With a raucous St Patrick's Day dinner at Fort Salisbury (Harare) in
1891, a mere seven months after the Pioneer Column raised their flag on
Cecil Square, the Mashonaland Irish Association was founded. Not only is
it the oldest expatriate association in Zimbabwe, the MIA is the oldest
Irish association on the African continent. The association developed
into a vehicle for celebrating Irishness through a busy social calendar
and welfare programmes. For over a century, the MIA has weathered the
various challenges and upheavals of a shared colonial experience and
Zimbabwe's struggle for independence. Today, it continues to celebrate
all things Irish while embracing its diaspora as it approaches its
thirteenth decade of existence.
This Miscellany charts the association from its inception to the present
day with contributions from historians, scholars, writers and poets,
priests, nuns, missionaries, ex-MIA Presidents and members; the diverse
contributions range from the colonial Anglo-Irish to the Jewish-Irish
experience and throughout, personalities have been resurrected,
colourful ones recorded and even the Minute books examined; all attest
to the richness of the association, its events but above all its
members. Cumulatively, and beyond the stories of individuals, the
narrative provides new insights into the layered complexity of the
colonial experience, and the adaptation (or not) of people of a
different culture and belief into a foreign setting.
