Realm: Writing
Mar. 26th, 2014 12:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
choco_froshSo on a happier (or at least hopefully funnier) note, I'm in the process of working up an article for submission. No, I'm not the one I sent nineweaving for feedback.
This is the one I'm pitching to cracked.com.
The title of this article is going to be something on the lines of "Five Tiny Countries (and their insane origins)". As it turns out, to pitch a listicle to Cracked they want you to write up one of your proposed entries in full.
Well.
In this case, "in full" wound up being "about three times as long as it ought to be". So I'm going to try to cut it down; but I felt that I wanted to post it somewhere in its full, uncut glory.
Speaking of potential double-entendres: those of you unfamiliar with Cracked should be aware that the following is excessively loaded with profanity.
1. Lesotho
Location: Completely surrounded by South Africa.
Size: I feel kinda bad about including Lesotho, because at 11 thousand square miles it’s actually about the size of Belgium. And Belgium, while commonly regarded as small, is not generally included in the “tiny” category. (Really tells you something about how we look at Africa, that.) However:
Population: About two million. So way less than Belgium; and (interesting fact) only about a fifth the size of the population of Rwanda. And as all of us who remember the Clinton years know, like two-thirds of Rwanda killed each other off with machetes back then [ CITATION NEEDED ]; so really, that’s pretty small.
The fucked-up origin story:
Our story begins in the 1820s, a period known locally as the Difaqane, which I think means something like “the point where things abruptly got shitty, but before Whitey came in and fucked everyone up.” The essential effect was that what is now Lesotho got invaded by a bunch of warlike outside groups (who in turn were usually fleeing something even worse), and since the local Sotho people weren’t, like, united or organized in any way, they pretty much ended up getting plundered, slaughtered, and/or enslaved.
Enter: Moshoeshoe. (Before any of you start imagining him as a cobbler played by one of the Stooges, note that his name’s pronounced Mo-shway-shway. Oh, and the country’s Li-su-tu. Because apparently whoever decided how Sotho was gonna get spelled was either an idiot or a sadist.)
Anyway, Moshoeshoe. In the midst of this shitstorm, this random dude establishes a sort of combo capitol, fort and refugee camp on a big mesa known as Thaba-Bosiu, a place that has been described as “a natural fortress”, and whose name means “The mountain that grows at night.” This name comes from the fact that in order to further deter assault on a place that was already pretty much impregnable, Moshoeshoe started a rumor that the mountain grew every night and shrank during the day, so trying to sneak-attack under cover of darkness would just be doomed.
Regardless of the magic mountain rumors, it was quite true that Thaba Bosiu became about the one place in the area where you could count on not getting plundered, slaughtered, and/or enslaved; so Moshoeshoe wound up with a shit-ton of followers, and the combination of that and some skillful diplomacy led him to unite the surrounding region into a kingdom of sorts. He later cut a deal with the British, under which he officially became part of the British Empire, and in exchange the British agreed to pretty much leave him alone.
This brings us to:
The fucked-up origin story: Part II.
So Britain had always assumed that Lesotho would become part of South Africa at some point. (It is, after all, frickin’ surrounded by it on all sides.) That is, up until about 1960.
By 1960, two things had (belatedly) become clear to the British. The first was that their whole colonization game in Africa was pretty much over, as Africans (gasp!) demanded the right to manage their own affairs, without help (read: exploitation) from Whitey.
The second was that South Africa was, by this point, being run by white-supremacist douchebags. Like, so douchey that even the (Conservative) government in Britain started suggesting that they needed to tone it down a little.
Both of these facts came into sharp focus that Spring, when the South African police opened fire on a crowd of black guys protesting against how much living under an apartheid regime sucked. The rest of the world responded with horrified condemnation. The South African government responded by arresting everyone in sight and banning the ANC.
Under these (and related) circumstances, the British government decided that shoving Lesotho into South Africa would actually be kind of a dick move. So in the end, it got its independence as a separate state.
A (relatively) tiny independent state, enveloped (literally and economically) in South Africa.
nineweaving for feedback.This is the one I'm pitching to cracked.com.
The title of this article is going to be something on the lines of "Five Tiny Countries (and their insane origins)". As it turns out, to pitch a listicle to Cracked they want you to write up one of your proposed entries in full.
Well.
In this case, "in full" wound up being "about three times as long as it ought to be". So I'm going to try to cut it down; but I felt that I wanted to post it somewhere in its full, uncut glory.
Speaking of potential double-entendres: those of you unfamiliar with Cracked should be aware that the following is excessively loaded with profanity.
1. Lesotho
Location: Completely surrounded by South Africa.
Size: I feel kinda bad about including Lesotho, because at 11 thousand square miles it’s actually about the size of Belgium. And Belgium, while commonly regarded as small, is not generally included in the “tiny” category. (Really tells you something about how we look at Africa, that.) However:
Population: About two million. So way less than Belgium; and (interesting fact) only about a fifth the size of the population of Rwanda. And as all of us who remember the Clinton years know, like two-thirds of Rwanda killed each other off with machetes back then [ CITATION NEEDED ]; so really, that’s pretty small.
The fucked-up origin story:
Our story begins in the 1820s, a period known locally as the Difaqane, which I think means something like “the point where things abruptly got shitty, but before Whitey came in and fucked everyone up.” The essential effect was that what is now Lesotho got invaded by a bunch of warlike outside groups (who in turn were usually fleeing something even worse), and since the local Sotho people weren’t, like, united or organized in any way, they pretty much ended up getting plundered, slaughtered, and/or enslaved.
Enter: Moshoeshoe. (Before any of you start imagining him as a cobbler played by one of the Stooges, note that his name’s pronounced Mo-shway-shway. Oh, and the country’s Li-su-tu. Because apparently whoever decided how Sotho was gonna get spelled was either an idiot or a sadist.)
Anyway, Moshoeshoe. In the midst of this shitstorm, this random dude establishes a sort of combo capitol, fort and refugee camp on a big mesa known as Thaba-Bosiu, a place that has been described as “a natural fortress”, and whose name means “The mountain that grows at night.” This name comes from the fact that in order to further deter assault on a place that was already pretty much impregnable, Moshoeshoe started a rumor that the mountain grew every night and shrank during the day, so trying to sneak-attack under cover of darkness would just be doomed.
Regardless of the magic mountain rumors, it was quite true that Thaba Bosiu became about the one place in the area where you could count on not getting plundered, slaughtered, and/or enslaved; so Moshoeshoe wound up with a shit-ton of followers, and the combination of that and some skillful diplomacy led him to unite the surrounding region into a kingdom of sorts. He later cut a deal with the British, under which he officially became part of the British Empire, and in exchange the British agreed to pretty much leave him alone.
This brings us to:
The fucked-up origin story: Part II.
So Britain had always assumed that Lesotho would become part of South Africa at some point. (It is, after all, frickin’ surrounded by it on all sides.) That is, up until about 1960.
By 1960, two things had (belatedly) become clear to the British. The first was that their whole colonization game in Africa was pretty much over, as Africans (gasp!) demanded the right to manage their own affairs, without help (read: exploitation) from Whitey.
The second was that South Africa was, by this point, being run by white-supremacist douchebags. Like, so douchey that even the (Conservative) government in Britain started suggesting that they needed to tone it down a little.
Both of these facts came into sharp focus that Spring, when the South African police opened fire on a crowd of black guys protesting against how much living under an apartheid regime sucked. The rest of the world responded with horrified condemnation. The South African government responded by arresting everyone in sight and banning the ANC.
Under these (and related) circumstances, the British government decided that shoving Lesotho into South Africa would actually be kind of a dick move. So in the end, it got its independence as a separate state.
A (relatively) tiny independent state, enveloped (literally and economically) in South Africa.
