trends, and geopolitics. His articles were published in East and South Africa, the USA and Europe. In the 1950s postal services between Mozambique and British East Africa became erratic, and the emergence of he nationalist freedom struggles in Mozambique and Angola, caused Portugal to cut off links with the already independent African nations like Kenya. There was no direct mail service. My father, Pedro Francisco was frantic. He had not met his only surviving brother, Nicolau Tolentino, since they parted on the docks in Mormugao in 1920, when Uncle 'Nico; had set sail for Mozambique. Dad had landed in Kenya in 1928. The trip in 1953 was their first and only reunion. Their letters were their only contact with each other. In the first year of the mail stoppage, Dad was desperate... until Christmas. A letter arrived in Nairobi delivered by courtesy of the U S Consulate Office in Nairobi. Primo Soares Rebelo had made it happen, through a favour of one of his American colleagues. For the next 12 years, until the passing away of Uncle Nico, he never forgot to help transmit those Christmas letters for his cousins. Soares Rebelo is related to us by way of his paternal grandfather, advocate Caetano do Rosario Soares and my paternal grandmother, Maria Prudencia Soares. By the 70s, the post-Salazar government in Lisbon was clinging by its fingernails to an unsustainable Empire in Africa. Mozambique collapsed in chaos. Unlike the British in Kenya, who had cleverly handed over the reins of power to an independent nation, Portugal bungled it when the colonials adopted a 'scorched-earth' policy. Nothing of value would be left behind for the Africans who would take over. Goans, who inadvertently formed a sizable chunk of the civil service, professional and technical services, fled with their European co-residents to relative chaos in Portugal -- a country that was totally unprepared materially to receive them. My family in Kenya lost contact with my uncle's family, dispersed across Portugal. We also lost contact with Soares Rebelo, who had stayed behind to complete his contract with his employers. His colleague had left the Consulate and had returned to the USA. Soares Rebelo moved to Portugal in 1978, and subsequently, in 1980, resettled in the historic city of Alcobaça, in the Central region of Portugal, famous for its Monastery. I had promised Dad, on his deathbed in 1975, that I would search out and re-establish contact with Uncle Nico's family. Travel to Portugal with a Kenya passport was restricted. However, 27 years later in 2002, travelling on a UN passport I made my first attempt. On that trip and on subsequent journeys, I located each cousin, from Nico's family, but no contact with Soares Rebelo. Finally in 2008, I was taken by my 'newly-re-united cousin' (another Bras Meneses) to meet him. You can imagine the emotion surging through my veins; I had found my needle in a haystack. Though his beloved Rosalina Filomena had passed away in 2007, I found a warm, feisty man, in good health, albeit slightly aged, surrounded by a few friends and lovingly cared for by his daughter, Mena, a medical doctor. This dynamic man at 90 was attempting to assemble and archive, in a systematic manner, all the writings of his late father; his own books and other documents; and a host of other projects. He would set aside these at the Library. He listed a number of projects he still had to complete and others in his mind, to start. When I returned to Portugal in 2010, much of the archival work was complete, and he had just embarked on a Dicionario of Goanidade -- Goans at home and abroad around the Globe. (I assumed it was to update his 1944 paper.) "That sounds like a very ambitious project," I said. "I'll do it," he said, displaying his feisty resolve. "I have been using a typewriter and hand scripting," he said, his sharp eyes focused on mine. "But Mena says I should buy a computer. I think I may be too old. 'You can't teach an old dog new tricks' is an English saying, no?" "You will always be young," I said. He was already halfway through his Dicionario de Goanidade at that point. "I must finish all my projects before my 100th birthday," he said. A month later, I received my first email message from Soares Rebelo. Two weeks later Skype connected us. He has proved to be more than our Special Contact -- our Superman will turn a hundred on December 1, 2016. -- Braz Menezes is the author of two historical novels about Goans in East Africa, set in mid-20th century, *Just Matata -- Sin, Saints and Settlers*, and *More Matata -- Love after the Mau Mau*, available at Broadway, Goa and amazon.com (also as an ebook on Kindle and Kobobooks http://bit.ly/JustMatata See also *Bwana Karani* by Mervyn Maciel mervynels.watuwasha...@gmail.com and *Feasts, Feni and Firecrackers* by Mel D'Souza Copies or reprints of Domingos Jose Soares Rebelo's books and articles and bibliography, could be got from the Director of Alcobaça Municipal Library at bibliot...@cm-alcobaca.pt Goanet Reader is compiled and edited by Frederick Noronha.