“You may see no rivers on the ground but we keep the rivers inside us. That is why all good things and all good people are called rain. Sometimes we see the rain clouds gather even though not a cloud appears in the sky. It is all in our heart.”
I challenged myself to ‘Read a New Country’ every month in 2023 where I picked a book from a country that I had never read anything from. And I ended up discovering such good treasures. I couldn’t continue it in 2024 but this year I’m picking up from where I left off.
I wandered to Botswana this month. Set in the drought-stricken rural village of Golema Mmidi, Botswana, “When Rain Clouds Gather” by Bessie Head follows Makhaya, a South African refugee fleeing apartheid, who illegally crosses into Botswana. He lands up in Golema Mmidi, a remote village mired in deep-rooted traditions and corruption, and reeling from its harsh environment. He soon gets entangled in the political and social microclimate of the village and its inhabitants, which include Matenge, a self-serving leader resistant to change, Gilbert Balfour, an eccentric English agriculturalist determined to introduce modern farming techniques, Mma Millipede, a kind, older woman and Paulina who develops a crush on Makhaya.
Each character in Head’s novel is distinct, and made intriguing with only snippets of their backgrounds revealed to us. Makhaya is enigmatic yet relatable. We get glimpses of a past shaped by oppression and pain but we never fully know what happened with him. Gilbert, too, talks of “running away from England” because “he had not felt free in England either.” Paulina is a fiercely independent single mother who is also looking to shrug off her past and build a new future.
Golema Mmidi welcomes all these runaways and becomes a character in itself, a microcosm of post-colonial Africa, torn between tradition and modernization, survival and growth.
Bessie Head’s writing is both lyrical and incisive and she finely balances the personal and the political. Head is South African by birth but lived in Botswana for many years as a refugee and is known more as a literary giant of Botswana.
Read this book for its odd set of characters and a peek into a Botswana village.
