Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga
Written in 1988, Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga is set in post-colonial Rhodesia (known as Zimbabwe today) during the 1960s-70s, and is the first novel by a black woman to be published in the nation. In this semi-autobiographical story, we follow Tambu (Tambudzai) who is from a poor farming family as she navigates holding onto her culture under colonialism, her educational journey, and balancing her parents’, extended family, and her own hopes.
“These children who can go to school today are the ones whose families will prosper tomorrow” (Dangarembga 72).
The story begins with Tambu stating “I was not sorry when my brother died” (11). Nhamo, her older brother and the only boy, is the one the family can send to school with the help of their uncle, Babamukuru, an educated man and now headmaster of the mission school who has recently returned from higher studies in England and is highly respected by the community. Nhamo is taken to the mission school and lives with Babamukuru in hopes that he will help his family in the future, but soon he falls sick and Tambu, despite being a girl, takes his place. This brings me to one of the greatest themes in the novel: gender inequality. From girls growing into women — Tambu and Nyasha, their mothers, Mainini and Maiguru, to Lucia (her aunt) – poor or rich, educated or uneducated, women alike face a double oppression. First, from the patriarchy and second, from colonisation. As a girl, Tambu’s family, especially her father do not see the value of educating her since she will belong to another family soon, but desiring to go to school after a few grades, seeing the difficulties her mother and grandmother faced and how hard they labour away inspires Tambu to grow her own crops, harvest, and sell them to raise money for her own school fees. After months she is able to harvest and is taken to the city market by one of the school teachers. There, a white woman gives her ten pounds out of pity, enough to pay for years of school fees, and which is put in a savings account at the school in order to protect it from her father who believes it belongs to him. It is after awhile at the local school that Nhamo passes away and she moves to the mission with Babamukuru’s family, in a western style home in the city with a maid, two cars, guard dogs, where meat is readily available, and things she has never seen are.
The mission school, while providing the opportunity to change one’s life, offers a very big threat: the loss of one’s native identity in exchange for Western values, systems, religion, and language. Nhamo, Nyasha and Chido (her cousins) have already fell victim to this, losing their ability to speak Shona fluently, for example. At the mission school, Tambu quickly catches up and excels, coming first in her class. When she returns to the family farm (or homestead) she begins to see how drastic her family’s poverty is, such as not being able to stand the outdoor latrine, showing Tambu how much she has changed.
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Now to the title. The condition of being nervous in the sense of the story is highlighted towards the end, in my opinion. Tambu is given the opportunity to study at the Young Ladies College of the Sacred Heart, an esteemed convent school after a group of visiting nuns are intrigued by her story and intelligence. This opens an opportunity for her to gain a better education, but one her uncle, cousin and mother fear will make her “like one of the Whites.” Tambu knows she cannot become like her brother who looked down on Shona values, traditions, and the language, but cannot help being amazed at what opportunities lie ahead, creating the nervous condition, a middle state where she must implement her own boundaries and refuse to be brainwashed. She must only take what is good from the education.
It is these words by Maiguru, Babamukuru’s wife, that make him allow Tambu to attend Sacred Heart. Maiguru is an educated woman, one of very few who have a masters and studied alongside her husband in England. She makes her own money and seems to have it all (or at least in the beginning to Tambu) having escaped the patriarchal traditional expectation of being less than and accept suffering like her own mother. Tambu learns that Maiguru too is subjected to the same expectations and faces them in a unique way. As the novel progresses, we see how she takes on greater agency against Babamukuru, wanting more say in family matters until at one point she leaves the home entirely to return days later, and avoids family gatherings where she is expected to manage, cook, and shop for everything such as during the Christmas holiday at the homestead.
Lucia, Tambu’s mother’s sister, highlights to the reader how traditional society views women who do not adhere to expectations of femininity. Lucia is an empowered, burly woman, who refuses to live by the rules, is unmarried, faces men directly and tells them exactly how she feels, is self-sufficient when she works as a cook at the girls’ hostel, and joins a grade one class in order to learn how to read. She comes from the same impoverished upbringing as Tambu’s mother, who is frail, often worries, and married to Tambu’s overbearing father, Jeremiah, since she was fifteen years old. In the beginning, Mainini tells Tambu “[t]his business of women is a heavy burden . . . and these days it is worse with the poverty of blackness on one side and the weight of womanhood on the other” (32). This quote tells us that Tambu’s mother understands the effects of colonisation on their society, having full right to worry as it also took her first son. She does not agree with the Western definition of success and believes Englishness will “kill them all if they are not careful” (296). Despite often being tired from many pregnancies, she picks her battles well, telling Jeremiah to allow Tambu to grow her crops so she can try and see for herself. While it was difficult to read the struggles she faced, Tambu’s mother shows the reader another nervous condition, one that shapes Tambu to be careful and remember who she is.
In my earlier post about No Longer at Ease I mentioned how I was disappointed in the diasporic story told by Achebe. I could not relate to Obi but I suppose it is just one telling of the diasporic experience. Dangarembga, however, tells it both appealingly and accurately. While Tambu does not leave Rhodesia in the novel, her presence at the mission school, Babamukuru’s house, and Sacred Heart make it seem as if she does. Instead, Nyasha, Chido, Babamukuru and Maiguru’s diasporic experience abroad is told, allowing the diaspora to relate to the feeling of re-fitting in in your homeland. I see why this coming-of-age novel about the colonial subject’s position in post-colonialism makes it one of the most highly regarded African literary works, as it begs us to ask ourselves: How are we all nervous? How do we navigate our nervous condition?
References:
Dangarembga, Titsi. Nervous Conditions. Graywolf Press, 2021.
