The Black Badge of Africa Gift Mudzingwa I was born with the scent
of wild flowers in the air,
The smell of wood-fires,
And the cooking pot.
My first tears flowed
from the sting of smoke,
From the pain of the thorns
in my naked small feet.
How I hated, at first,
The long hours, herding cattle,
But loved the hills,
And the river - when it gave me fish!
I learned to listen
to the songs of the birds,
To watch the colours
of the dawn and sunset.
I learned to love
The land that gave me
My own black badge.
The black badge of Africa,
QUESTIONS
1. Where is the poem set? Provide two sets of evidence from the poem that support the
setting
13]
2. What does the black badge symbolize in this poem?
(1)

to create suspense.

major league baseball

explanation:

jack roosevelt robinson broke the color barrier in major league baseball.as he was the first african american to play in the major leagues, jackie robinson became the target of racial abuse. jackie robinson is referring to the historic event, harlem riot.

with mrs. linde, nora reveals her insensitivity and lack of shame about the forgery she committed. she implies that mrs. linde has obviously aged since they last met 10 years earlier, which accounts for nora’s inability to recognize her old friend. although nora seems sympathetic to mrs. linde’s plight, she can’t seem to control herself from boasting about her three children, her husband’s recent promotion, and how good she feels to finally have some money to spend. in a way, she seems to be flaunting her good fortune in front of mrs. linde who, deprived of all these benefits, has come to ask nora for . it is also through her interactions with mrs. linde that we realize something deeper lies under nora’s seemingly childish exterior. she reveals the secret of her forgery to mrs. linde and seems to see herself as quite resourceful for having done it.

in the company of dr. rank, nora is freer than she is with her own husband. she openly laughs with joy at knowing that all the other bank employees will be under her husband’s control. she offers dr. rank a macaroon, apparently forgetting that he knows she is forbidden to eat them. she then quickly covers for herself by claiming that mrs. linde brought them. nora seems much more assertive and free with these other characters, as well as unabashedly willing to scheme, lie, and justify her transgressions as altruistic.  

krogstad provides an interesting parallel to nora. like nora, he too is guilty of committing forgery, for which torvald condemns him and decides to fire him. although krogstad is a man and nora a woman, their crimes of forgery unite them. in fact, krogstad might represent what nora would be like if she were a man and were not strictly scrupulous like her husband is. for example, she tells mrs. linde that "a barrister's profession is such an uncertain thing, especially if he won't undertake unsavoury cases; and naturally torvald has never been willing to do that." perhaps nora would have delved into the unsavory, given how opposite she is to her husband. krogstad's is also the only harsh voice of reality that nora is forced to hear, and that is because he blackmails her for her regaining his job at the bank. finally, torvald’s reaction to krogstad’s forgery seems to foreshadow his harsh and cold reaction to nora’s forgery.