Dealing with Nostalgia

Why one's old school still matters so much!

Most Asians have strong memories of the the schools they went to in East Africa. I find that my older brothers and their friends also fondly remember their time at school. It is the secondary school that East African Asians went to that matters most, partly because they remember the experience of their formative years but also their triumphs and successes not only in academic terms but also in their participation in sport, their trips for camping, boating or any outdoor activity, their rows and friendships with their teachers and the generally happy times they had at school. There are also many memories of laughter, sometimes at the expense of a teacher and other times at the expense of a student. There is also the perennial talk of how all the boys in a class fell in love with a certain teacher or a particular girl. Remember this is a recollection of life of Asian males. I have no idea of what the East African Asian women remember of their schooling!

Many Asians also talk about how they did very little work at school and got away with low input. This can also extend to how they cheated their parents to other cases where they feel that their parents did not supervise them enough or were not capable enough to monitor their education closely. Had this been the case, they might have done better in their new homes in the west. The Asians always refer to successful boys and girls who were high achievers and how they have done well in the countries they migrated to by virtue of how they worked hard at school. Of course, achievement at school is not the only indicator of success. Many people develop later in life.

Talk to any group of Asians from Nairobi, Kampala and Dar-es-salaam, the names of a number of prominent schools always come up but generally adding up to less than 10 schools overall which have played a major role in the development and lives of East African Asians. Those Asians from Kampala recall their days at Kololo, Old Kampala or the Aga Khan Schools. British Asians with backgrounds in Nairobi refer to a number of elite schools which were high on academic achievement and also excelled in sport. There are similar recollections of schools in Tanzania.

My own days in Kololo Secondary School in Kampala made a major impact on my life, not to mention the Sikh primary school that I also went to. It is a great joy to be in touch with primary teachers who taught me as long as 45 years ago and also teachers from Kololo Secondary School.

Where does all this lead to? The East African Asians' nostalgia needs to be tapped and turned into a positive force. Schools in East Africa have received help from Asians, some of whom hold fundraising dinners for their old schools. There is the occasional news of the old boys' and old girls' fundraisers but there is no strategic action which can convince the heads of those schools that the East African Asians can be relied upon to become real friends of the schools they went to. One or two people who have come back from Kampala report that the heads of schools are worried about tokenism from 'do-gooders' who have handed over the one-off cash donations, which are warmly welcome but do not help to address the real needs of the schools. The most painful remark to be heard in recent months was that East African Asian visitors have made pledges which have not materialised.

Are you thinking of what I am thinking?

Living with the new "host" communities

What's in a name?

The other day I was in a community gathering which was attended by people from many backgrounds. There were East African Asians, people from India and Pakistan and also, people from the English community. I know they were English because I heard them talking to each other.

Then halfway through the proceedings, the secretary said," I must say a few words in English because there are a few people from the host community among us today". I noted the use of the term "host" community with amusement. It was a clear indication that the announcer's understanding of migration was different from many Asians who feel that they are as much the host community in the UK as anyone else. Most British Asians have discarded the notion of migration as that of going off to distant lands to live in someone else's country. They feel that they are at home. The UK is their home and they are as much the hosts.

However, there are many areas of confusion, some of which can be interesting. Many Asians in the UK continue to harbour the feeling of "us" and "them" but much depends on the issues that are under consideration. When there is talk about the rising incidence of teenage pregnancy or carjacking, the most common Asian reaction is that this is a problem in "their" community, meaning the English, or the "white" community and that such matters should not concern them. However, when the discussion turns to issues such as unemployment or high interest rates, they see those areas as a common problem which affects all sections of the communities.

This form of selective owning of the issues has not received the consideration that it deserves.

A Secret Admirer of the Ismaili Community

A view from the outside

My previous post refers to issues within the Sikh communities in East Africa that I left behind in 1972. I think I have asked hard questions to analyse the work of the Sikh community. I wanted to ascertain how and why the Sikh community had set out to achieve a wide range of objectives. It took me many years to learn that the leadership of faith-based organisations cannot be expected to achieve the wide range of outcomes that my questioning implies.

Faith based organisations led by Asians were successful as long as they were able to fulfill the requirements of their legal mandates or conditions for charitable registration in the countries in which they operated. They had to deliver their faith based objectives, and no more. However, East African Asians found, in many cases, that their religious organisations were also required to fulfill other roles such as liaison with African Governments, ensure representation at civic functions, comply to the emerging social policy requirements. They had little choice even when many of them were not capable enough to do so.

These assertions do not tend to apply to the case of the Ismaili communities in East Africa. Here was a community which appeared to be 'successful' in many areas of proactive engagement. They appeared to have a good balance as far as their vision and objectives were concerned. They had the patience to develop organisations with suitable structures for delivering their multiple programmes. They had mostly a clear basis for being accountable to their general public and to the Aga Khan, their spiritual leader. This would suggest that they monitored their programmes and took care to remedy any weaknesses. The results of such an accountable approach to management of large and small projects could be seen through many success stories - schools, hospitals, dispensaries and community support projects.

How did the Ismaili community succeed? Do the Ismailis also think that they were successful?

I am pleased to hear from a reader, Mansoor Ladha, who lives in Canada. Mansoor is researching for a book on the Ismaili community. Born and bred in Tanzania, Mansoor held senior positions in journalism in Tanzania and Kenya before going to Canada. He worked for five years as a journalist before buying two weeklies which he ran for 25 years. He is interested in hearing from Ismailis who lived in East Africa. Mansoor can be contacted by email mlpublish@shaw.ca

I also look forward to hearing from Ismailis who can discuss the reasons for their success in East Africa. Would they also be interested in discussing the key aspects of their approach to development? Were Ismaili organisations focused but also flexible in meeting changing needs in the East African environment?

A secret admirer....

Have there been times when you have looked at your own community, that is, its inner workings, its leadership and its successes and failures and decided that some other community is doing better than your own? When this happens people secretly admire the other community but are not able to share that secret.

The question of leadership is unavoidable in these debates. East African Asians, during the period leading to the 1972 expulsion, almost certainly found that their leaders were mostly thrust upon them. The main contenders for representation and leadership came from faith based organisations.

I am going to talk about the Sikh community, a grouping that I came to know well as a member of that community. In general the Sikhs had minimal political experience with no ambition to propel themselves into the civic society with the aim to lead a political party. With the exception of four or five people in the whole of East Africa, Sikh leadership came from faith based organisations. There was some intra-Sikh factionalism based on the Indian caste system which meant that their leaders came from two distinct ‘pathways’ but both factions drew from a pool of people who actually knew little about the religion and were not always qualified to lead. Their main endorsement was their wealth, which was largely generated by their success mainly in the building construction industry. The Ramgarhia Sikh contractors became leaders and their energy and knowledge went into – you’ve guessed it, building temples or developing them. This appeared to be the case in Kenya as well as Uganda.

The Sikh communities have always been prone to a high level of fragmentation, especially in the UK. This results in the formation of a larger number of organisations with members distributed amongst them. Because each temple can only sustain one president and his team of henchmen, those with leadership ambitions go on to start new splinter groups that are differentiated by minor identifiers. They aim to build more and more temples. But the boomerang always returns to hit one in the back of the head. It is now acknowledged that there is excess capacity in the temples of the UK based Sikh communities but the multiplication of the temples has continued. The boomerang is debt. It has also multiplied. Having said all this, there is no evidence that a Sikh temple has ever gone into receivership owing to its inability to service debts anywhere in the world. The Almighty always lends a hand.

When one talks to the Jaat Sikhs, who are traditionally farmers, they say that the builders and artisan Sikhs who came from the Ramgarhia caste have helped to create an asset base that is quite disproportionate to the size of their communities. Both Sikh factions in the East Africa of the 1960s did not build schools, hospitals, playgrounds or housing for poor African communities. But they did not also look after their own poor, ill or elderly with the exception of offering a few scholarships for Sikh school children who went to Sikh faith schools. That was the picture until 1972.

The fragmentation of the Sikh communities, the servicing of high debt charges and the high maintenance costs of bricks and mortar and lack of strategic vision have also meant that, in the main, the Sikhs in the UK have not built schools, hospitals and playgrounds for the needy. There is a hypothesis for a PhD dissertation in these lines. Why did the fragmentation take place in the Sikh communities? How many rival Sikh temples did it create? What was the impact of the size of the congregations and how does each temple cope with their debt service boomerangs? Are my questions valied and sustainable? Can these questions be applied to analyse the status of other Asian communities?

Here is a confession. I have been secretly admiring the Ismaili communities and their phenomenal achievements in the East African countries. It appears to me that they have succeeded in dealing with all the questions that I have raised. More about this in the next post.

The Wahindis in Kenya - post expulsion and post Moi ....

Talk to people who are returning to the UK from their Kenyan holidays or business and sporting trips, they report in one common fashion, " The Asians are doing really well! They are making a lot of money. Why should they want to leave?"

Let us clarify one key point at the outset. We do not know how many of the Asians still living in Kenya today are citizens of that country. As citizens, they are entitled to work and live according to the norms of Kenyan society today.

Do the Asians have to be seen to be different today (than those Asians who were expelled from Uganda) if they are not Kenyan citizens? That is, different in their attitude, work and play and how they interact with local people? Is this a relevant question?

The people returning from Kenya also report that it has probably become difficult for many Asians to leave Kenya. Many have stayed too long and are aging. Others have not done too well financially but have held on to steady and skilled jobs at all levels. Both groups would find it difficult to emigrate to the countries of traditional choice, UK, US and Canada.

There is also the real possibility that politicians in Kenya have learnt a few lessons from their neighbours where the Asians had to leave following expulsion or the withdrawal of work permits?

What is the make up of the Asians who have decided to remain in Kenya? After all, the Ugandan Asian expulsion took place nearly 35 years ago. Has that event now lost its significance?

At the same time, a new generation of Kenyans have come into power. What do they think about the Asian presence, if at all, and their contribution? More importantly, a new generation of local Kenyans have moved into congested cities. They want jobs, education, health and welfare and safety. The Kenyan economy does not appear to have grown in order to to keep in pace with demand for jobs and public expectations.

How are the Asians and their leaders responding to these developments?