This story by Botswanan writer Bessie Head deals with one of the world’s most terrible crimes. It takes place in Botswana’s “lonely lands” where families usually live a poor but contented life in harmony with nature. Every year, when village headmen proclaim the beginning of the cropping season, farming families relocate from the villages to their ploughing lands. We follow a family who, having endured six years of crippling drought, reach a point in the seventh year where they feel they must make a devastating decision: to all perish from starvation or sacrifice their children to a rain-god.
The version of Looking for a Rain-God that most people know, and the one reproduced here, first appeared in Bessie Head’s 1977 short story collection The Collector of Treasures and Other Botswana Village Tales. The story is apparently based on true events. Before Head became a recognized writer, she submitted an article about it to the New African magazine. This was written in 1966, just one year after the executions, and includes some additional (and in some cases conflicting) information.
Original Text / PDF (1,518 words)