When Rain Clouds Gather

Bessie Head

Sep. 2013 · Waveland Press

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Rural Botswana is the backdrop for When Rain Clouds Gather, the first
novel published by one of Africa’s leading woman writers in English,
Bessie Head (1937–1986). Inspired by her own traumatic life experiences
as an outcast in Apartheid South African society and as a refugee living
at the Bamangwato Development Association Farm in Botswana, Head’s
tough and telling classic work is set in the poverty-stricken village of
Golema Mmidi, a haven to exiles. A South African political refugee and
an Englishman join forces to revolutionize the villagers’ traditional
farming methods, but their task is fraught with hazards as the pressures
of tradition, opposition from the local chief, and the unrelenting
climate threaten to divide and devastate the fragile community. Head’s
layered, compelling story confronts the complexities of such topics as
social and political change, conflict between science and traditional
ways, tribalism, the role of traditional African chiefs, religion, race
relations, and male–female relations.