Design that Matters Field Journal

Poisonwood Bible

Barbara Kingsolver's Poisonwood Bible follows an American missionary family--husband and wife and their four daughters--through their service in the Congo from 1959 to 1961, a tumultuous period which coincided with Congolese independence from Belgium, the country's first elections and the shattering coup d'etat which followed. Kingsolver shows the missionaries' profound ignorance of the culture in which they've arrived, and illustrates the difficulties of crossing that gulf of misunderstanding.

At first Mama got after us for staring and pointing at people. She was all the time whispering, "Do I have to tell you girls every single minute don't stare!" But now Mama looks too. Sometimes she says to us or just herself, Now Tata Zinsana is the one missing all the fingers, isn't he? Or she'll say, That big goiter like a goose egg under her chin, that's how I remember Mama Nguza.

Father said, "They are living in darkness. Broken in body and soul, and don't even see how they could be healed."

Mama said, "Well, maybe they take a different view of their bodies."

Father says the body is the temple. But Mama has this certain voice sometimes. Not exactly sassing back, but just about nearly. She was sewing us some window curtains out of dress material so they wouldn't be looking in at us all the time, and had pins in her mouth.

She took the pins out and said to him, "Well, here in Africa that temple has to do a hateful lot of work in a day." She said, "Why, Nathan, here they have to use their bodies like we use things at home--like your clothes or your garden tools or something. Where you'd be wearing out the knees of your trousers, sir, they just have to go ahead and wear out their knees!" [Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible, p.62/616]