Rasharasha: To Africa for a Rose

by Emma Ellis

This forthcoming book tells the story of a pioneering Western Australian family who staked a future in East Africa on the promise of an abandoned rosebush.

Blending family story with history, this non-fiction account is told through the lives of three generations of women, united by the man and the farm - named Rasharasha - that they all loved. 

In 1917, Honor Hassell, the youngest daughter of a wealthy and distinguished Western Australian pastoralist and politician, married penniless, disabled Gallipoli veteran, Frank Anderson, against her parents’ wishes and accompanied him to Yokohama, Japan. Six years later, they lost their home and almost their lives in the Great Kanto earthquake of 1923. Seeking healing from trauma and distance from family disapproval, Honor and Frank began a new life in the wilds of East Africa, with their daughter, Patricia. There they created a farm on the strength of finding an abandoned rosebush flourishing amid a tangle of grasses and thorn trees on an isolated valley slope known locally as Rasharasha. This Swahili word, they learned, meant ‘land of mists’ and ‘good grazing under the trees’.

Soon the family found itself at the heart of dramatic world events that culminated, once more, in the need to find a new home. Only later did the family members realise that behind the tumultuous forces determining the course of their existence lay a truth that none had imagined. Told in three parts, the account focuses first on Honor, secondly on her daughter, Patricia, and thirdly on her granddaughter, Jeannine.

The book is not yet available for purchase, but enquiries can be sent via the Contact page.

Three Voices, Three Generations of Women

Honor: Honoria Ethel Anderson, née Hassell, 1893 - 1980

Patricia: Ethel Patricia Wright, née Anderson, 1918 - 2011

Jeannine: Monica Jeannine Cook, née Wright, 1944 -

The Story

“I have bought a farm here. Await letter in the post. Have not received any letters since Ceylon. Are you well. Address Arusha Tanganyika.”
Frank Anderson, 1925

When Honor Anderson received in 1925 an unexpected cablegram from her husband, Frank, whom she had not seen for almost two years, she faced a life-defining choice. He told her that he had bought a farm in Tanganyika Territory (now Tanzania), near the town of Arusha. Should she and her seven-year-old daughter, Patricia, remain safely with relatives in Western Australia, or chance the unknown in remote Africa? They both missed Frank; family separation had been forced on them by a calamitous earthquake in Yokohama, Japan, where they had previously been living. Although used to a life of comfort, Honor bravely chose adventure, guided by love and a sense of duty. She sailed to Africa with Patricia. When they eventually arrived at the new home Frank had chosen, there was no farm… Only a beautiful pink rose flourished in a long-abandoned garden, deep in the wilds of Maasailand.

Part One tells of Honor’s early life of comfort and privilege in Western Australia before her marriage. After secret fiancé Frank and her favourite brother enlisted in 1914 in the 10th Light Horse regiment and went to war, she endured weeks of harrowing silence. Finally came devastating news about the regiment’s famous Nek charge at Gallipoli in 1915. Eventually she heard from Frank again, seriously wounded but alive. The story then moves to Japan. There, Honor and Frank lived an idyllic life in Yokohama until the terrifying 1923 Great Kanto earthquake and subsequent fire. Together with their five-year-old daughter, Patricia, their escape was dramatic.

Honor had never imagined herself as a pioneer’s wife, let alone simultaneously caring for a man disabled at Gallipoli and a young child traumatized by an earthquake. Somehow, she had to cope when she joined Frank in their new home, a ruined shack at Rasharasha, adjacent to the wild and challenging Monduli mountains, an eagle’s flight from Mount Kilimanjaro. Isolated and miles from medical care, their only neighbours were wild animals and nomadic Maasai warriors. Slowly the farm they created together began to take shape. It was a simple idea Honor had that eventually transformed their lives.

Part Two shows how lonely young Patricia was influenced by her parents’ astonishment when they realized that, from the start, the family was unwelcome in Tanganyika Territory. It was not the local Maasai people nor other Africans who evinced this hostility. It came from an entirely unexpected quarter.

Like her mother, Patricia remained guided by her loyalty to Frank, a pioneer in agriculture and photographic safaris, a regional politician and one of the ‘great characters’ of colonial Tanganyika/Tanzania. It was Patricia’s tenacity that consolidated Honor’s idea that evolved into the family’s contribution to the Allied victory in World War II.

Part Three sets the life of Jeannine, Patricia’s daughter, in the wider context of the British Empire’s evolving global socio-political crises and epic dissolution. It shows how the changes in colonial thinking and practices shaped the lives of the three generations of women. Ultimately, the 1960’s ‘Winds of Change’ tore their lives asunder. Jeannine was thrown into a world where she sought to understand and unravel the myths and shocking truth concerning Britain’s troubled relationship with its colonial subjects, both past and present - the fallout from which we still contend with today.

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Rasharasha: To Africa for a Rose illustrates vividly the vital yet often unacknowledged role of women who supported the pioneering dreams of their men-folk. It also pays tribute to the natural world and its power to sustain people in adverse circumstances.

The rose as a symbol unites the Anderson family’s tale of passion, beauty, survival, war and politics.

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