I’m Building A Set of Stairs that Leads to the Stars...

From Esther Greenwood aka Sylvia Plath let’s move on to Elizabeth aka Bessie Head!

Like Em Zee, and like Esther, Elizabeth is the fictive persona to Bessie Head in this, her hugely successful autobiographical novel, A Question of Power, published in the year 1973.

Bessie Head is one of the prominent novelists from South Africa, and in this, her autobiographical novel, titled A Question of Power, Elizabeth/Bessie Head, the protagonist, struggles with depression, and the repressive societal outlook towards her, as a result of the oppressive social conditioning! In this highly autobiographical novel, Elizabeth was born to an interracial couple – her mother being a wealthy and white South African lady, and her father, a black African servant! In short, her precarious predicament is that, she is a love-child, conceived out-of-wedlock! And promptly enough, as per the 'dictates' of the oppressive social norms that forbid the birth of a child out-of-wedlock, Elizabeth’s mom is sent to a mental asylum, for reasons known only to the so-called ‘powers-that-be’! Hence it is anybody’s guess whether Elizabeth/Bessie’s mother was really 'insane' or situations so 'necessitated' it! 

Sample this –

“Your mother was insane. If you’re not careful you’ll get insane just like your mother. Your mother was a white woman. They had to lock her up, as she was having a child by the stable boy who was a native.”

And because of this, her mother’s ‘mental illness’ Elizabeth  lives with her adopted parents where she takes her schooling, and then goes on to become a teacher! 

After a failed marriage, Elizabeth moves with her young son to rural Botswana, all alone by herself! Here she has to battle severe financial crisis, and a mental breakdown as well! Adding salt to injury, the rural people in Botswana are really suspicious of her mannerisms, which adds to her mental woes. Elizabeth thus faces a deprivation both physically and intellectually! She also teaches at a local school, and soon after, gets involved in a local cooperative farming venture that was meant to promote the local economy of the village.

This autobiographical novel sharply contrasts the daytime world of Elizabeth’s drudgery, her routines at school, and at the cooperatives, with her night-time chaotic world of mental breakdown!

Her first novel When Rain Clouds Gather that happened in 1969, discusses threadbare on this, her life as a refugee in a refugee camp in rural Botswana. And with highly favourable reviews to authenticate and reassure the writer within her, Bessie moves ahead courageously in her literary career, with her subsequent books!

When Rain Clouds Gather is a pioneering novel in many ways. In fact, it is through this intensely descriptive novel that outsiders the world over could read and know for themselves the gory effects and horrific consequences of apartheid in South Africa. Moreover, the novel is based on her lived experiences as a refugee at the Bamangwato Development Farm!

Makhaya Maseko, the young South African refugee flees his land because of the racially-charged atmosphere, and settles in Botswana, in the fictional village of Golema Mmidi. Soon, Makhaya is involved in a cattle cooperative, as part of a local agricultural endeavour, and he gets hired as a worker on the farm. Gilbert is impressed with Makhaya and soon starts training him on basic skills in agricultural farming, and driving a tractor.

Makhaya, who is adept in the use of the Tswana language, begins to share enriching ideas in agriculture with the local community women in Golema Mmidi. No spoilers though!

Just some snippets that I loved reading through, from the novel, for y’all –

“Oh, so you have no complaints about the white man?” the old man said, struggling to pry some information out of the tightly shut mouth.

The young man only turned his face slightly, yet the light of laughter danced in his eyes.

“Ha, I see now,” the old man said, pretending disappointment. “You are running away from tribalism.

But just ahead of you is the worst tribal country in the world. We Barolongs are neighbours of the Batswana, but we cannot get along with them. They are a thick-headed lot who think no further than this door. Tribalism is meat and drink to them.”

The young man burst out laughing. “Oh, Papa,” he said. “I just want to step on free ground. I don’t care about people. I don’t care about anything, not even the white man. I want to feel what it is like to live in a free country and then maybe some of the evils in my life will correct themselves.”

In his anxiety to get as far away from the border as fast as possible, he hardly felt the intense,

penetrating cold of the frosty night. For almost half an hour he sped, blind and deaf and numbed to anything but his major fear.

He had not walked more than a few paces when he again came to an abrupt halt. The air was full of the sound of bells, thousands and thousands of bells, tinkling and tinkling with a purposeful, monotonous rhythm. Yet there was not a living thing in sight to explain where the sound was coming from. He was quite sure that around him and in front of him were trees and more trees, thorn trees that each time he approached too near ripped at his clothes. But how to explain the bells, unearthly sounding bells in an apparently unlived-in wasteland?

Oh, God, I’m going crazy, he thought.

Soon he saw a fire in the bush, a small bit of self-contained light in the overwhelming darkness. He headed straight for it, and as he approached, the flickering, crackling light outlined the shape of two mud huts and the forms of a woman and a child. It was the woman who looked up as she became aware of approaching footsteps. He stood still, not wishing to alarm her. She appeared to be very old. Her small eyes were completely sunk in the wrinkles of her face. The child was a girl of about ten who kept her head bent, idly drawing a pattern with a stick on the ground. He greeted the old woman in Tswana, politely calling her mother in a quiet, reassuring voice.

She did not return the greeting. Instead she demanded, “Yes, what do you want?” She had a loud, shrill, uncontrolled voice, and he disliked her immediately.

“I was looking for shelter for the night,” he said.

She kept quiet, yet stared fixedly at the direction from which his voice came. Then she burst out in that loud, jarring voice, “I say you are one of the spies from over the border.”

Since he did not respond she became quite excited, raising her voice even louder. “Why else do

people wander about at night, unless they are spies? All the spies in the world are coming into our country. I tell you, you are a spy! You are a spy!”

It was the shouting that unnerved him. The border was still very near, and at any moment now the patrol van would pass.

“How can you embarrass me like this?” he said in a quiet, desperate voice. “Are women of your

country taught to shout at men?”

“I’m not shouting,” she shrilled, but in a slightly lower voice. His words and consistently quiet speech were beginning to impress her “I know you are a spy,” she said. “You are running away from them.”

He smiled. “Perhaps you just want to annoy me. But as you can see, I’m not easily annoyed.”

“Where do you come from?” she asked.

“From over the border,” he said. “I have an appointment to start work in this country tomorrow.”

“Why didn’t you come by train?” she asked suspiciously.

“But my home is so near, in the Barolong village,” he lied.

She turned her head and spat on the ground as an eloquent summing up of what she thought of him.

Then she sat with her head averted as though she had abruptly dismissed him from her thoughts. The bells were still tinkling away.

“What are all those bells for?” he asked.

“They are tied around the necks of the cattle because they are grazing freely in the bush,” she said.

He felt ashamed at the thought of how they had terrified him and they were only cow bells. He also wanted to laugh out loud, and to suppress this he said conversationally, “I’m not an owner of cattle. I suppose the bells are there to locate them if they get lost?”

“Of course,” she said scornfully. “Cattle wander a great distance while grazing.”

Meanwhile the child had crept quietly back to the fireside. Half-consciously his gaze wandered in her direction, and he was startling to find the child looking at him with a full bold stare.

There was something very unchildlike about it and it displeased him. His glance flickered back to the old woman. She was staring again and he even imagined that he saw a gleam in the sunken old eyes.

My God, he thought, what a pair of vultures they are.

Aloud he said, “Is the room ready now, mother?”

That’s for a teaser, though! Do go ahead and read this gripping novel that’s available on all major online stores!

To sum it up, through this intense novel, not only does Bessie Head depict with detailed descriptors on the life of a refugee, but also beautifully brings out the fact that traditional tribal knowledge systems are highly pertinent, and hugely impactful even as it joins together with the advancements of science for the progress and betterment of society.

And with highly favourable reviews to authenticate and reassure the writer in her, Elizabeth moves ahead courageously in her literary career, with her subsequent books!

The fact that a vibrant soul like Bessie, battling depression, in rural Botswana, with half-white ancestry, at an age and clime when inter-racial parentage was considered a huge taboo especially in rural Botswana, could stand up for herself, with courage and conviction speaks volumes to her perseverance and her faith in herself.

And, considering the fact that she was a solitary woman without a family, a woman without money and support, a woman without any one to guide or counsel her, and still managed all by herself to make her mark in the literary world, by carving a unique literary niche and a literary space for herself, by writing in intense detail, about her tryst with her mental hallucinations, and her psychiatric troubles, (that she quite believes she has inherited from her mom,) is in itself a laudable feat worthy of the highest of appreciations!

And that’s one reason why, although she died at the age of 49, her inspiration and her rich legacy continue to live on through her living words that prove that added ammo and a shot in the arm to a generation of readers and writers in general, and those battling depression and mental illness in particular.

As Bessie Head says with conviction, “I’m building a set of stairs that leads to the stars. I have the authority to take the whole of mankind up there with me. That is why I write.”

And that explains the immense power of her pen, for us all!

More power to Elizabeth aka Bessie Head and her ilk!

images: canyouactuallydotcom, amazondotcom