The Catholic Goan is more often seen as the office clerk, the teacher, the nurse or if stereotypes are to be taken into account, the ayah, the cook and the butler. But what about his entrepreneurship? This little known fact about him seems to have recessed from our collective memory.

When alcohol was thought to be corrupting the moral fibre of the indigenous population in East Africa and posing a grave threat to Empire itself, Ewart S. Grogan railed, in 1908, that it was not the white sellers responsible for this condition and instead called for the rescinding of licenses granted to numerous Goans who ran liquor shops. Grogan was a notable explorer of the time, the first man to have walked across Africa from Cape Town to Cairo. Later, he settled in Kenya where he became the darling of those white settlers who wished for Kenya to become another racially segregated South Africa. He was a fearful character and as a long-standing member of Kenya's legislative assembly, most vocal about his resentment of non-white populations, particularly Indians. Reportedly his solution to the Mau Mau rebellion was to "catch a 100 of these rascals and hang 25 of them in front of the others…they are just black baboons." In later years though, Grogan mellowed towards Goans and had developed some respect for their managerial capabilities. His huge sisal estates in Taveta, which lies midway between Mombasa and Nairobi, were run by three families all from the Sequeira family tree, who oversaw everything from accounting to odd-jobs.

In any case, Puritanical aspirations to affect the morality of indigenous populations were unenforceable in East Africa. By the mid-century, one of the finest wine stores in Mombasa was that of CPV Rodrigues; a store so deluxe, Goans themselves felt a little intimidated to step inside.

In other parts of East Africa, Goans were likely to be traders if they weren't in the Civil Services. A lady I spoke to, who had spent more than 30 years in Malawi, a small state wedged between Tanzania and Mozambique, recalls that many of the Goans in the rural areas operated general stores and tailoring shops. These were typical family-run shops, with the front-end used for vending the merchandise and the rear of the house occupied as living quarters.

So whatever happened to the Goan posro? By the time the Gulf migration took place, our entrepreneur spirit seems to have been bleached away and sanitized into respectable "empregadoponn". Perhaps the Gulf émigré found it impossible to compete with the Iranians and the Malabaris, coming from Kerala's Malabar coast, who owned most of the small stores in those early days in the Gulf region. Malabaris and Arabs enjoy a long trading history and Richard Burton conjectured that the word "bar" itself is borrowed from the Persian-Arabic word meaning "land of blacks", as in Zanzibar. The Sindhis and Gujaratis have an equally long trading history in the Gulf, but they rarely ran the general stores selling knick-knacks. They were goldsmiths, textile shop-keepers and retailers in household items. They set up the Jashanmals, Choithrams, Lals and Allieds, which grew to be trading empires in the region. That success would blossom in due course. In the beginning they were humble merchants like everyone else who took big risks. The story goes, in 1934, Rao Sahib Jashanmal, negotiated with the Emir of Kuwait to open up a store at Safaat Square, Kuwait, which was at the time a camel caravan resting site.

Was it just that the Goan found himself to be on the wrong side of competition? Or was there something else in our societal make-up, which subtly denigrated the humble posrokar selling paraffin, pao, and peppermint candy from glass jars, which little children reached out for with grubby hands? Did we somehow genetically modify our entrepreneurial genes and substitute them instead with a great desire to always be in secure and safe employment? There is another reason that might have heralded the death knell of the family-run posro. The Catholic Goan's inclination towards small, nuclear families, which withered away the home-grown labour it takes to run these businesses successfully. Perhaps in the end analysis it is our twisted logic which saw this type of business as blue-collar work and saw virtue only in jobs which required us to don on a shirt and tie, that finally and firmly closed the door on the Goan posro, at least in the Diaspora.

Selma Carvalho is hoping to interview (email or telephone) Goans who lived in Uganda in the 1940's or earlier. You can contact her at carvalho_sel@yahoo.com