Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 116
which he described only a couple of years previously as a possible eighth wonder of the
world, which would be a showcase if it were not such a remote and unknown place.
In our next section we will see how things developed, and see that the attachment of the local
people of Ghwa'a to their mountainous home was not just practical, but also emotional. We
will learn later that the long term effect of this was very defeatist and traumatic, in particular
for the people of Ghwa'a. They had experienced, a little less than thirty years earlier, how the
slave raider turned district head Hamman Yaji came to their homeland, which for a long time
they had thought was a fairly safe and independent place to live. The maintenance and care
they had put into their agricultural terraces was more than just a technical achievement. Little
did they know then of what was still to come, and that only about sixty years later the Boko
Haram terror group would spread fear and death and also re-enslavement across the terraced
hillsides. Again, not many took notice of that latest tragedy either!
Plate 13b: Ghwa'a terracing - still intact during my time (the photo was taken in 1998)
Limankara and Disa become the newly planned resettlement area
At the end of 1952 the original resettlement area to the west of the Zelidva spur was
abandoned due to problems of flooding, and a new area was now projected to the south of
Gwoza, between Limankara and Disa. The plan over the coming two or three years was to
resettle between 25,000 and 30,000 inhabitants of the Gwoza hills to this more suitable area
consisting of about 100 square miles. We are told in the report that the area would be divided
into farmlands of 30 acres, each aligned in one or two rows with two acres preserved for the
building of houses. The houses were planned to be at the front of the plots, so they would be
opposite one another other along a long road, for easier administration. The new villages
emerging from this plan were supposed to consist of homogeneous tribal units.
Unfortunately this new plan of an organised resettlement scheme did not take off either. The
provision of settlers seemed to be the main obstacle, as becomes obvious in a report by the
settlement officer, Mr Kershaw, entitled 'Gwoza Settlement Scheme: Provision of Settlers',
written in December 1953. The report was written after the 'Gwoza Affair', which resulted in
the already-mentioned killing of the retired lawan of Gwoza town in Ghwa’a. I will
summarise the report as it provides an appropriate pretext for the next section.
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