Chapter 108 History Lesson

December 7, 1867.

Colonial East Africa, Mlandizi Cultural School.

Today the First Town (Mlandizi) Cultural School welcomed two special "students", Maximiliano I and his wife Queen Carlotta.

Queen Carlotta arrived in East Africa a month ago. At that time, for the safety of her future mother-in-law, Ernst personally arranged for one of his own ships to free up a ship and go to East Africa with the fleet.

Seeing Maximiliano I safe and sound in Tanga, East Africa, Queen Carlotta and Maximilian I cried while embracing each other.

As the person who originally encouraged Maximilian I, after Maximilian I was arrested and imprisoned in Mexico, Queen Carlotta shed tears every day in Europe and suffered greatly.

The disaster in Mexico caused Queen Carlotta to abandon her dream of becoming a queen. Now she just wants to spend the rest of her life with her beloved.

After Tanga and Maximiliano I staged a passionate affair, Queen Carlotta expressed her willingness to live with Maximiliano I in East Africa for some time.

…

Maximilian I visited the First Town (Mlandizi) for the first time, the seat of the central government of East Africa.

As the earliest developed city in East Africa (a town, some European cities are very small, they are actually towns), its size is slightly smaller than that of Dar es Salaam, but its planning and facilities are obviously more complete, and Architecture and culture reflect the style of the German region.

What is slightly different from Europe lies in the local natural landscape, environmental climate and some East African urban supporting facilities planned by Ernst himself.

Such as street trees and green belts, which are currently difficult to see in European cities. Of course, the green belts in the East African colonies are very simple, which is to set aside an earthy open space in the middle or on both sides of the road to allow weeds to grow on their own.

The most indispensable thing in the East African colonies is land, so urban planning is very wild. Big is always the best. Although the current road scale and grade are not up to the standard, the places that should be reserved have been reserved and can be used directly in the future. Upgrade city roads.

Therefore, on both sides of the streets paved with bricks and stones, apart from the green belts, there are still large open spaces, and the houses and buildings on both sides are separated by the roads. This makes the first town (Mlandizi) with a relatively small population ) looks more empty.

The houses on both sides are mainly one-story buildings, and many of them are still civil structures. However, the open space between the yard and the houses is almost 100 square meters, which is also convenient for subsequent renovation and upgrades.

The drainage channel is mainly behind the house and is currently open-air. The strange laws in East Africa stipulate that residents are not allowed to discharge sewage in the public drainage channel behind the house. The drainage channel is mainly used to deal with precipitation in the rainy season.

This is done to prevent the drainage channels from turning into smelly ditches. You must know that the environment in East Africa, especially the coastal plains like First Town, has relatively high temperatures all year round. Once the sewage ferments, it can be washed away by rainwater in time during the rainy season. , and the weather is dry during the dry season, so sewage can only stay in the ditches, breeding various bacteria and attracting flies.

Of course, as the future develops, it will not matter if the open water channels are paved with cement pipes. But in this era, East Africa must put hygiene first. Hotbeds of tropical diseases are no joke.

When Maximiliano I and his wife first arrived in the first town, they saw the First Town Cultural School. Because the First Town Wenhua School was built late, it was built on the outskirts of the town.

The couple were both interested in the educational content of the East African colonies. They wanted to know how the content taught in such a backward (compared to Europe) place was different from that in Europe.

In Mexico, Maximiliano I had no time to show his ambitions. The whole country was in chaos and there was no energy for education.

Although conditions in East Africa were relatively poor, compulsory education was still available, which naturally interested the couple, so Maximiliano I took the initiative to experience schools in East Africa.

The East African colonial government sent people to arrange for the two to visit the First Town Cultural School.

The first-grade classroom of the First Town Cultural School was full of students, and Maximiliano I and his wife were arranged to sit in temporary seats at the back.

There are about thirty or forty students in the class, including children of Chinese immigrants and children of immigrants from the Austro-Hungarian Empire (Paraguayan immigrants need a separate Spanish teacher), and the teacher is a graduate of the Hechingen Military Academy.

As the seat of the central government of East Africa, the teaching staff of the First Town Cultural School is unparalleled in East Africa.

You must know that the Hechingen Military Academy and other schools run by the Hechingen royal family are actually crash courses, so the level of the students varies.

Many students, by the time they graduate, can at most be able to converse in German and master some German words.

But there is a huge shortage of people in East Africa, so even those with poor grades will be sent to teach in the East African colonies.

Those who are smart and learn a lot will be tutored by senior students, and those who are not very smart and learn poorly will be tutored by junior students.

Fortunately, the content of textbooks in colonial schools in East Africa was relatively low-level, and most people only had to read the textbooks according to the text.

This section was a history lesson. Maximiliano I opened the textbook on the East African colonies and read it with gusto, and kept whispering to Queen Carlotta.

The Hechingen graduates who taught took the initiative to ignore the little tricks of Maximiliano I and his wife. After all, they all knew that these two were distinguished guests invited by the government.

Because of the current diversity of immigrants in the East African colonies, teachers have to use bilingual teaching in the first grade, and then switch to German teaching from the second grade onwards. Therefore, Chinese children must overcome the language barrier if they want to achieve academic results.

The first chapter, unsurprisingly, is an ode to the Hohenzollerns, emphasizing the royal family of Hechingen as rulers of the lands of East Africa and the long history of the royal family of Hechingen and the Hohenzollerns.

Naturally, these young children didn't feel awkward watching it, and just listened to it as a story. The history textbook was actually extracurricular reading, and there was no exam.

This is also a little trick played by Ernst. When a course requires an exam, there will always be a group of people who will be disgusted with it.

When reading extracurricular books (actually non-exam books), the younger you are, the more likely you are to become addicted. Just like novels, the more you read, the more addictive you become. However, treating novels as exam content will greatly dampen the enthusiasm of readers.

Maximilian I and Queen Carlotta read the last chapter of the first chapter while suppressing their laughter.

After all, when it comes to history and inheritance, many families in Europe are more prominent than the Hohenzollern family, especially the Habsburg family, which still lacks some background.

Of course, every aristocratic family in Europe publicizes the prominent status and long history of their family, so this is not the reason why Maximiliano I broke the defense. If he was bragging about the Habsburg family, he would definitely be better than what is written in this book. Even more exaggerated.

What made Maximilian I and both of them feel funny was the final description of the royal family of Hechingen, which was almost the same as the savior.

This is not an injustice to Ernst. The final content is the use of religious narrative techniques to mythologise the status of the royal family of Hechingen.

It's just that Ernst was more reserved and didn't explicitly mention any gods, such as the so-called descendants of Amaterasu from the Japanese royal family, the Egyptian pharaoh who called himself the son of the sun god, and the Far Eastern royal family who was enshrined in the Zen of Mount Tai...

Instead, they used words (yes, the kind of Blue Sky Project) to make the Hechingen royal family look very solemn and majestic. The reason for this is to avoid religion.

Immigrants in East Africa now have a variety of beliefs, but without churches and priests, residents, whether they are Catholic or Orthodox, can only rely on ancestral experience to engage in spontaneous prayer and other activities.

But Ernst was aiming at secularization. It was difficult to force these adults to give up their beliefs, but it was still easy to change the minds of these children.

There is no need to go too far, as long as education and sports do not have religious overtones as is currently the case in Europe (many religious schools in Europe).

If they are not learned and repeated, people's memories will slowly fade away. Relying on the East African people to spontaneously inherit those religious traditions will never be as good as the elaboration and dissemination of a professional organization (referring to the church).