Tsitsi Dangarembga’s novel Nervous Conditions tells the story of Tambu, a young teenage girl, as she lives a life of hardships, twists, and turns in the colonized state of Rhodesia, which is now present day Zimbabwe. In the large picture the novel deals with how a negative, colonial influence can place a control over people causing them to develop illnesses, side effects, and mindsets that can last for many years. However, the themes of the book go above and beyond those conditions in regards to freedom, identity, and the importance of education.
The idea of education was one that struck me as interesting because I believe it is a concept that is easy for many American readers to connect to while reading the novel. Education is taken for granted in the United States because everyone is given free public education and many students continue at the university level because they have the financial means and opportunity to do so, but education in Zimbabwe is a different story, as the country suffered from years of colonial control that caused their people to have fewer opportunities in the field of learning and becoming educated.
Nervous Conditions helps set up the idea that the importance of education is a universal theme because when readers from other countries see how much Tambu works in order to go to school they will be able to connect her journey to how hard they work in order to be successful in school. Education serves as a way to gain a voice, an identity, and a place in the world in both societies, but a difference in opportunities makes it difficult for many people in Zimbabwe to continue to become educated as they don’t have all the resources that the people in America do. I believe this novel offers a look into the worlds of both education systems in the United States and Zimbabwe showing that education is valued in both societies, but democracies have more opportunities for their people to continue their education as postcolonial countries are still suffering from years of being ruled and the transitions that have come after that colonization.
In the novel, Tambu’s brother, Nhamo, is the only member of the family that is being educated because most families could only afford to send one person to school at a time, and their parents raised funds for Nhamo being that he was the male of the family. Even though it wasn’t fair that the system was set up that way being that Tambu didn’t get a chance to immediately go to school because she was a woman, education was still a whole family ordeal. Babamukuru, the children’s uncle, is the head of the family because he is the most educated and successful. Therefore, it is his job to make sure that he sets up the rest of the family with everything that they need in order to have productive and plentiful lives. He does his part by offering Nhamo to come to his missionary school as it would be a better education than regular schools in Zimbabwe. Meanwhile, Tambu is stuck at home wishing that she too could have the education that her brother was getting from her uncle. Tambu works as hard as she can in order to reach this goal as she plants corn and tries to sell it at the marketplace to raise funds for school. The selling process doesn’t go over too well, but eventually a white couple gives her enough money to pay for her education because they felt sorry for her. However, she didn’t get her chance to go to school until Nhamo reached a sudden death because she was able to take his place for her family being that Babamukuru wanted to keep his promise of educated at least one person from each strand in his family.
The fact that Tambu was given the chance to have this education was quite shocking during this time period in this country because women weren’t looked at as equal to men. When Tambu initially expressed her aspirations to attend school her father said, “Can you cook books and feed them to your husband? Stay at home with your mother. Learn to cook and clean. Grow vegetables” (Dangarembga, 15). His views go along with the common ideal that education was a man’s institution. Her father believed that any education that she received would just benefit her husband’s family in the future and not hers, so he saw no use in providing money for her to learn when it could be allocated elsewhere in more useful ways. Luckily, education was an “inherited tradition and a patriarchal investment in which it allowed the man to play the primary bread winner” (Nair, 133) because that allowed Tambu the privilege of attending the missionary school under the guidance of her uncle, Babamukuru, who is the headmaster of the school.
This educational opportunity sets Tambu up for lifelong learning since Babamukuru’s devotion to his family overrides society’s view on women being educated. It was rare for women to be highly educated at this time, but that didn’t mean that it didn’t happen. Bababmukuru’s wife, Maiguru, holds a master’s degree, and she serves as an inspiration to Tambu throughout the story. Tambu hopes to one day be as educated as her aunt, but she hopes that when that time comes she will have the ability to use that education.
Although Maiguru is highly educated, she doesn’t have the privilege of using that education because she still has to play the role of a woman in society. She is expected to cook, clean, and wait on the men of her household while at the mission and while at the family homestead. This causes turmoil for her as she is trapped in this society where she can’t let her true identity show. Literary theorist, Janice Hill, states, “colonial education, and the drive of the entire Sigauke family to educate themselves and each other through the colonial system, drive and complicate much of the action of the novel in ways that are directly connected to silencing…” (Hill, 79). Maiguru is a character who is connected to that silencing as her role in society causes her to not be able to use her degree. A person’s education is what defines who they are, and the fact that she doesn’t have that right leaves her as a silent character in this novel. She conforms to her role of mother and wife and just lets her degree go to no use. She was fortunate to have the opportunity to earn that degree in England while her husband and children were studying abroad, but back in the state of Rhodesia, she doesn’t have the opportunity to put the knowledge she gained to use.
Tambu is aware that her aunt’s lifestyle could very well be her outcome in the future as the society she lives in is relatively static, but she hopes that through education and with time opportunities will arise for her. Therefore she takes every chance she can get to keep learning. When given the chance to possibly attend an esteemed mission school near the end of the novel Tambu says, “If you were clever, you slipped through any loophole you could find. I for one was going to take any opportunity that came my way….going to the convent was a chance to lighten those burdens [of the women in my family] by entering a world where burdens were light” (Dangarembga, 182). Although Tambu uttered this statement near end of the book, this seemed to be her motto throughout the novel. She was aware that educational opportunities were scare for her people, especially women, so she took any chance that she could get to learn and, therefore, gain her own identity.
This educational adventure starts right after Tambu’s brother dies and she is offered his spot at Babamukuru’s mission school. This step offers a whole new world for her as she goes from a simple school in her village to this mission school that is towns away. Originally mission schools weren’t used to educate as much as they were to bring Africans to Christianity (Summers, 117), but they also served as a more effective form of education as their teachers were paid more than government schools (Summers, 132) because they held higher degrees and were educated in faraway lands just like Babamukuru.
While at this mission school, Tambu is offered a variety of opportunities that wouldn’t necessarily be available to someone of her status, but because she has the connection with Babamukuru she is allowed the privilege to step inside his world. She lives with Babamukuru’s family right on the mission grounds, and she is treated as if she were a daughter in the household. The family gives her food, provides her with clothing, and sets her up with a bed. Coming from a homestead where she was expected to wait on her family members and play the role of a woman in the home, this was a drastic change for her. She was able to focus on her studies for once in her life while also forming connections with her cousins that had been educated in England.
Being that her cousins, Nyasha and Chido, had been educated in England they were different than most of her peers. Living in a mansion that was as furnished as Babamukuru’s, and having a life as privileged as they had was very rare in Rhodesia at this time. In fact, Tambu had mistaken Babamukuru’s garage for his house (Dangarembga, 64) because she had never dreamed that her uncle would be living in such an extravagant place as his white-walled mansion. There had always been a since of disconnect between Tambu and her cousins because she was very used to her lifestyle on the homestead where things weren’t westernized at all. However, once Tambu started living at the mission, she too started to become westernized just like her cousins. She found in the mission a place that she didn’t want to leave. It offered her a transformation and step into the direction of becoming the person that she wanted to be. She said, “Babamukuru was God, therefore I had arrived in Heaven. I was in danger of becoming an angel, or at the very least a saint, and forgetting how ordinary humans existed—from minute to minute and from hand to mouth” (Dangarembga, 70). Through her time spent at the mission, Tambu was able to learn from scholars in a variety of fields while also living in this dream-like land so different from what the rest of her family was experiencing, and then one day she was offered an opportunity to attend an even higher esteemed mission school ran by nuns.
The day when the nuns came to the mission, Tambu tested high enough on her test that they administered that her next level of schooling could be taken at the covenant school that the nuns ran. Originally, Tambu didn’t want this to happen because he feared that she would become too educated for her own good, but in the end he allowed her to go. Tambu continues with her motto by taking any opportunity placed in front of her and jumping on it. She finds it hard to leave her cousin Nyasha behind, but she knows that she has to do this for her in order to break out of the uneducated stigma that women are placed under in society.
The story ends with Tambu coming back to the mission school to visit Nyasha who is suffering from an eating disorder due to the control that she has been under from her father, her people, and the colonized government. Nyasha’s issue is a separate theme within itself in the story, but it in fact connects with education because when Tambu comes back she sees what the colonized system has done to Nyasha, and she is able to reflect. Tambu states, “I told myself I was a much more sensible person than Nyasha, because I knew what could or couldn’t be done. In this way, I banished the suspicion, buried it in the depths of my subconscious, and happily went back to Sacred Heart” (Dangarembga, 208). Tambu was able to see what a colonized system can do to a person who isn’t rebelling and taking chances to get out of it. Tambu chose education as an escape from this system, and her reflections on how Nyasha turned out allowed her to write about all the aspects of this story in hopes that people could see that she had not gained the freedom to be a strong, independent woman who wasn’t going to let anything stand in her way. She was given opportunities unlike so many other people during this time, but she took them and allowed education to be her ticket to escape, freedom, and identity.
American readers should be able to connect with this idea that education can offer an escape because that is a very similar concept in The United States. Students are told to stay in school because they can achieve their dreams with degrees. High school diplomas used to offer a variety of job opportunities, but now it seems as if people have to have a college degree if they want to make a decent living. Therefore, people are finding means of going to college to escape from the world of financial hardship in order to become the person they want to be. This is similar to Tambu’s journey because in the end her education started to give her an identity and a voice.
American readers should also be able to connect with the way education is set up in Zimbabwe. Students who have the opportunity will attend a primary school for seven years, and then they will move on to secondary school consisting of six forms which are closely related to high school and college in The United States (Embassy of The United States). The years are a little different as it only takes three years to earn a bachelor’s degree and five years to become a doctor, but their system is very much set up like the one that America has today.
Both societies offer a variety of schools for their students to attend. Whereas Tambu could attend a government school or a mission school, students in The United States have the chance to attend public school, private school, or charter school. Although it is hard to associate the class system in America with the hardships that the people of Rhodesia suffered from, there can be a connect between the two systems. Just as opportunities arose for Tambu to get a better education because of her family connections, schooling in America is related to income and success as well. Although it is free to attend public school in The United States, many parents believe that private and charters schools are the better route to take, and they cost money. There is much debate in America as to which school system is the most effective way for children to learn, but the connection to opportunity, financial opportunity, is still there.
This idea of opportunity is what divides the two cultures as well though because in America everyone has the chance to attend school through public school, but in Zimbabwe (or Rhodesia) a student’s chance of being educated is in the fate of how much money their parents have to spend, who they are related to, and the chances that they take. Tambu lucked out because she was given the chance to be educated by her uncle after her brother, unfortunately, passed away. However, many people, especially girls, wouldn’t have gotten that chance because the colonized land offered many hardships for families—Tambu’s situation was a success story. People had to worry about living from day to day. Money was used for shelter and for food first off, and if any was left over then maybe one child could be supported to go to school.
Education in America is taken for granted, but books like Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions help change this status. This cross-cultural theme about the importance of education helps students from America relate to those in Zimbabwe, but it also helps them open their eyes to the hardships that take place for people living under colonized rule. America was once a colonized state many years ago, but the way history turned out they became a democracy. History could have taken another route though, and Americans would have been in the same situation that those in Rhodesia were facing. Therefore, it is important for readers in America to read books like this in order to reflect on the life that they have and to connect with others as humans in this worldwide society.
Works Cited
- Dangarembga, Tsitsi. Nervous Conditions. Banbury: Ayebia Clarke Publishing Ltd., 2004. Print. Embassy of The United States. “Education in Zimbabwe.”
- Hill, Janice E. “Purging a Plate Full of Colonial History: The Nervous Conditions of Silent Girls.” College Literature 22.1 (1995): 78-91. EBSCOhost. Web. 10 April 2011.
- Nair, Supriya. “Melancholic Women: The Intellectual Hysteric(s) in Nervous Conditions.” Research in African Literatures 26.2 (1995): 130-140. EBSCOhost. Web. 10 April 2011.
- Summers, Carol. “Demanding Schools: The Umchigwe Project and African Men’s Struggles for Education in Southern Rhodesia, 1928-1934.” African Studies Review 40.2 (1997): 117-140. EBSCOhost. Web. 10 April 2011.
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