No New Land Read Online Free Page A

imitations of Parker pens, in the stores. Finally, a new dawn was proclaimed, the beginning of a new era of cultural integrity and economic self-reliance: banks were nationalized, English was replaced as the medium of instruction in primary schools, students underwent army training and political indoctrination, and tilled farms.
    They, who had looked to London for the time of day, accepted the changes, the initial ones that came with popular, attractive slogans. Their children, third- and fourth-generation Africans, were taking readily to the new identity. What the government said made sense to the youth. Independence did open up new vistas, intellectually. Swatches of history became available, which had so far been hidden from them. They were not enamoured of the British as their elders were. Not after they had heard or read about Nehru and Tito and Nasser, not to mention Ben Bella and Nkrumah. The future was theirs, they were its masters, and the street fruit-vendor, the shopkeeper, the elderly sheikh all looked upon the schoolchild, black or brown, with pride. Youths would march proudly in support of African socialism in Youth League uniform, under a scorching sun. But as the changes became more extreme, as newer and stranger Ways were imposed, the idyll of a new Africa began to appear as shaky to those of theyounger generation as it had always appeared to the older.
    There were two more disruptive swoops the winds had in store for them, after which they could be said to have done their work.
    In Uganda, General Idi Amin, who had over-thrown an elected government, had a dream. In this dream, Allah told him that the Asians, exploiters who did not want to integrate with the Africans, had to go. It was said, in an attempt to discredit the revelation, that the general had a few weeks before made an unsuccessful overture to an Asian woman. In Amin’s “final solution” the Asians, their citizenships stripped, were expelled – to whatever country that would take them, or else to refugee camps; in effect, they became orphans awaiting adoption. Many of them would wind up in Canada and the United States.
    Weeks later, in Dar, rental properties, most of them Asian, were nationalized. There were those whose final act of faith in the new country was to put the savings of two generations of toil to develop a mud-and-limestone dwelling into a two-storey brick building. These buildings lined Dar’s main streets, each a monument to a family’s enterprise, proudly bearing the family name or else that of a favourite child. When they were taken, that was the final straw. Cynicism replaced faith, corruption became a means.
    The “Uganda exodus” showed a way out for Dar’s Asians. Canada was open and, for the rich, America too. Thus began a run on Canada.
    It was the rich, the hardest hit by the takeovers, who started the movement. Not everyone joined initially, but soon a chain reaction set in, drawing more and more people, fuelled by insecurity, fear, competition, greed, love. Everyone felt the pull. On one hand to see your children using hoes and spades and brooms during schooltime and not learning English when English was one constant you could not deviate from: English education, the one pillar of success, tenet of the faith as it were, becoming more and more inaccessible in the country. On the other hand lay the wealth, the stability of Canada and the Western world. Ten years hence, would your children forgive you when they saw their friends return as wealthy tourists waving dollars and speaking snappy English? The way you spoke English determined who you were. Nurdin remembered: the boys and girls who went to England for their education and returned a class apart – in speech, in clothes, in bearing and manner – in everything. His dream girl had been such a person.
    He had been a good employee of Bata. He had developed his market in Central Province patiently, town by town, store by store. He would drive out with his African