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Wow, so I'm updating from a really, really long xanga break.  It seemed really stupid and careless of me to let my last entry be a Harvard homework post first because that was soooo long ago and second, someone reading that would be like what, what is this?  Ok, so quick update about my life.  I've pretty much been either doing homework and applying to colleges the past few weeks, with a little play/madrigals/praise team/piano practice thrown in there.  I realized just a little while ago that I put so much time and energy (not to mention 70 bucks) into my Columbia application, and I'm probably not even going to get in.  I'm so schitzo (as in schizophrenic) about that school.  One day I'll be like, "Oh, I don't need a car because I'll be living in New York next fall, and I'll just take the subway," and another I'll be so sad and hopeless and wondering why I even got my hopes up and applied in the first place.  Time will tell, that is until December 15.  Oh well, if I don't get in there's always Calvin.  Ha!  I wrote this paper called "Calvin Schmelvin" for college writing that all of you considering that college should read.  The funny thing is is that probably end up there after bashing it pretty much for my whole high school career.  Yeah, and if you're planning on going there, don't take offense to my mocking that college because it's probably the best one in West Michigan, and its honors program is probably the most difficult, except for maybe U of M's.  Oh well, sorry about my boring senior-y post.  Maybe it'll give you a little peak into the mundaneness (Is that a word?  I tried spelling it mundaness, but that didn't look right...) that has been my life lately.  Actually things have been going pretty well lately.  I got two really good tests back on Wednesday that I thought I'd failed.  Oh wow, the highlight of my life... good tests.  Bye all.

Tambu’s Liberation

             In his preface to Frantz Fanon’s book The Wretched of the Earth, Jean-Paul Sartre says, “The status of ‘native’ is a nervous condition introduced and maintained by the settler among colonised [sic] people with their consent” (Sartre 17).  In order to explain why Tambu, unlike Nyasha, is able to begin the process of liberating herself from the “nervous conditions” induced by settler colonialism, we must first have a working definition of the phrase “nervous conditions.”  The “natives” of Rhodesia had the status of a “nervous condition,” literally, a condition of their nerves, because there was a constant struggle within them.  They had to decide whether or not to adopt the new culture of the British or to hold onto their traditional way of life.  Tambu is able by the end of the novel to begin the process of liberating herself from this struggle because she lived long enough in her native Shona culture to firmly ground herself in it.  Nyasha, however, moved to England when she was quite young and still very impressionable.  She became so grafted into the English culture that she came to prefer speaking English to Shona and became more comfortable with the ways of the white man than those of the Shona.  The problem is that because she is black, she could never be fully accepted into the English culture.  She always struggled within herself, because she didn’t belong to the English or the Shona culture.  She admits this herself, saying, “Now [my parents] are stuck with hybrids for children” (Dangarembga 78).  Tambu is able to begin liberating herself from the “nervous condition” that Nyasha is stuck with because she lived in her Shona culture for so long that she did not lose it when she was exposed to the English education system.

            The first indication of how Anglicized Nyasha has become is shown when Babamakuru returns home from England with his family.  Tambu asks Nyasha if she wants to dance.  Tambu says, “[Nyasha] took a long time to understand.  ‘They don’t understand Shona very well anymore,’ her mother explained” (Dangarembga 42).  Whereas Nyasha has already been so implanted into English culture that she doesn’t even comprehend her native language anymore, Tambu only speaks a few words of English.  She could only understand words like “dirty” and “sleep” when she overheard Nyasha talking to her mother (Dangarembga 43).  Another example of how changed Nyasha is compared to Tambu happens soon after this first meeting when Nyasha visits Tambu from her house at the mission.  Tambu repeatedly invites Nyasha to come places with her, but she always declines.  Tambu says, “I missed the bold, ebullient companion I had had who had gone to England but not returned from there.”  This shows the extent to which Nyasha’s experience in England has changed her.  If Nyasha had stayed in Rhodesia and held onto her Shona language and culture, she would not have developed the nervous condition where she was constantly in conflict with her Shona side and her English side.  She would have only been as anglicized as Tambu was, and so would have been able to liberate herself from these nervous conditions.  Tambu, on the other hand, did not go to an English school.  She did not go to a school at all, because her family only had money to send her brother Nhamo to school.  Instead, she tended to the family’s garden and maize fields, fetched the firewood, looked after the livestock, and helped her mother with the household chores.  She became indoctrinated in the Shona culture at a time when her cousin was becoming indoctrinated into the British culture in England.  If Nyasha had been at home helping her mother with the chores and living amongst her Shona peers, she certainly would not have become as anglicized as she did when she lived in England, and she would never have developed the internal struggle between her Shona culture and the white man’s English culture.  Because of this, she never would have developed a nervous condition (at least not one as strong as she had upon her return from England), and would have been able to liberate herself from it by the end of the novel.

            We next see the extent to which English culture has so affected Nyasha when Tambu first goes to Babamukuru’s house at the mission.  Maiguru and Tambu are sitting in the living room and Maiguru tells Nyasha to say hello to Tambu, meaning to come over and greet her properly.  Nyasha promptly says a quick, “Hello,” tells her mother she’s going to go clean herself up, and leaves the room.  Maiguru tells Tambu, “They are too anglicized…  They picked up all these disrespectful ways in England and it’s taking them time to learn how to behave at home again” (Dangarembga 74).  Nyasha again defies her mother when Maiguru says that she doesn’t approve of the book that Nyasha is reading, but she continues to read it anyway.  Both of these instances show how Nyasha has lost the Shona custom of children respecting their parents and how she now acts like a British child, saying anything she wants to her mother and disobeying her.  Tambu, on the other hand, is disgusted by Nyasha’s behavior.  She says, “It was so embarrassing, the way Nyasha thought she could say anything to her mother” (Dangarembga 74).  She still abides by Shona custom and shows respect to her parents and elders.  Later, Nyasha confesses to Tambu why she hadn’t talked to her on her first day back from England.  She says, “Actually we were frightened that day.  And confused.  You know, it’s easy to forget things when you’re that young” (Dangarembga 78).  She admits to Tambu that she was so young when she went to England that she forgotten all about how her home country looked and smelled and what things she was supposed to do and what things she wasn’t supposed to do.  Because she forgot all of these things, all of her Shona customs, and had them replaced by English customs, she isn’t able to liberate herself from the struggle that she now feels within herself, whether to embrace her Shona heritage that she lost, or to try and fit in with the white man’s culture to which she knows she will never belong.  Because Tambu stayed in the country and kept her Shona customs, she doesn’t have to deal with this identity crisis nearly to the degree that Nyasha does, and is able to liberate herself from this “nervous condition” by the end of the novel.

            Another instance in the novel where we see Nyasha blatantly disobeying her parents happens at the supper table when Nyasha begins to help herself to the rice before her mother has finished putting food from the third dish onto Babamukuru’s plate.  Before the fight erupts, Maiguru interrupts and ends the squabble.  However, tensions rise when Nyasha finds that Maiguru has taken her book and hidden it.  Nyasha yells at her mother, “But, Mum!  How could you?  Without even telling me.  That’s – that’s – I mean you shouldn’t – you’ve no right to –” (Dangarembga 83).  Babamakuru tells her to sit down and finish her food, but she stands up and says she’s going to her bedroom.  Babamakuru explodes, and tells her to sit back down and finish her food.  Nyasha disobeys him again, however, and walks off.  This again shows that Nyasha has lost her Shona habits, i.e. the respect for her parents, and instead has adopted the English habit where she doesn’t respect her parents.

            The last time we see Nyasha showing the values that she learned in England is when she immediately throws up the food that she eats at supper.  Tambu hears her in the bathroom from her bedroom and asks if she’s ill.  Nyasha replies, “No…  I did it myself.  With my toothbrush.  Don’t ask me why.  I don’t know” (Dangarembga 190).  Here Nyasha shows that while in England, she learned that women are supposed to be skinny, so she goes to desperate measures to make sure that she looks that way.  Tambu, who hasn’t been indoctrinated into the white way of thinking, says, “By my standards she had grown definitely thin, but I knew that she preferred bones to bounce and so I said nothing” (Dangarembga 197).  Tambu’s “standards” were the standards of the Shona people, which she was able to retain by staying in Rhodesia, while Nyasha had her standards changed when she moved to England.  This is why Tambu is able to overcome her “nervous conditions” by the end of the novel while Nyasha is still in conflict with herself about whether she belongs to the English culture or to the Shona.

            Because Tambu stayed in Rhodesia, she was only exposed to the effects of settler colonialism after she became fully grounded in the Shona culture.  Nyasha, however, moved to England when she was five (assuming that she and Tambu are the same age) and so was exposed to English culture from an early age.  She became more comfortable with English culture than with that of the Shona, but couldn’t assimilate fully into English culture simply because of the color of her skin.  This is what led to her “nervous condition,” a condition of uncertainty and insecurity where she barely knew who she was anymore.  Tambu was only exposed to the English culture when she went to stay with Babamakuru and later when she went to college in a predominantly white school.  By then, she knew that she was Shona through and through, and so could resist the effects of settler colonialism.  This allowed her to liberate herself from the “nervous condition” that it induced.

Works Cited

Dangarembga, Tsitsi. Nervous Conditions. Emeryville, CA: Seal Press, 2004.

Sartre, Jean-Paul. Preface. The Wretched of the Earth. By Frantz Fanon. New York: Grove Press, Inc, 1963. 17

When Babamukuru suggests that Jeremiah and Mainini finally be married after years of “common law” marriage, Mainini is confronted with an identity crisis.  Is she a native African for whom it is alright to live without having a Christian marriage, or has she been so Europeanized that without having this marriage she is “living in sin?”  According to her Christianized brother whom she respects and admires greatly because of how he has helped her and her family in the past, she is more European than African and should be married.  I believe that she considered herself to be purely African and thought that the marriage was completely unnecessary (we at least know that Tambu did.)  However, she ends up going through with the marriage.  Did she merely want to wear pretty clothes and have a grand feast that all of her relatives would attend?  Or did she really believe that this marriage was necessary to rid her of the sin of living with a man she was not married to?  I believe that the former reason was much more important to Mainini than the latter.  There is nothing in the story that tells us that Mainini was a Christian.  So in response to the question, “Who am I in reality?” I believe that Mainini would answer, “An African who doesn’t mind participating in European ceremonies, especially when they’re paid for by my brother-in-law.”