In chapter 21 of the novel Beka Lamb,
Beka and her family visit her friend Toycie in the Belize Mental Asylum.
Toycie has been expelled from school for being pregnant, her boyfriend refused to marry
her, and she has lost her mind. She acts like she is sitll in school, waiting for the
recess bell. Beka's Granny Ivy is dismayed that Toycie has lost her mind just because
she has become pregnant and the reader finds out later that Granny herself had the same
thing happen to her, and yet she did not "degrade herself" like Toycie seems to be
doing. Beka reminisces back about how she and Toycie used to take walks along the sea
wall. Beka remembers how Toycie's Aunt Eila told them folktales - about the evil
Tataduhende who goes around tearing thumbs off little girls and
boys.
Aunt Eila wants to move Toycie out of the mental
institution to her brother's home at Sibun River, a Creole settlement that Beka refers
to as "the bush." Eila thinks Toycie will get better there, among her people, where she
belongs.
Toward the end of the chapter, Granny Ivy
decorates the Lamb house with the blue and white flags of the Peoples' Independent Party
but Daddy Bill makes her take them down and put up the flags of the British colonial
empire, the Union Jack.
This is an important chapter
because it shows the continuing conflict of "be'fo time" and "nowadays" in Belize,
illustrates the continuing conflict of Creoles vs Panias (represented by Emilio and
Toycie), and the political conflict of colonialism vs
independence.
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