Fatehali Hirji Sunderji

Fatehali Hirji Sunderji

Family tree

Parents

Hirji Sunderji

Siblings

Akberali Hirji Sunderji

Mohamedali Hirji Sunderji

Partners

Sakarbai Kassam

Children

Karim F. Hirji

Mohamed F. Hirji

Nazir F. Hirji

Born in

Hirji Sunderji(Born in).

Our Imam issued an edict in 1945 exhorting us to settle in the south. Each family had access to a loan of TSh 5,000 with flexible repayment terms. It sufficed to set up a small shop or business. His visit to Lindi in 1946 added emphasis to his words. The early 1950s saw other avenues for economic advancement open up. Housing and commercial loans on generous terms from community institutions were now regularly available. The colonial authorities provided plots for houses, shops, prayer houses and schools. While life was decidedly difficult, and our parents slogged daily from dawn to dusk to maintain a minimally decent existence, these were the conducive aspects of the historic conditions under which they came to make a home for themselves in Lindi and its interior areas.

Aga Khan III was a global statesman and one of the wealthiest persons in the world. His politics over a life time mostly reflected the agenda of the British empire. Thus, in India and Africa, he urged his followers to be loyal subjects of the Crown. The advice to set up shop in the south likely had the nod of the British rulers who were instituting a massive ground nuts production scheme in central and southern Tanzania. It came with an influx of colonial officials, company employees and their families. The Asians were to be the middle-men for the European firms, and were as well expected to establish the service infrastructure for colonial rule, thereby enabling the European way of life to operate without too many glitches.

The poorly conceived scheme failed in a matter of years. The bulk of the Europeans left, but the Asians stayed behind. Ground nuts or not, their presence was vital for the import-export structure to take root, expand geographically and flourish financially.

The South

Father had five living brothers and one sister. He attended the Aga Khan Boys School in Dar es Salaam, but neglected his studies, frequently missing classes what he wrote was barely readable. His English always remained rudimentary. He conversed in Swahili to the extent needed to deal with servants, vegetable sellers, customers and public officials.

I recall that when they were older than fifty, both regularly read books of hymns, prayers and holy edicts. Father additionally read Gujarati novels and health books, and perused English newspapers. She did not. to roam about town with friends. He dropped out in primary Standard 4 or 5. By that time he had learned to read and write in Gujarati. Unfortunately, at the primary level.

Early Days

Mv father first opened a small shop near the African area in Lindi in 1952. He sold salt, oil, sugar, biscuits, candies, matchboxes, flour, rice, soap, beans and kerosene. But his stock was tiny. My mind still holds the image of a ramshackle storefront with odd-shaped, mostly empty aluminium bins, and half-filled candy- toffee bottles on a brownish table with cracks running in all directions. A mostly bare wooden shelf stood at the back. His customers were largely African.

He had a difficult time making ends meet. 1 can still hear him complaining to mother, / just sold a few sweets today. The profit was ten cents. How can I feed all of you this way? 1 wonder how I can recall this detail. I was but four years old. Is it a visualization of what I was told sometime later? Or perhaps it was because the conversation preceded a striking shift in our family life. A faint image of the major rain storm that engulfed the south around that time lingers. Our roof was damaged; some of the corrugated iron sheets were blown away. I see myself shivering in the damp house. Roads were flooded and communications were severed for about two months.

A more solid image shows a filthy, pungent, unlit outhouse in the backyard. The floor was slimy, slippery. The rusted, sheet metal walls creaked with the wind. Long whiskered, giant cockroaches slithered in and out of the squat-hole. Too terrified to place myself over it, I mostly voided outside. For that, 1 was teased by my elders to no end.

Father closed his Lindi shop in 1954 (or perhaps 1955), and began work as a lorry driver. His truck plied between Lindi and inland towns, delivering imported goods to traders and returning with agricultural produce like cashew nuts, cassava, maize, beans and charcoal. The roads were treacherous during the typical three month rainy season. But he did not cease his runs, and was (hereby respected by area merchants for his dependability.

After two years, he secured a loan of TSh 10,000 from the Ismaili run Diamond Jubilee Investment Trust. It enabled him to open a retail shop in Bunju. Mohamedali, his younger brother, was his partner and ran the shop. Father’s transport work went on but on a more independent footing. Using a part of the loan and his savings, he got a truck of his own; a fellow Ismaili driver has told me that it was a BMC 7-ton truck.

Earnings from the Bunju shop did not pay the bills. So the two brothers moved to Ruponda, a lush forest-enclosed place that was more than a village but not quite a township. It was located about ten kilometres from Nachingwea, a key interior commercial hub. Father was already making regular deliveries to that area and had a good sense of the opportunities. His arrival enabled Ruponda to boast a grand total of two shops, his and a bigger one run by an Ithnasheri merchant. They sold general merchandise and bought cashew nuts, beans, honey and beeswax from local farmers, bagged it, and sent it to the merchants of the port towns, Lindi and Mtwara.

— Professor Karim F. Hirji