Education as Alienation
For a young girl to feel alien or unaccepted in her familiar cultures can only lead to disaster. This confusion of self leads Nyasha to find inadequacies within herself and to “[grow] vague and [detached]” from her family and even from herself at times (Dangarembga 118). According to Ngũgĩ, “…education tends to make [people] feel their inadequacies, their weaknesses and their incapacities in the face of reality…” (56). Nyasha begins seeing inadequacies in her appearance and it is not long before she develops an eating disorder. Nyasha is very self-conscious, and throughout the novel there is constant mention of her food intake or lack there of. Tambu herself notices that “[s]he [is] self-conscious…constantly clasping her hands behind her buttocks…” (Dangarembga 37). Nyasha’s body issues develop into an extreme case of anorexia till the point where “…she had grown skeletal” (198). Nyasha deals with her confusion and conflict of identity through her eating disorder. She knows that the root of her problem is not food. She agrees that it is much “more than food. That’s how it comes out, but really it’s all the things about boys and men and being decent and indecent and good and bad” (190). Nyasha’s education from school and her education from her home and parents teach her two very different things. Her education does not match her culture and this leads to turmoil. Nyasha is a “hybrid” and thus she will never fit into one mold or belong to one culture (78). Nyasha sums up her educational experience when she says to Tambu, “I’m not one of them but I’m not one of you” (201). Nyasha’s education has left her feeling completely alienated from everyone and everything and suffering with physical and mental anxiety that is manifested through her anorexia.
Both Nhamo and Nyasha, according to Tambu’s mother, fell prey to “Englishness”; “‘It’s the Englishness…it will kill them all if they aren’t careful’” (Dangarembga 202). However, Nervous Conditions also tells Tambu’s story through the English educational system, but the novel makes the reader question the narrator: What has set Tambu apart from Nhamo and Nyasha “who had [both] succumbed” to “Englishness?” (Dangarembga 203) Tambu answers with, “…I had been too eager to leave the homestead and embrace the ‘Englishness’ of the mission; and after that the more consecrated ‘Englishness’ of Sacred Heart” (203). Thus, she too is at risk of being alienated from her culture. Tambu ends the novel telling her readers that she is willing to take the risk of being educated. She decides to “question things and refuse to be brainwashed” (204). Through the chronicling of her story, Tambu ultimately reflects that she is conscious and aware of the threats and dangers posed by attaining a colonial education. While Tambu’s shows how colonial education often times led to alienation and worse, death, it also shows that education is a vehicle that enables many Africans to tell their stories. Tambu’s resolution to not be “brainwashed” gives the reader some assurance that she will not let “Englishness” catch hold of her and snatch away her culture and identity as an African woman.
Both God’s Bits of Wood and Nervous Conditions portray a negative aspect of the colonial education system for the most part. Colonial education, according to Ngũgĩ, “allowed the richness of Africa’s cultural heritage [to be] degraded…in this event Western culture become the centre of Africa’s process of learning, and Africa was relegated to the background” (Ngũgĩ 100). The characters discussed in both novels lose a connection to their African culture to varying degrees. They were all taught “…to look on Europe as [their] teacher and the centre of man’s civilization…” (Ngũgĩ 100). However, it is difficult to ignore a larger concept. There must be some underlying positive attributes of the colonial education system. If the authors of these novels had not been products, either directly or indirectly, of the colonial education system themselves, would their stories and voices be as powerful and as strongly heard as they are today? Had Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Sembene Ousmane, and Tsitsi Dangarembga not received or been somehow influenced by colonial education, would there even be a debate over education as alienation? These great African minds would have still existed, regardless, but it is very arguable that their words and theories would not have had such a heavy impact on the world.
Works Cited
Dangarembga, Tsitsi. Nervous Conditions. New York: Seal Press, 1989.
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. Decolonising the Mind. New Hampshire: Heinemann, 1986.
Ousmane, Sembene. God’s Bits of Wood. New Hampshire: Heinemann, 1970.
