If you know your literature, you realized the importance of Botswana long before Mpule Kwelagobe was crowned Miss Universe. Botswana was the adopted homeland of one of South Africa's most famous writers, Bessie Head.
Head, a teacher and journalist, fled South Africa in 1964, becoming a refugee in Botswana, a land-locked republic in southern Africa, bordered by South Africa on the south, Namibia and Namibia's Caprivi Strip on the west and north, Zimbabwe (Rhodesia) on the east, and a small section of Zambia on the north. Formerly the British Protectorate of Bechuanaland, Botswana, one of the world's poorest and most sparsely populated countries, became an independent nation within the Commonwealth in 1966, just two years after Head's arrival.
For 15 years, Head lived the precarious life of a refugee before she was finally granted citizenship in 1979. During that time, she wrote three books set in Botswana.
When Rain Clouds Gather, her first novel, is based on a famous agricultural project at the Bamangwato Development Farm. In Botswana, the sandy, saline soil is considered unsuitable for agriculture. Because there is little rainfall, it was considered an ideal place for an agricultural project in which many of the climatic conditions could be controlled through irrigation.
For many years, this novel, first published in 1969, was given to visitors to Botswana as they arrived in the country.
When Rain Clouds Gather is a remarkable novel because it shows how everyone, regardless of colour, has a place in this world. This was a novel idea at the height of South African apartheid. The novel tells the story of an English scientist trying to work with the traditions of Botswana and the resistance to an agricultural programme. Much of the scientist's work is accomplished through the South African refugees then thought of as a burden to many of the people of Botswana, who are known as Batswana.
Head's writing always stressed the threads that connected people regardless of race or ethnicity. Her sensitivity to humanity outweighed her bitterness and anger.
She was the daughter of a rich, white heiress of a horseracing fortune and a poor, black stable boy. Head's mother was whisked away to an insane asylum where she committed suicide four years after her confinement.
Head was sent to good schools through a fund her mother had left for her. She was unable to write, however, until she arrived in Botswana.
There, the semi-arid, beautiful undulating hills with dry scrub and savannas formed the stark setting for Maru, a fascinating story about overcoming racism.
In this book, an orphaned Masarwa girl is raised by an English woman conducting a bizarre experiment. The woman believed she could take a child from an ethnic group scorned by all, raise the child without any knowledge of her low status, and destroy any sense of inferiority. The story turns into a powerful love story as well as a poignant philosophical statement.
Many people consider A Question of Power Head's best novel. Here, she documents her own mental breakdown. At one point in the novel, Head accuses Botswana's beloved leader, Sir Seretse Khama, of ritual cannibalism and incest and posts these accusations outside the post office in Serowe, the setting of her last novel, Serowe, Village of the Rain Wind.
The kind Khama, who had shocked his elders by marrying an Englishwoman, could have had Head deported. Instead, he ordered her taken into psychiatric custody.
Head was eventually cured and came back to write The Collector of Treasures and other Botswana Village Tales and Tales of Tenderness and Power.
Head died in 1986 at the age of 49. She spent most of her life battling alcoholism.
Head's books are published by Heinemann and available at Amazon.com.