The first time Emma Dias stepped foot in Kenya, it was jacaranda season in Nairobi. September 1953. She had flown from India to visit her twin sister Joyce, who had just married a Goan man working in the Kenyan civil service.

Emma was beautiful: shoulders set with assurance, face framed by strong, straight brows and a soft but deliberate smile. She had a good head on her shoulders. She was whip-smart, she stood her ground. You know the story. A beautiful, intelligent woman arriving in Kenya—a single woman? Of course Goan families began making “inquiries.”

Anton Filipe da Gama Pinto was eager for his son Pio to meet her. He was getting worried about Pio’s political activities. Goans were whispering that Pio was Mau Mau, that he was a communist, that he was—in hushed, scandalized tones—”politically active.” A.F. da Gama Pinto believed that marriage would “settle” his son. So inquiries were made, arrangements followed, and one day in Nairobi, Emma met Pio.

At the time, Pio was 26 years old. He was built like an athlete, with a thick, black shock of hair. But Emma found him, in other more important ways, unlike other Goan men. Pio was invariably kind, generous, with an easy laugh. He was sharp. He was driven. At the time, he was working as a journalist, writing for a radical newspaper. He was always getting thrown out of places for breaking Nairobi’s “colour bar” which segregated Europeans, Asians, and Africans in restaurants, buses, residences, and in virtually all other spaces in the colonial city.

Even as Emma found herself drawn into his laugh, it was clear to her that he “was not the marrying kind.” It was clear from the beginning where Pio’s heart truly lay: with the Kenyan people. Later, she would often wonder what made him decide to marry after all, when it was so clear that his first love was his “cause.”

Still, despite these very honest “terms and conditions”, Emma was dazzled by Pio. He was not patronizing. “Pio was honest in a funny way,” she said. “He told me he did not make much to support me and I should therefore start thinking about getting a job myself!” And he was drawn to her quiet intention, the way she listened carefully to your words and folded them away in her mind. They chose each other.

Pio and Emma were engaged in October 1953. Within the three months that Emma had on her visitor’s visa to Kenya, she had become Emma Gama Pinto. The two honeymooned in Jinja.

Once they returned to Nairobi, Emma realized that Pio would remain true to his word. Their life was not comfortable. They lived in a bedsitter in the courtyard of a friend’s house. The four foot by four foot kitchen had only a single-burner stove. The toilet was a hole in the ground.

Emma’s parents flew in from India to visit the newlywed couple. When they saw the conditions in which their daughter was living, they asked themselves in dismay if they had given their daughter over to a life of poverty. They gifted the young couple a car, a washing machine, and some cash. Later, Pio confessed sadly that he had used some of that money to make a down payment on a printing press. There were hardly any printing presses owned by Africans then, and Pio wanted to operate one as “the voice of the people” to print radical papers in local languages. Emma knew then that she would be sharing her husband with the entire country.

She had married a flitting shadow, always moving, always working. He was hardly ever in their tiny bedsitter. He barely slept. To protect Emma, Pio compartmentalized his life and kept each compartment sealed. He kept his two worlds apart and made sure they did not touch.

But in the end, Pio’s work would do more than just touch Emma. It would shape her entire life.