Postcolonial Green: Environmental Politics and World Narratives

"Relations with Food": Agriculture, Colonialism, and Foodways in the Writing of Bessie Head

“Relations with Food” Agriculture, Colonialism, and Foodways in the Writing of Bessie Head jonathan highfield The relations of man with matter, with the world outside, and with history are in the colonial period simply relations with food. —Frantz Fanon, Wretched of the Earth In much of the criticism about Bessie Head, her writing is linked to agriculture. Coreen Brown notes that agricultural work in her novels “becomes the means to establish shared aspirations” (38); Craig MacKenzie writes that gardening provided “Head with a therapeutic activity that proved critical to her psychological survival” (27); Anissa Talahite writes that the garden in Head’s work serves as “a metaphor for finding a hybrid space for cross-cultural connections to take place” (144); and Gillian Stead Eilersen’s biography of the exiled writer has chapters entitled“PuttingDownRoots”and“RippinguptheYoungPlant,”metaphorically linking periods in her life to agricultural activities (v).1 In a 2003 essay, “Agriculture and Healing: Transforming Space, Transforming Trauma in Bessie Head’s When Rain Clouds Gather,” Maureen Fielding takes the argument to a more explicit level, seeing agriculture as a primary metaphor in Head’s writing: Given colonialism’s long history of usurping land, it makes perfect sense that reclaiming land would be a healing gesture. In fact, part of the healing work being done in South Africa now is the attempted restoration of stolen lands. But the reclaiming of the land in When Rain Clouds Gather is more subtle than the reclamation that takes place when a revolutionary , or in South Africa’s case, an elected government reclaims stolen lands. This reclamation is really a transformation of land that has been controlled by uncontrollable forces into land that can be managed by the people who live on it. Head suggests when the land can be managed, “relations with food” 103 the people will no longer be the victims either of nature or the grand masters who wield power for their own benefit. (Fielding 20) While recognizing the centrality of agriculture in Head’s work, none of these books or essays looks directly at the way agriculture and farmers are represented in Head’s work and the implications of that representation . In this essay, I examine the portrayal of agriculture and foodways in Botswana in her novels, short stories, and nonfiction writings to show that while Head provides a detailed and empathetic portrayal of women’s roles in the growing of foodstuffs and the creation of food, her discussion of agriculture in her adopted country underemphasizes the extent to which colonialism and imported agricultural practice affected the foodways in Southern Africa. Bessie Head (1937–1986) was born in South Africa and went into self-imposed exile in what is now Botswana in 1964. During her life she wrote four novels, When Rainclouds Gather (1968), Maru (1971), A Question of Power (1973), and A Bewitched Crossroad (1984), a collection of short stories, The Collector of Treasures (1977), and an oral history, Serowe: Village of the Rain Wind (1981). An early novel, The Cardinals (1991), two volumes of short fiction and nonfiction, Tales of Tenderness and Power (1989), A Woman Alone (1990), and a volume of her letters, A Gesture of Belonging (1991) were published posthumously. Agriculture is central to Bessie Head’s work, and it is a very specifically located agriculture. In her book Serowe, Head attempts to document the history of the Botswana village in which she lived as an exile from apartheid South Africa. The idea that culture is shaped by the rhythms of nature and agriculture emerges repeatedly throughout the book. Head writes about the traditional Tswana calendar, which focused on monthly seasonal changes and the accompanying changes in people’s routines. For example: HERIKGONG (January) “Re loma ngwaga” . . . “We are biting the new year.” People begin to eat the first crops of summer from their lands. These are melons, pumpkins, and a local squash, Leraka. In the old days, before people were allowed to eat anything from their lands, they took the first fruits to the chief who had to have the first bite. The eating of the first fruits was a time of ritual and ceremony. 104 jonathan highfield TLHAKOLE (February) “Tlhakole” literally means “Wipe your plough.” It’s too late for ploughing now, the corn will never ripen, so give it up. For those who have ploughed with the early rains, the corn stands high in their fields, the pollen has disappeared on...