Focus on Zimbabwe: Nervous Conditions (1)

A lot has obviously been said about Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions (1988), with the immediate relationship to Franz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth (1963) possibly being the obvious beginning point. But given that I have promised to record my thoughts on every book I read this year (and enjoy), I will add to a large existing body of literature on the book.

My first reaction to Nervous Conditions was one of disappointment, not because it was a bad read, but because so much had been said about it, yet, I missed the immediate sense of greatness of the book. I had thought it told a melodramatic tale of suffering that would send me to uncontrollable levels of sadness – my immediate reaction? Nervous Conditions was actually a very ordinary book.

Ordinary in the sense that it told a story most of us African girls/ladies grew up with and still have to contend with. Ordinary in its pickiness of daily life. Ordinary as well, in its constant reference to pain and sadness we have felt and suffered. We who have grown up against the grain. Yes, ordinary.

Yet in its ordinariness, it was a great novel, full of things we all feel we should have said, captured out of our zigzagged histories. Yes, ordinary. So that in its great engagement with the afflictions of colonialism and patriarchy, it really was saying a story that is ours.

This review will be based on the characters of the novel, those who touched me, and realities I live and have to contend with.

Babamukuru:

My first choice, because I think beyond the patriarchal power he exercises that minimizes every other person, he was in fact a great man. Babamukuru represents to me, those Africans who followed the preaching of the White missionaries, “read hard and you will reap the rewards, you will get out of your abject poverty, and you will prosper. But in your prosperity, remember to use your education, to break the African yoke, the circular yoke of poverty. Use your education to save your family, and raise them above the conditions of their current living.”

Sounds familiar?

For most of us who have had the benefit of a good education, the reality is we do not always come from good economically stable families. We come from families full of loved ones who in spite of every effort, continue to remain where our parents were, never moving out of those cycles. Like Jeremiah, Babamukuru’s brother, there are those members of the family who do not even want to try and are content with grovelling for the money at every opportunity. Then there are those who have given up like Tambudzai’s mother. Then once in a while if you are lucky, there are the Lucias who do everything to get out, break free from the yoke. It is often an amazing moment for everyone, and especially for the one who wanted this to happen so badly, the one who resembles Baba. So in spite of his God like status, which goes against the grain of any decent feminist critic, one has to look at what Baba is after. One has to sympathize with what his family has to put up with, in order that Babamukuru’s family rises out of the Yoke. Take for instance, Maiguru.

Maiguru:

Maiguru is everything some of us would never want to be: the perfect wife. She obeys a stubborn egoistic man at her peril, to the point that when she eventually decides to run away, Nyasha, her extremely brilliant daughter celebrates.

I think Maiguru is a tragic figure. It is the 50s, she has a Master’s degree (some of us still feel very great in this day and age just having a basic degree!) and she has all manner of opportunities open to her. But clearly, she is the product of an evil patriarchal system that is hell-bent on keeping women somewhere just below a one week old baby boy (remember when Babamukuru tells Tambudzai that he feels the need to start saving money for Dambudzo, Tambu’s one week (month) old baby brother. His vision is that Tambu should finish school fast get a job and a good husband. Babamukuru’s focus thus turns supremely towards a baby boy whose potential is yet to be measured, and is willing to sacrifice Tambu’s education at the Catholic school for him. Convoluted I know but this is the system from which Maiguru emerges. So when she packs her bags and leaves Babamukuru, we are all relieved. Like Tambu and Nyasha, we hope she will never return to Baba, we hope and pray that she will escape from the utter selfishness displayed by him.

But she comes back.

And even though she begins demanding more of him, and asserting herself a lot more firmly, we are disappointed that she still treats him and spoils him with praises and that no one appreciates just how hard it is to be part of such a man’s life. We are told when she leaves that Babamukuru continued existing as if Maiguru never left. Of course he would exist, what with all the women (Anna, Tambu and Nyasha) standing to be held accountable if none of his meals were made, or if his shirts were not clean. The machinery that keeps him going is the same one he humiliates.

Chido:

I particularly love the character of Chido, mainly because he is the ‘absent’ man in the novel. You see, in a novel where Jeremiah the lazy drunk and Takesure have bigger rights than brilliant women such as Mama Tambu, Lucia, Nyasha and Tambu, you have got to celebrate the power of the absent one. He is not absent in the way that Achebe’s Nwoye or even Okonkwo’s fathers are, he is absent in a good way, a healthy way, a way feminists would appreciate (radical?). So while I may not want to say much more for fear of spoiling it, I think Chido represents the salvation of the novel. If more of those characters were as absent, I suspect the four women would be a lot happier.

I think both Tambudzai and Nyasha need a lot more reflection before I write what I thought of them, but you get the general drift.