Brokeness and Healing

Everytime summer comes along, so comes swimming trips to the river. The sweltering, hot heat beating against me only makes the chill of the rivers waters that much better. It is everytime I swim though, I am reminded of the scar on my body that is on my lower abdomen. People always ask me, "Did you have your appendix taken out?" And everytime I answer, "No, bike accident". Back when I was 16, my brother, along with some friends of ours decided it would be a good idea to go bike riding at night with no lights. Although I presently realize the stupidity of this idea, at the time my reckless mind thought, "Hey, sounds like fun". The place in which I lived at the time was very hilly, even the house was built on a hill. To make a long story short, I eventually crashed into the side of our driveway, (which was also next to a hill) and injured myself pretty bad. I remember distincly picking out little rocks from my side which is now the "appendix" scar.

For Bessie Head and her semi-autobiographical character Elizabeth, inner turmoil is bane of her existence. The book, A Question of Power, deals with the events of a mentually disturbed woman living in Botswana who attempts to cope with her mental anguish. In a turn of events, Elizabeth questions her identity and sense of belonging. Moving into Botswana has been difficult for her as suspicions of the tribe around her cause her to become distrustful and distant. Robert Burton, author of Artists of the Floating World, describes her predicament, "The floating world for Bessie Head is the still-point between these two poles: between the local and the universal, alienation and belonging, madness and groudedness, framelessness and frame." (75) Part of the brokeness that Elizabeth feels inside is her inability to feel belonging. Stuck between the world of modernity and the simple world of the tribal community. Much of the pain that she feels is related to the fact of her race, half-white, half-black. This limbo she feels, has had the best of her as both races and cultures clash into a somewhat nightmarish fantasy.

Through all the torment and soul-suffering that Elizabeth, and also for Bessie Head, there is a moment of reflective solitude which she searches for answers. Head writes, "I seem to have taken a strange journey into hell and darkness. I could not grasp the darkness because at the same time I saw the light." (190) Once again, these two conflicting worlds were pulling for her attention. Maybe one could propose that it was the percieved notion of the two worlds, or two answers, that gave Elizabeth such immense distress. It is almost as if it is a information overload of the senses. Different gods and dieties telling her right, then left, then right again. This tortuous madness it seems drives a wedge through the soul of Elizabeth and perhaps Bessie Head as well. On the following pages of the book, Elizabeth plays with the idea of gods or God being the source of human anguish. She hypothesizes that humans cannot utterly have any real control over the situation because mankind is too weak to dream up such ugliness. Ultimately however, it is the land of Africa in which Elizabeth finds her meaning and belonging. And it is in Africa where her heart lies.