by Tina Lobo
mervynalobo@yahoo.ca
I was born in the 1920s on the ‘spice’ island of Zanzibar. In the
1930s, my parents sent me to Bombay for my education and every year I went to
Goa for my holidays.
Some of my favourite memories of Goa involve mangoes. I once remember eating about forty small ‘sucking’ mangoes one morning. How could you blame me? The mangoes kept falling in our compound as the wind blew through the trees. When my Aunt saw all the seeds she thought I would get sick, but she got another surprise when I ate a full meal after that. I was twelve years old at the time.
During summer, my cousins and other children in the vaddo would come over in the evenings to play. Sometimes we went to the surrounding hills and ate mangoes, cashews, karwandas, kantas, etc. All these tasted much sweeter because they were free. At times, we would even collect and bring back cashew nuts to roast at home. Nothing tastes better than home-roasted cashew nuts.
In those days, each family would look after their coconut trees by putting manure and salt on the tree roots. This allowed for three or four harvests a year. Sometimes when I arrived in Goa, there would be an entire room filled to the ceiling with coconuts. The coconuts were split open and the flesh was extracted and dried on mats. The copra was then sent to the village mill to extract coconut oil. The residue was fed to the cattle.
During one monsoon, I watched the cultivation of rice in the vast fields around Parra. After the seedlings were transplanted, mud bunds were made, to enclose the water. Small fish were put into the fields to eat the mosquito larvae and insects. These fish grew quite large. As the rice grew, the plants started swaying in the gentle breeze. First there were carpets of green, and later, beautiful carpets of gold, laden with paddy. Those scenes of swaying rice still remain one of my favourite memories.
After the harvest, the paddy was parboiled in big copper vessels. It was then dried over several days on large mats called dalhi. This rice was then pounded in the van, which was a hole in the kitchen floor built for this purpose. This is still the rice that I first look for when I am in Goa.
Firewood was used in the kitchen to cook food. Coconut husk and shells were used to light the fire and the kitchen was always smoky. Daily lunch was invariably fish, which was brought every morning to the house by vendors. Pigs were slaughtered for feast days and the butcher would come over to each house to inquire how many pounds were required. Relatives came over to make san’nas and ‘warais’ for the feast. The pork that was not used for sorpatel and roast was used to make sausages. As kids, we were given the responsibility of looking after the sausages, which were hung on poles to dry. Our job was to drive away the crows who also knew how good the chourisam tasted.
After World War II, my dad, who was the chief engineer on one of the ships belonging to the Sultan of Zanzibar, got permission to make a long visit to Goa. He took us on a ‘match-box’ cart to visit relatives and friends in Anjuna, Sangolda and Siolim. The ‘match-box’ was a painted wooden box on wheels, pulled by two cows. (It had steps at the back, two windows at the sides and a window in the front so that you could speak to the driver.) When the ‘match-box’ hit a rut, you banged your head on the sides of the box. Although this mode of transport was slow and uncomfortable, my dad preferred it as it allowed him to soak in Goa. He also claimed that by conversing with the driver, he caught up with all that had happened in his village while he was away.
Weddings, too, were different then. First, there was the vojem. Each house was sent an invitation, which included a small banana and a bit of bol. The day before the wedding, the bride was given a bath with juice made from grated coconut. The most important dish was rice with samarachi koddi. The food was served on plates made of small leaves, which were woven together. Several courses were served and we had to sit on mats. This meant one had to alternate between sitting cross-legged or with your legs tucked in behind you!
I now live in Canada and travel to Goa every year. I always
visit Parra to see the house and the vaddo where I spent my youth.
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Tina Lobo is a third generation Zanzibari. She studied at Sophia and St. Xavier's colleges at Mumbai where she obtained degrees in economics and teaching. She was the first female committee menber of the Goan Institute, Zanzibar. Tina spent fifty years teaching in Zanzibar and Dar-es-Salaam. She now resides in Toronto and spends her time playing Euchre and Bridge.