Revisiting a book that offers a new language and a more secure understanding in which long-standing emotional and intellectual issues could be resolved.
This city church was for Goans only 3 years ago
The renaming of Parklands Secondary School to Dr Ribeiro Parklands School in 2015 was to pay homage to an Indian Goan who not only donated the land on which it sits, but also as a salute to his community’s contribution in Kenya.
Goans, unlike other Asians, did not come to Kenya to build the Uganda Railway. Most came as doctors, lawyers, accountants, clerks and businessmen, as Cyprian Fernandes informs us in his 2016 offering, Yesterday in Paradise. He reveals that others came as chefs, tailors, carpenters, mechanics and musicians.
Dr Rosendo Ayres Ribeiro, was the first private medical practitioner in 1899. He is famous for visiting patients atop a zebra, which was more disease resistant than the traditional horse. Dr Ribeiro operated under a tent in the muddy tin shack that was Nairobi where he invented a malaria drug which was patented and sold to an international pharmaceutical.