The Autobiography of Amos G. Gona: More Than Luck

By Ophelia De Laine Gona

In The Autobiography of Amos G. Gona, the reader can vicariously experience many interesting events of Amos' life. His story is replete with events that make one smile in understanding—or clench hands in fear. The book recounts memorable adventures, at least two of which could have been disastrous for him had it not been for a bit "more than luck." It follows his life from birth on a Christian mission compound in India through a professional life in six countries to retirement in Florida. Over the course of the fascinating eight decades that he has lived, politics, geography, technology, and global awareness have changed human history in such staggering ways that many of the fascinating events described could not possibly occur in today's world. Every person who reads this book will learn something while being intrigued by this remarkable story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ophelia De Laine Gona
• Release date: Jan 26, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301980390

Ophelia De Laine Gona

Ophelia De Laine Gona, formerly a medical school professor, is retired from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. In addition to scientific publications, Gona's previous writings include articles about her father and the Briggs lawsuit.

Book preview

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AMOS G. GONA:

More Than Luck

Compiled and illustrated by

Ophelia De Laine Gona

SMASHWORDS EDITION

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PUBLISHED BY

Ophelia De Laine Gona on Smashwords

The Autobiography of Amos G. Gona

Copyright © 2012 by Ophelia De Laine Gona

Thank you for downloading this free ebook. Although this is a free book, it remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied and distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy at Smashwords.com.

Your support and respect for the property of this author is appreciated. You may find out more about the book at <http://www.opheliadelainegona.com>.

This book is available in print at cost at http://www.blurb.com.

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General Reading Material

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Table of Contents

Preface

Part I – Childhood

Chapter 1. Who? What?

Chapter 2. Why? Where?

Chapter 3. Dry Weather, Wet Weather

Chapter 4. SPG Mission Compound

Chapter 5. Perspectives

Chapter 6. Our House

Chapter 7. Play/Excursions

Chapter 8. Daily Life

Chapter 9. Ancestors/Relatives

Part II – After High School

Chapter 10. College/University

Chapter 11. Burma

Chapter 12. Malaya

Chapter 13. Ghana

Chapter 14. Researcher/Professor

Chapter 15. Zimbabwe

Chapter 16. Friends, Florida, Fate

Line Drawings

Figure 1. Location of Nandyal

Figure 2. Water well

Figure 3. Bamboo water chute

Figure 4. Indian rope bed

Figure 5. Map of SPG Mission Compound

Figure 6. Tiffin carrier

Figure 7. SPG High School

Figure 8. Church of the Holy Cross

Figure 9. Wall around Church of the Holy Cross

Figure 10. Leaf plate

Figure 11. Old-fashioned radio

Figure 12. Floor plan of Gona house

Figure 13. Water buffalo

Figure 14. Cooking area in Gona kitchen

Figure 15. Butter churn

Figure 16. Bullock cart

Figure 17. Genealogy Chart 1. Family Tree

Figure 18. Genealogy Chart 2. Descendants of Gona Elias and Mesa Sarah

Acknowledgements/Sources

Glossary of Foreign Terms

Preface

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The impetus for this autobiography came from my children’s desire to know more about my childhood in India. For a long time, I thought that my life had been unremarkable and resisted writing anything down. However, upon my wife Ophelia’s insistence, I finally jotted down a few notes. I had forgotten so many things, but—as she asked questions—I recalled more and more detail. Names and events, buried deep in my brain for numerous years, began popping to the surface of my consciousness. I sometimes made notes or, at other times, I simply relayed the information to her. When I mentioned vaguely recalled incidents, she put the bits and pieces away in her mental file and asked me about them later, gently probing until she was either satisfied or knew that particular fountain was dry. With my memories of bygone days coming back, I started getting excited. From the vantage point of old age, I looked back, often seeing events unfold in exquisite detail—frequently feeling bittersweet nostalgia for times long past.

Amazingly, Ophelia took the information I related to her (as well as I could remember it) and articulated it all to create an account as accurately as possible. The early part of the story is not told in chronological order. I don’t remember when some of the incidents occurred, however, the exact time that many of them happened is not important. Through her research, my wife discovered many details of which I was unaware, but which are extremely relevant to my story. Step by step, she succeeded in pushing, persuading, and inspiring me to recall and relate more and more. She has adroitly combined information to paint a picture of how life was for me—one Christian boy who grew up in South India in the 1930s and 1940s.

When I finally began recounting events for her, I decided I also wanted to describe, for posterity, various experiences I that had later in life. I believe my children—and perhaps someone else—will like to read these vignettes of my life. The chronicle of events from the time I left my hometown until I came to America is almost entirely sequential. Many of these things are documented and it was easier for me to recall when they happened. Again, it was Ophelia who took my memories and molded them into a smoothly flowing account of my life.

Except for the photographs of my mother and of me as a youth, there are no photographs in this ebook although a number are present in the paper editions. These provide a visual record of the journey I have made during my adult life, but were technically difficult to include in this edition. Ophelia’s original illustrations, some of things known to her only from my descriptions, should help the reader visualize aspects of my life that may be unfamiliar. She was also the source of pronunciation guides, transliterating sounds as she heard and pronounced them. The reader should note Ophelia has included a Glossary at the end of the book to help in understanding unfamiliar terms. In total, she put in an unimaginable amount of time and effort to complete this work. Let there be no doubt: This is my story, but her book.

Together, the two of us prepared this book especially for our granddaughter, Kira Laine, who has only a vague idea of her roots from my side of the family. I trust that it will help her understand more of her background, as well as that it will be a significant legacy and one of the best gifts she ever received from her Tha-tha (and her Awa).

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Part I. CHILDHOOD

Chapter 1. Who? What?

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My name is Amos G. Gona. I was born on 16 July 1933 and spent the first fifteen years of my life in a place called Nandyal (Nahn-dee-ahl). After that, I travelled to many places in the world and did numerous things that I could never have dreamed of when I was a child.

This is an account of some things that have happened to me and some things that have influenced my life.

Figure 1. Location of Nandyal. The city names shown in this outline map of India are those that were in use when I lived in Nandyal.

Chapter 2. Why? Where?

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I said my name is Amos G. Gona. That’s true: I am legally known as Amos G. Gona. It’s an unusual name for an Indian. However, unlike most Indians—who are Hindus—my family is Christian. That is why, like almost everyone else in my immediate family, I was given a Western name. When I was growing up, I didn’t write my name the way I do now. In my family, as in many Telugu (tel-oo-goo) families, the surname was placed before any given names. Only on official documents was our surname written out in its entirety. In everyday practice, it was simply abbreviated. Since my surname is Gona, my name was written as G. Amos.

When I tell people my name is Amos G. Gona, they can’t believe their ears. Westerners expect to hear a mouthful of unfamiliar syllables. Instead, when I say, Amos Gona, they are confused—failing to comprehend. Often they say, How do you spell that? Indians, on the other hand, simply stare at me. I look like one of them, but my name is not right. It’s far too short. They expect a longer, multisyllabic name. It taxes their imagination to believe that a man named Amos Gona could truly be from India—unless he came from Goa, the former Portuguese colony where Indians often have strange, European names.

In response to such situations, I often bring out the heavy artillery and reveal my middle name, one that is typically Indian—and typically Hindu. That part of my name came from my abba (ahb-ba; father’s father). His name was Gnanaprakasham and that same name is the typically Indian part of my name. It’s long enough to satisfy even the most traditional of my former countrymen.

That name certainly is long. Once, while traveling in West Africa and trying to enter the country of Togo, the immigration officer insisted on writing my full name on the official papers. Obligingly, I began to spell Gnanaprakasham. By the time I got to the fourth a, he interrupted in exasperation and said, Never mind.

From my childhood until the time I got married—about fourteen years after I had left my home in Nandyal—I was known by several variations of my name (e.g., G. Amos, Amos Gnanaprakash, Amos Prakash, G.A. Prakash, etc.). But you know how women always have to change things. When I got married, my bride was suspicious. Too many variations in my name. I believe she thought, What honest man would have so many aliases? Aloud, she said, No more variations. Decide which way you want to write your name and stick with it. So I chose Amos G. Gona and, except for spelling out my middle name when some official asks me to do so, that’s the way I’ve written it ever since.

Several times now, I have used the word Telugu. That’s the name of my mother tongue. Centuries ago—more than six hundred years before Christ was born—there was an ancient kingdom in the southeastern part of the Indian subcontinent called Andhra (ahn-dhra). The Andhra people spoke Telugu—a melodic and flowing language, sometimes called the Italian of the East. It has been a written language for at least sixteen centuries, as long as—or longer than—Europeans have been writing English. Despite that long history, many people have never heard of Telugu.

When I got married, over fifty years ago, my wife referred to Telugu as a dialect of Indian. I was appalled that there existed someone who knew so little about India. There is no language called Indian and, as I told her at the time, 35 million people speak Telugu. That number has since doubled. Today more than 74 million people speak Telugu as their native language. That’s about two-thirds the number of people (115 million) who speak French as a first language. And yet, most Westerners have never heard of Telugu!

Most Westerners—no, I should say most people—have never heard of Nandyal. The name comes from the word Nandi (a bull-like creature that was Lord Shiva’s primary vehicle in Hindu mythology). The town got its name because of the nine temples in or near the town that have large Nandi statues.

Nandyal was a relatively small town in Andhra Pradesh, one of the states in the country of India. In 1933 when I was born, the political and administrative geography of both India and Nandyal was very different from what it is now. Although I’ll say a little more about that later, right now, it is enough to know there was a place called Nandyal, and that it was in South India in the state of Andhra Pradesh.

The town of Nandyal was in a beautiful valley, about 100 miles—as the crow flies—inland from the Bay of Bengal. Roughly ten miles to the west of town were the flat-topped Erramala Hills, colored red by their bare rocks and soil. To the east—about the same distance away—were the black hills of the Nallamalas, a low, forest-covered mountain range whose greenness appeared dark (black) in the distance. At times, during the dry season, the valley itself looked dry and unproductive, but the forested Nallamalas—where teak, eucalyptus, cashew, bamboo, and soft wood forest trees grew—were always green, thanks to the lush plants that thrived on the life-giving waters from pure mountain springs.

About a mile from where we lived on the SPG Mission Compound, in the valley on the side of town toward the Erramalas, the Kundu River flowed. The rain-fed Kundu began on the eastern side of the Erramala Hills, thirty miles upstream from Nandyal. Feeder streams from springs and rain on the western slopes of the Nallamalas increased the size of the river until, long before it got to Nandyal, its bed was quite broad. Nevertheless, both the width and the depth of the Kundu became quite diminished in dry weather. On the other hand, the river’s level could rise rapidly when it rained, putting the town of Nandyal and the villages of the valley at risk.

The Kundu became ferocious with heavy floodwaters. I can remember some places not far from where we lived being flooded, but the waters never reached the Mission Compound where our house was. The land where the compound was built was high enough to keep us safe and dry. Even in present times, the waters of the Kundu have swollen and overflowed, rushing out into the valley and causing great loss of homes and commerce. In 2009, much of Nandyal and forty-some villages were inundated and outside communication was lost. But the SPG Mission Compound, on its high ground, escaped the disaster and provided a site for flood relief camps to be erected.

Chapter 3. Dry Weather, Wet Weather

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Nandyal was in the tropics, but it was not in a rainforest. On the contrary, its weather was dry and there was little rain during most of the year. In the old days, there sometimes were terrible droughts followed by famines. The average annual rainfall was about 25 inches (63 cm), more than three-fourths of which fell during the monsoon. The three seasons were winter, summer, and monsoon. Winter was quite agreeable and enjoyable, lingering for five months—from October until February. During those pleasant months, temperatures sometimes dipped down to about 64° F (18° C). In November, the mean temperature averaged about 82° F (27.8° C), and the early mornings could be a bit chilly—even at the end of February.

But during the summer, from March to June, things were very different. Starting around the beginning of March, rain abandoned Nandyal altogether. The temperature soared. In April and May, thermometer readings might reach 112° F (44.4° C) in the shade. It got so hot and so dry that the sun burned plants and, although life went on, no one worked in the fields.

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I remember how the meter gauge trains of the Madras & Southern Mahratta Railway huffed and puffed their way into the Nandyal Railway Station on blistering hot days. Some came from the west, leaving the low, red Erramala Hills behind before they crossed the shriveled-up Kundu River and rolled into the station, loaded with people and bags and boxes. Other trains made their way into the station, chugging along from the opposite direction, already having come over the green Nallamala Hills via the Nandikanama Pass and having skirted the town of Nandyal by perhaps a mile and a half. They too were full of passengers and goods.

In clouds of black smoke and steam, the trains added even more heat to the already soaring temperatures. The rail line, built 45 years before my birth, led to the development of a settlement around the rail station. It was also responsible for our SPG Mission Compound being built in Nandyal. Because it placed all parts of the district within thirty miles of a railway, the railway opened up commerce with the rich grain-growing areas. Goods—salt, peanuts, foreign made objects, coconuts, cotton, woven goods, turmeric, honey—were dropped off, picked up, or never left the trains as they passed through the depot. All year, a steady flow of people passed through the gates of the railway station. The commerce associated with the trains helped Nandyal become a municipality in 1900.

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On leaving the station, almost every passenger that alighted headed toward the town, over a mile and a half away. The road they had to take passed right through our SPG Mission Compound and every day we watched a steady stream of people make their way along the dusty route.

Figure 2. Water well. Using the rope and pulley, a person could draw up a pail of water. Four wells like this were on our Mission Compound. The well’s wall prevented contamination and its cement skirt kept the ground underfoot dry.

An odd traveler or two had enough money to