Merali Snr

In India in the nineteen hundreds, it was customary for boys and girls to marry young. My father, Merali Sr., and mother, Kamar, followed suit and were married in their teens in the village of Jiwapur in Gujarat. Seeking adventure and the chance of a better life for his family, my father left India shortly after marrying and embarked on a series of adventures through several African countries.

My father’s travels first took him through Madagascar - an island in the Indian Ocean east of Mozambique. Formerly an independent kingdom, Madagascar became a French colony in 1896 but gained independence once again in 1960. From there myfather continued on to Mombasa, Kenya in East Africa where he started his first job as a salesman.

However, just six months later, he decided to continue on to Albertville in the Congo. Today Albertville is known as Kalemie, a town on the western shore of Lake Tanganyika in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It rests between the three largest African great lakes: Lake Victoria, Lake Malawi and Lake Tanganyika. Then as now, Kalemie was a very busy port filled with steamers that pass across the lake to Tanzania, Burundi and Rwanda. It is also the starting point for a railway network that connects several towns to the destination of Kindu.

By 1914 when the Belgian-German war broke out, my father was settled in the Congo. As the Congo was then under Belgian rule, my father volunteered to serve in the army against Germany. Through his time in the service, he had numerous exciting adventures. He described one of his most memorable experiences as learning that although cannibalism was no longer a routine cultural ritual, it was still practiced randomly among certain Congolese tribes. After serving four years in the military, the war came to an end and my father was honorably discharged from the Belgian army.

During his four-year stint in the military, my father carefully saved his earnings so he could return to India to bring back his wife Kamar. Together they returned to Africa, passing through Kalemie and continuing their journey by boat along Lake Tanganyika. They disembarked in Moba, Congo in the northeastern part of the Katanga province – a city once known as Baudouinville after the Belgian King Baudouin.

In Moba, my father established a merchandising retail business. He was a hard worker and a very smart person, soon becoming a successful merchant and owning between twenty-five and fifty shops. He carefully created a distribution network in the area and by his middle years was considered a wealthy man. He taught himself to speak French, Gujarati and Swahili, capabilities that furthered his prominence in the business community. Once a month for business purposes he would travel to Kalemie, which contained both a small Indian community and a Jewish community. The Indians nicknamed him “Moba Na Sheth,” which translates to “The Boss of The Moba.

My father was multilingual and could converse with the African people in Swahili, which is both the native and commercial language of Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and Congo, a language spoken by over 21 million people in Africa. He was also able to communicate with the Indian community in the Gujarati language – an Indo-Aryan language dating back to 400 B.C. and the native tongue of Mohandas K. Gandhi, the “Father of India.” There are approximately 46 million Gujarati speakers worldwide, making it the twenty-third most spoken language in the world.

While my father was not officially trained in the law, he was appointed by thecourt to act in an honorary capacity as attorney for the Indian people. He would hold court with individuals who had various legal problems. Utilizing the many languages hehad mastered, he communicated successfully with various people, giving them advice and helping them with their problems. By most accounts he was a good-natured, kind and generous person.

After my father and mother had been settled some time in the Congo, they began building their family. My sister Khadija was born first followed by my brothers Nur, Sher and Abdul. I was born on March 1, 1929 in Moba, followed a year and a half later by my youngest brother Babou. The fifth of ultimately six children, my parents named me Pandju meaning fifth in Gujarati.

Shortly after I was born, my father lost all his assets. His own financial downfall may have coincided with the crash of the New York Stock Exchange. My parents were faced with the difficult situation of more mouths to feed but not enough money to go around. A man not constructed to give up and surrender to mishaps, my father immediately moved to Kalemie and, with the help of some friends, managed to open a new shop. My mother, as usual, was a tremendous help to him through the crisis. Over the course of the next several years, my father was able to rebuild his resources from scratch and again provide well for his family. By this time my mother’s main focus turned to supervising the daily business of the shops and working closely with customers. It did not take long for her to become a household name in the community thanks to her good dealings and instinct for success. Around town she became known as “Saiba Ya Bato Yote” – Swahili for “friend of everybody.” She possessed an incredible calming nature that everyone was drawn to. One morning I remember a crazy and dangerous African man entered our shop brandishing a bow and arrow. He pointed it directly at my mother and I ran to hide under her billowing skirt. My mother stood bravely pleading with the intruder and was somehow able to calm the man, who lowered his bow and left without hurting anyone.

When I was around fifteen years old, my father died after struggling with a long illness. He was only fifty-five, and his loss was quite a blow to me

'The MERALI Memoirs - From Africa 2 America' By Pandju MERALI

Merali snr with daughters.
Merali Snr.