Tsitsi Dangarembga's novel, Nervous Conditions, takes place in the late 1960s and early 1970s, after the British colonizers left Africa. In her novel we read about the struggle Tambudzai and her relatives go through in postcolonial Africa. Throughout the course of this essay I will be elaborating on how Tambudzai managed to "escape", while Nyasha, her cousin, "rebelled" against the effects of "Englishness" in their lives.
In Dangarembga's novel, Nyasha fittingly describes the problematic situation of postcolonial education as: "It would be a marvellous opportunity, she said sarcastically, to forget. To forget who you were, what you were and why you were that. The process, she said, was called assimilation, and that was what was intended for the precocious few who might prove a nuisance if left to themselves" (Dangarembga 178-179).
Tambudzai, who is born into a rural farming family, has an uncle, Babamukuru, who was educated first by white missionaries, then at universities in South Africa and England. He is the eldest male and the pride of the entire family. It is because of his good education that he works as the headmaster of the mission school. Pauline Ada Uwakweh states in her article titled Debunking Patriarchy: The Liberational Quality of Voicing in Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions that, "Babamukuru and his family enjoy material privileges, such as indoor plumbing, that the rest of the family have only ever heard of. But there is a catch to it all. Babamukuru and his family are different. They do not participate in traditional ceremonies. .
Upon returning from England, his children Nyasha her brother have forgotten their native language, Shona. They are so-called anomalies that fit into neither culture. They are too native for the English and too English for the natives." (Uwakweh 74-75) .
Tambu is scornful of them. When she discovers her cousins" loss of their native tongue she feels hurt.
