The child was handed over to colored foster parents, who cared for her until she was thirteen. Because her natural mother had provided money for Bessie's education, she was placed in a mission orphanage, where she earned a high-school diploma and was trained to be a teacher. She taught elementary school and then wrote for the African magazine
Drum. On 1 September 1961 she married Harold Head, a journalist with whom she later had a son, Howard. The marriage ended in divorce, and in 1964 she accepted a teaching position in Botswana, then the British Bechuanaland Protectorate. When she left Soudi Africa she was given a canceled exit visa, depriving her of citizenship and making her a refugee. Fifteen years later, in 1979, she was granted citizenship by the government of Botswana. There she found an African past with depth and dignity she could be proud to claim as her own. She died of hepatitis in 1986 in Serowe, where she had made her home.
When Rain Clouds Gather (1968), Head's first novel, is the story of Makhaya Maseko, a political refugee from Soudi Africa who escapes to Botswana after serving a prison term for sabotage.
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