One of my best friends has been suffering from depression for about a year and a half. I don't think she has an eating disorder like Nyasha does, but my friend cuts herself. Ten months ago, on the day after my seventeenth birthday, my family got a call late at night. My friend was going to the hospital because she had written a suicide note and taken a bottle of aleve. It's too easy for me to remember the vacuum of panic that lodged itself in my stomach and the silence that followed the entire issue around for months.
Because of this personal experience I react very strongly to Nyasha's bulimia and depression. I want to scream at the doctor who tells Nyasha and her family that because her skin is darker than his, she is not human. And as a non-human entity, she need not worry about serious diseases such as bulimia.
Since I've been in the position of watching a friend drown in her own personal ocean, it's easy for me to empathize with Tambu as she watches her cousin helplessly. Earlier in the novel when Tambu's mother is depressed at the prospect of Tambu going to school at Sacred Heart, Dangerembga writes "unlike a physial ailment of which everyone is told, an illness of this nature is kept quiet and secret". This theme of silence appears again when Nyasha is systematically rejecting her meals and it seems that not even her family can talk about it. I particularly resonated with this both times because after my friend went to the hospital I felt that I wasn't allowed to talk about it with her or anyone else when all I wanted to do was talk.
I think that Dangerembga is posing a question with Nyasha's suffering. Nyasha is the most idealistic character in the novel. Lucia works the system to get what she needs; she played Babamukuru's ego and the traditions of her culture to get a job and her independence. Nyasha tries to change the system; she fights with her father over her rights. Nyasha suffers the most in the novel; she is physically and emotionally abused by her father and suffers from bulimia. It seems to me that Dangerembga is implying that if Nyasha were not so principled she wouldn't suffer as much. So I think the author is asking a question about working towards your ideals at the cost of your own well being. How far should one go? If Nyasha's family hadn't saved her, I think she would have died. Should she have compromised her principals to survive?
I really like your point about how silence is very important in Dangarembga's novel. Often the power of colonialism is presented as a silencing of other cultures, and often sexism and racism is presented as a silencing of "The Other." Sometimes, as you point out, trying to speak out only brings suffering, but accepting the silence and then working the system, quietly, seems more effective. The weak struggling against the strong sometimes do choose compromise as a way to continue to work ever so slowly towards ideals. There is a saying in Kenya, "Better a live dog than a dead lion." Of course, I think dogs are far more noble than this aphorism implies, but that's beside the point.
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