Dear Reader

               Dear reader,

I began this project with many different options of a research topic, some much more complicated than others. The one that really stuck out to me was the children’s perspective on war, because the narrator in my book seemed so completely un-phased by the traumatic events she experienced.  However, as time progressed, I realized that I would not be able to create a decent argument in time for school to end. Instead, I researched the Rhodesian war, and as I did so it became evident to me that there had been no hope for the settlers from the start. You cannot just force your way into a population of natives that large with such a devotion to their land, and expect them to bow down to you without a fight. This did end up happening during the Rhodesian Bush Wars, and it was extremely frustrating for me to read about the acts that the British settlers had carried out in order to exert their power over the Rhodesians. They had disrupted the lives of a people who had never given them a reason to do so. What was the most upsetting was that from the moment the whites made their moves in Rhodesia, the land could never be the same. There was no way it would ever go back to the how it was after the meddling of the British. My “Golden Thread” is hands because of that very reason. Because the natives had crafted their own lives with their own hands and it had turned into something beautiful, something that worked for them. But the settlers took that way of life and tore it apart; the settler’s hands were destructive. So the natives were forced to abandon what they had once known, and become aggressive, they had to pull their land back, while the other side was tugging just as hard. Even though the British lost in the end, the Natives were still left with a completely overturned life.

                                                               Sincerely,

                                                                              Siobhan West

Genre #4 Poem for Two Voices

One by One

Genre #3 Recipe

Ingredients for a rebellion:

1 whole fertile land

One quart of contented natives

A few foreigners

A dash of aspiration

10 tablespoons of superiority

Two cups of aggression

One five pound bag of guns

First, combine the land with the content natives. Let sit for a couple centuries. Watch it expand and change naturally.  Then, in a small bowl, mix the foreigners with the aspiration, and gradually add the superiority one tablespoon at a time. Each tablespoon will cause it to rise. Next, you will combine the natives mixture and the foreigners mixture, and it would be wise to hold the bowls with a cloth or an oven mit, for when the chemicals of these mixtures interact it will become very hot. Add a cup of aggression and half of the bag of guns immediately after you do this. Then, before it cools down, place the mixture in the oven at 600⁰F for about ninety years. When you take it out, add the second cup of aggression, and empty the bag of guns. Watch as the components separate like oil and water. You can try to stir them back together, you can even use your hands and attempt to force them to combine, but they never will. It will taste salty and extremely bitter. Enjoy.

Genre #2 Poem

Colonial Hands

Colonization is hurtful to all

Colonization brings the fall

Of nations established eons before

And rulers and subject and deep-rooted folk lore

When men from afar arrive with sinister plans

Civilization cannot be held together, even with native hands

So we look into history and at their past deeds

They ignored right and sovereignty and these homeland’s needs

We can try to do better in the future I reckon

And an age of equality and freedom we may beckon

Genre #1 Drawing

Drawing Explanation

This is a picture of a Rhodesian rebel grasping at the rhodesian flag and the land. The yellow picture is the shape of the territory that the natives called Mashona Land. The other man is a British settler, he is also grasping for the land and the flag, underneath it is ripping, although sadly you cannot tell from this photo. The settler is fading away, consumed by fire. This means that he is losing, but the fire is taking over the land, ruining it. Even when the rebel comes out on top, he will have to deal with the destruction of his land.

Expository Essay

Siobhan West

Ms. Romano

4 AP English, Per. 5

24 May 2014

Lost Land, Lost World

Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs tonight, by Alexandra Fuller, is a memoir in which Fuller recounts the events of her childhood in Rhodesia during the country’s civil war of the 1960s and 70s. The story is told through her eyes as a young girl. She grows up experiencing the adverse effects of war while being ignorant of what the war was actually about. The war was a result of the white mans’ colonization and dominating power combined with the native’s extreme longing for their own independence. After this interference by western foreigners, the lives of those who lived in what was originally called Mashona Land could never be the same. The British had settled there in the late 1800s, and the effects of one hundred years of their influence simply could not be undone. The compulsory foreign power that comes with colonization disrupts and forever changes the lives of indigenous people.

When the settlers arrived in Mashona land, they were led by a man name Cecil Rhodes, an ambitious British businessman.  The natives were forced to relocate, their land was stolen from them, and the settlers took power and compelled the natives to work for them. When they had arrived, they brought with them the ideology of innate British superiority, which they believed justified their discriminatory colonial policies. They believed that because they were more educated, more technologically advanced, much wealthier, and white, they deserved to rule the land. In their opinion, the natives could only benefit from the changes made to the territory, and they should be grateful.

Any chance that the settlers had of living peaceably with the natives was ruined because of their failure to ask for a share of the land, and for permission to introduce new ways of life.  They took the country by force, and when they left it they took generations of native history and culture, never to be returned. Most settlers left the land because everything they’d had was taken by the new independent government after the war, and they were now the ones living in fear. The natives had finally defeated their oppressors, but could not go back to the world they’d had before colonization. They could not make their own decisions anymore because they were living under a leader that didn’t honor their way of life or include them in the benefits of the white lifestyle.  They were, essentially, servants in their own home.

Alexandra Fuller saw this and grew to understand the things that most of the settlers had not because they were so blinded by white superiority. Fuller’s mother had run a small clinic in the beginning of the story, because she wanted to take care of the people who worked for her. But then, as the war progressed, she began to turn them away, uninterested in helping a people that were causing so much conflict. “Now she says, ‘Don’t you have your comrades at the hospital? We’re all lovely socialists together now, didn’t you know?’” (). There was so much misunderstanding on both the settlers side and the natives side that it not only ruined lifestyles but also ruined the chance of a compatible future.  

As young Alexandra Fuller would make her way into the hills around her farm, she often saw what was called Ghost Camps, which were areas that held signs of Guerilla occupance (Guerillas were small groups of civilians using military tactics to fight strong, more traditional armies) They consisted of cold fires, empty tins, smashed bottles, and parts of broken abandoned shoes. “We see that they have watched us, that they must know where we go every day, our favorite walks, the way we ride” (105).  As she left the farm, she saw only the women, the elderly, and the young children. “They shrink from our gaze, from our bristling guns. Some of the bigger children run after us and throw rocks at the car. Their mothers shout but their words are snatched away by dust, sucked up in the fury of our driving” (104).  This is what the native’s lives had become as a result of British occupation. They had turned into the aggressors they had never been before, they were so desperate to get their land back.

The native warriors did not want Rhodesia, it was the land so bitterly fought over. They hated Rhodesia and what it stood for, which was white minority rule. It was the land, the Mashona Land, that they longed to have again. That land meant much more to them than just a place to grow crops. It represented the lives they’d had before the white settlers, at a time when they could stick to their simpler, comfortable, more traditional ways. They wanted to have that again, they wanted it so much that it started a rebellion. But in truth, they would never get it back. They won the territory; a patch of earth, but they would never win back Mashona Land.

Works Cited

http://peterbaxterafrica.com/index.php/2011/08/08/a-thumbnail-sketch-of-the-zimbabwerhodesia-bush-war/

http://www.historytoday.com/paul-moorcraft/rhodesias-war-independence

http://rhodesianforces.org/RhodesiaStudyinmilitaryincompetence.htm

http://www.popularsocialscience.com/2012/10/19/the-fall-of-rhodesia/

Quarter 4 Post #2

            Reading this book made me realize I didn't have a concrete understanding of what the actual conflict was about. I knew there was a civil war, there were terrorists, it seemed like it was white people versus black people, etc. The author went into detail every now and then to inform the reader but I still felt in the dark. I decided to research the Rhodesian civil war, and every now and then I’d think “Oh that’s where her dad was going every week!” or “that’s why their farm was being attacked.” And the best, most embarrassing realization was “I guess she wasn’t talking about actual gorillas and just spelling them in some weird British way” (Guerillas were small groups of civilians using military tactics to fight strong, more traditional armies). Those moments in my research were extremely satisfying because they helped me understand what the author’s family was going through, and what they wanted as a result of the war. This is a very condensed version of what I found out:

The Rhodesian War was fought to preserve the Anglo-Saxon culture and values that had been instilled in the lands as a result of British colonization before the 1900s. In Africa, there were many states called Dominions, which means they were independent under British terms. Rhodesia was called a Self Governing Colony, which meant that it wasn’t under British rule. The Dominions were all working fine at the time because they had mostly white populations anyway, but Rhodesia had a large native population. When Rhodesia helped out Britain during World War II, Britain promised that it would make Rhodesia independent under minority rule (British rule). This caused a lot of controversy all over the globe, because many other countries believed that native Rhodesians should be able to rule their own country, but Britain had given the white settlers their word already.

Other countries were gaining independence from their colonial powers. Like India, Malaysia, Burma, and Nigeria. Canada, Australia, and New Zealand were too, and they had white populations. Those three made a strong petition to Britain to give Southern Rhodesia independence under a majority rule, which basically meant to give the power to the natives.  Britain was no longer a global power, so it had to fall in line with the popular idea amongst other countries that it should grant independence to Rhodesia under majority rule (native rule).  Then all of this fighting happened between the Rhodesian government and the rebellious native groups (I could go into detail but that would make this like 5000 words instead of 500),  and eventually the latter won. It came as an extremely demoralizing shock to the white population. This was the result of years of Britain’s attempting to control a land that did not belong to them. They had lost so much in the process, and basically ransacked the land of Rhodesia, and it was all for nothing. Native Rhodesians were able to rightfully rule their land.