"Looking for a Rain God" by Bessie Head

The short story written by Bessie Head, follows a family of six living in the village of Kgotla, in Africa. The story starts with the family living in the land which is fertile and very rich with all sorts of vegetation, and also the people who live on this land have different sources of water and live in a very prosper manner. Then in 1958 a seven year drought fell upon the land which spirals the turn of events that would lead the youngest of the family Neo and Boseyong to pay the ultimate price. The people from the village are driven to the edge of sanity as their despair and fear for survival turns them to do unspeakable things. The main character of the story Mokgobja, who has passed the point between sanity and madness, recalls a tribal practice (or ritual) from the old times that would be a foolproof way to make the rain, fall once more. So Mokgobja, with his son Ramadi, his sister-in-law Tiro, and Tiro’s sister set out to re-enact the ritual Mokgobja described, blinded with despair, in hopes of making the land prosper again, not knowing that they would be crossing onto a road which there was no return. They kill the two little girls and spread their bodies across the land, but nothing changes. The land is still ablaze with the suns incredible heat. The four remaining family members decide to head back to the village and the villagers notice that something is amiss as the two girls are not back with them. When the police investigate and questions the family the mother of the two children (Tiro), falls into chaos and spills the truth. In the end Ramadi and Mokgobja are found guilty in a trial and sentenced to death for the murder of the two little girls.

This is without a doubt an atrocity if we look at it from the point of view of our society here in the Western world. However being as there is such cultural diversity in the world, some of them find this type of behavior normal because it is their cultural way of life. Nowadays the majority of the religions do not practice human sacrifice in the name of a God. They have gone as far as condemn it, but still other types of human bloodshed are still around in the modern world in the name of a religion, like religious persecution. However in the 1960 Valvidia earthquake, a local “machi” (shaman) of the Mapuche culture, demanded that the grandson of a villager be sacrificed in order to calm the earth and the ocean. They both proceeded to remove the arms and legs of the 5-year-old and stuck him into the sand of the beach as a form of stake. The two men were charged with murder, but were released two years later after a judge overruled that the two men “acted without free will, driven by an irresistible natural force of ancestral tradition.” This account is very similar as the story from Bessie Head and although we may look upon the story with a biased point of view because our morals differ from those in the story. We must first understand that once a human passes the point of madness, the law of the jungles kicks in and they will do anything to survive.