What Is Your City’s Samora Line?
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In Harare, Samora Machel is a road (and Mozambican war hero) that goes right through the city (America isn’t the only place who chop did this in the 50s) splitting it in 2—north and south.
That whole line isn’t technically Samora but the ends come from a highway which leads into it so it’s all the same really.
One of the nice things the colonialists did was take all the nice land and shove all the black people onto the shitty parts. When it comes to Harare (then Salisbury), the colonialists got nice large tracts of land in the nice parts of Harare up north leaving the poor gardeners and maids who worked for them to get the now crowded but still shitty southern parts. Mbare and Chitungwiza were commuter towns where the workers would stay without their families in the rural areas.
Evidently, I’m from the northern part of Harare—muSalad (a coconut).
Anyhow, I think the idea of a separating landmark is in most cities. For example, I saw a video discussing the Red Rooster line [14:28] in Sydney, Australia that goes from east to west in more of the Red Rooster restaurants are on the poorer west side of the line than the richer east.
From the video.
There’s a proper word for this that I don’t know of but I’ll call it the Samora Line for now. What’s the Samora line in your City? Email me at [email protected] and let me know.