Name: When Rain Clouds Gather
ISBN: 9780435909611

Bessie Head

Two exiles--one white, one black--in a poor village in Botswana struggle with tradition, climate, and the local chief as they try to modernize the villagers' farming methods.

When Rain Clouds Gather

Marion

To fill in the dull round of the day, many women drifted to the church, where they were also able to obtain a bit of mission education.

 But in spite of the advantage they had over men educationally, few of the women developed a new personality.

They remained their same old tribal selves, docile and inferior.

Paulina gazed thoughtfully into the fire. It had surprised her when Makhaya had inquired about the child. Batswana men no longer cared. 

In fact, a love affair resulting in pregnancy was one sure way of driving a man away, and it was a country of fatherless children now. Perhaps, she thought, this man still had tribal customs which forced him to care about children. 

Every protection for women was breaking down and being replaced by nothing.

'Are you religious, Mama?' he asked lightly.

Mma-Millipede looked at him with an alert glance. 'If you mean, am I good, I can right away say no, no, no, she said.

Goodness is impossible to achieve. I am searching for a faith, without which I cannot live.'

They must know what would happen one day in southern Africa. They must know, somewhere deep down, that one day all those millions of unarmed people would pitch themselves bodily on the bullets, if that was the only way of ridding themselves of an oppressor.

The whole world knew this. There was this curious Philosophy• Violence breeds hatred and hatred breeds violence. Hatred can only be defeated by love and peace.

But had Hitler been defeated by love and peace? Six million Jews had quietly died before Jewish people earned the right to live on this earth. Had six million Africans to die in southern Africa before black men earned a dignity too?

The philosophy of love and peace strangely overlooked who was in possession of the guns.

There had been love and peace for some time on the continent of Africa because for all this time black men had been captivated by the doctrines of Christianity. It took them centuries to realize its contradictions, and Mma-Millipede's generation was the last of the captivated generations. The contradictions were apparent to Makhaya, and perhaps there was no greater crime as yet than all the lies Western civilization had told in the name of Jesus Christ. It seemed to Makhaya far preferable for Africa if it did without Christianity and Christian double-talk, fat priests, golden images, and looked around at all the thin naked old men who sat under trees weaving baskets with shaking hands. People could do without religions and Gods who died for the sins of the world and thereby left men without any feeling of self-respons-ibility for the crimes they committed. This seemed to Makhaya the greatest irony of Christianity. It meant that a white man could forever go on slaughtering black men simply because Jesus Christ would save him from his sins. Africa could do without a religion like that.

This novel is a beautiful exploration of various themes main one being a society in transition. It’s set in independent Botswana and gives great insight into rural life in Botswana, this is a nomadic society where men travel far for cattle grazing, while the women remain home farming, a white man moves into the community to teach the women new ways of farming particularly for capital so they transition into cash crops

Bessie head explores the effects of changing to a post colonial society through the effects on tribe which had been a main organizing factor in colonial times, african womanhood where women are empowered through the new forms of farming particularly for money, the tension between old customs and values and modernity such as the taboos around growing certain crops because they are grown by tribes considered inferior, relations between black and white people post independence through the character of Gilbert who moves into the village to help transition the locals from subsistence agriculture and finally exile through Makwanya the protagonist who similar to Bessie Head is a South African who flees the apartheid state after being tried and imprisoned for anti apartheid organising. 

This is the first african novel i have read that is centred on life in rural areas particularly around farming(subsistence agriculture) which is still a major part of life on our continent in Africa. Especially showing some historical context for the transition from subsistence farming to the rise of the cash crop economy.

A great introduction to Bessie Head who is considered part of the canon of anti apartheid writers in South Africa. 

This novel is a beautiful exploration of various themes main one being a society in transition. It’s set in independent Botswana and gives great insight into rural life in Botswana, this is a nomadic society where men travel far for cattle grazing, while the women remain home farming, a white man moves into the community to teach the women new ways of farming particularly for capital so they transition into cash crops

Bessie head explores the effects of changing to a post colonial society through the effects on tribe which had been a main organizing factor in colonial times, african womanhood where women are empowered through the new forms of farming particularly for money, the tension between old customs and values and modernity such as the taboos around growing certain crops because they are grown by tribes considered inferior, relations between black and white people post independence through the character of Gilbert who moves into the village to help transition the locals from subsistence agriculture and finally exile through Makwanya the protagonist who similar to Bessie Head is a South African who flees the apartheid state after being tried and imprisoned for anti apartheid organising. 

This is the first african novel i have read that is centred on life in rural areas particularly around farming(subsistence agriculture) which is still a major part of life on our continent in Africa. Especially showing some historical context for the transition from subsistence farming to the rise of the cash crop economy.

A great introduction to Bessie Head who is considered part of the canon of anti apartheid writers in South Africa. 

When Rain Clouds Gather

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