Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood Read Online Free Page B
Author: Alexandra Fuller
Tags: nonfiction, History, Travel, Biography, Non-Fiction
Killing. Inyati: the Place of the Buffaloes. Nyabira: the Place Where There Is a Fjord.
The white men came. They said, “What name do you give this place?”
“Kadoma,” they said. Which in Ndebele means, “Does Not Thunder or Make Noise.”
The white men call that place Gatooma.
“And what name do you give this place?”
“Ikwelo,” they said. Which in Ndebele means, “Steep Sides of the Riverbank.”
The white men called the place Gwelo.
“What is this place?”
“Kwe Kwe,” said the Africans, which is the sound the frogs make in the nearby river.
The white men called the place Que Que.
“We will live in this place.”
“But this is the chiefdom of Neharawa,” said the Africans.
“And we will call it Salisbury.”
The white men named places after themselves, and after the women they were with or the women whom they had left behind, after the men they wanted to placate or impress: Salisbury, Muriel, Beatrice, Alice Mine, Juliasdale, West Nicholson.
And they gave some places hopeful names: Copper Queen, Eldorado, Golden Valley.
And obvious names: Figtree, Guinea Fowl, Lion’s Den, Redcliff, Hippo Valley.
And unlikely, stolen names: Alaska, Venice, Bannockburn, Turk Mine.
In 1896 the Ndebele people had rebelled against this European-ness. They killed about one hundred and fifty European men, women, and children in a matter of a few weeks. But within three months the settlers, with the help of military reinforcements from South Africa, had defeated the Ndebeles, and Cecil John Rhodes had negotiated a cease-fire with the Ndebele leaders at Matopo Hills.
In camp
Matopo Hills, where Cecil John Rhodes is buried, staring out over Ndebeleland in perpetuity. Matopo Hills, a corruption of “Amatobos,” meaning “the Bald-Headed Ones.”
In the same month, June 1896, that Rhodes was settling with the Ndebeles in the south of the country, the Mashona in the central and east of the country rose up in a separate and more serious rebellion against the whites. When farmers, such as the Mashona, go to war, they are not like the Ndebele warriors, who come into the open savannah flashing their bare chests under the clear sky and waving their plumed headdresses and flaunting the skins of slaughtered lions and hunted leopards on their thighs and brows. Farmers fight a more deadly, secret kind of war. They are fighting for land in which they have put their seed, their sweat, their hopes. They are secretive, sly, desperate. They do not come with loud war drums and bones of powerful animals around their neck. They come with one intent, sliding on their bellies, secret in the night. They don’t come to be victorious in battle. They come to reclaim their land.
The Mashona killed four hundred and fifty settlers.
Reinforcements to help the settlers arrived from South Africa and England. The Africans developed a system of hiding in caves to escape from the white man’s army. The settlers used dynamite to force the Africans out of the caves, killing whole villages at a time when the caves collapsed—Mashona men, women, and children died by the hundreds, buried together. Survivors of the collapsed caves were executed as soon as they crawled out of the ready-made tombs. It took almost two years for the first Chimurenga to be quelled.
The Africans did not forget their heroes from this first struggle for independence.
Kaguvi, Mkwati, and Nehanda.
Kaguvi. Also called Murenga, or Resister. From which the word Chimurenga comes.
Mkwati, famous for his use of locust medicine.
Nehanda, the woman, supra-clan mhondoro spirits. She went to her execution (with Kaguvi) on April 27, 1897, singing and dancing. “We shall overcome. My blood is not shed in vain.”
Now, how can we, who shed our ancestry the way a snake sheds skin in winter, hope to win against this history? We wazungus. We white Africans of shrugged-off English, Scottish, Dutch origin.
Seven ZANLA troops died on April 28, 1966, the first battle of the
The white men came. They said, “What name do you give this place?”
“Kadoma,” they said. Which in Ndebele means, “Does Not Thunder or Make Noise.”
The white men call that place Gatooma.
“And what name do you give this place?”
“Ikwelo,” they said. Which in Ndebele means, “Steep Sides of the Riverbank.”
The white men called the place Gwelo.
“What is this place?”
“Kwe Kwe,” said the Africans, which is the sound the frogs make in the nearby river.
The white men called the place Que Que.
“We will live in this place.”
“But this is the chiefdom of Neharawa,” said the Africans.
“And we will call it Salisbury.”
The white men named places after themselves, and after the women they were with or the women whom they had left behind, after the men they wanted to placate or impress: Salisbury, Muriel, Beatrice, Alice Mine, Juliasdale, West Nicholson.
And they gave some places hopeful names: Copper Queen, Eldorado, Golden Valley.
And obvious names: Figtree, Guinea Fowl, Lion’s Den, Redcliff, Hippo Valley.
And unlikely, stolen names: Alaska, Venice, Bannockburn, Turk Mine.
In 1896 the Ndebele people had rebelled against this European-ness. They killed about one hundred and fifty European men, women, and children in a matter of a few weeks. But within three months the settlers, with the help of military reinforcements from South Africa, had defeated the Ndebeles, and Cecil John Rhodes had negotiated a cease-fire with the Ndebele leaders at Matopo Hills.
In camp
Matopo Hills, where Cecil John Rhodes is buried, staring out over Ndebeleland in perpetuity. Matopo Hills, a corruption of “Amatobos,” meaning “the Bald-Headed Ones.”
In the same month, June 1896, that Rhodes was settling with the Ndebeles in the south of the country, the Mashona in the central and east of the country rose up in a separate and more serious rebellion against the whites. When farmers, such as the Mashona, go to war, they are not like the Ndebele warriors, who come into the open savannah flashing their bare chests under the clear sky and waving their plumed headdresses and flaunting the skins of slaughtered lions and hunted leopards on their thighs and brows. Farmers fight a more deadly, secret kind of war. They are fighting for land in which they have put their seed, their sweat, their hopes. They are secretive, sly, desperate. They do not come with loud war drums and bones of powerful animals around their neck. They come with one intent, sliding on their bellies, secret in the night. They don’t come to be victorious in battle. They come to reclaim their land.
The Mashona killed four hundred and fifty settlers.
Reinforcements to help the settlers arrived from South Africa and England. The Africans developed a system of hiding in caves to escape from the white man’s army. The settlers used dynamite to force the Africans out of the caves, killing whole villages at a time when the caves collapsed—Mashona men, women, and children died by the hundreds, buried together. Survivors of the collapsed caves were executed as soon as they crawled out of the ready-made tombs. It took almost two years for the first Chimurenga to be quelled.
The Africans did not forget their heroes from this first struggle for independence.
Kaguvi, Mkwati, and Nehanda.
Kaguvi. Also called Murenga, or Resister. From which the word Chimurenga comes.
Mkwati, famous for his use of locust medicine.
Nehanda, the woman, supra-clan mhondoro spirits. She went to her execution (with Kaguvi) on April 27, 1897, singing and dancing. “We shall overcome. My blood is not shed in vain.”
Now, how can we, who shed our ancestry the way a snake sheds skin in winter, hope to win against this history? We wazungus. We white Africans of shrugged-off English, Scottish, Dutch origin.
Seven ZANLA troops died on April 28, 1966, the first battle of the
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