#askari
A painting showing WW1 Imperial German Askari charging forward.
The German empire recruited natives from German East Africa (now Tanzania) to serve in the Askari units.
They were commanded by European officers, and fought a highly effective campaign against the Allied forces in Africa, fighting against a much larger British force until the end of the war in 1918.
Askari units were all given a army pension, but due to the turmoil at the end of the war this was never carried through. In 1964, the Federal German government attempted to make good on these promises and pay the entire back-log of payments to any surviving Askari who could be found.
A payment station was set up for the men to travel to, seeing as postage to the many unnamed villages was unfeasible. 350 men turned up, but many had lost the papers issued to them at the end of the great war. The banker who had brought the money came up with a simple way to sort the real soldiers from fakes. As each man stepped forward he was handed a broom handle and asked (in German) to perform rifle drill movements with it. Not one man failed the test.
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Abdulrazak Gurnah: Afterlives (2020)
insomnia + internet outage = ??? character design exercise ???
OBLIGATORY HEADCANONS UNDER CUT
mufasa - naturally born a bit chubbier/bulkier then most other cubs, which his brother teases him over. he’s very much like his son, just much more polite and slightly more obedient. he’s a real flirt with the girls, which is to say that he crushes on them frequently but is deathly shy about interacting with them.
bianca - that’s her birth name, tho she later adopted the name “zira” as an expression of her violent resentment for the pridelands bc symbolism. she’s a member of simba’s generation, having been born shortly after him; this adds to her feelings of betrayal, but rly basically nobody liked her bc she was a weird little bully. she had really bad baby teeth.
takaskari - hey 6NA and TLG fans, ahmhmhmhm fixed that for you!!!!!! anyway, still effeminate, still melodramatic, and still petty and spiteful, probably from being super coddled and spoiled. his beauty mark is ever so slightly more raw/saturated then it is in his adult years.
sarabi - fearless, playful, but also precocious. her single mother was a refugee with lots of cubs who found asylum in the pridelands under the kind king ahadi’s rule, and this instilled heaps of loyalty in her. when she was older, she frequently babysat bianca, often spending their time together trying to instill stronger morals in the cub.
