Bessie Head makes clear that the characters in the story had to resort to extreme religious practices like the sacrifice of Neo and Boseyong due to the desperate moments they experienced. She remarks this clearly in the tone and in the plot of the story. Bessie also reflects the same recurrance to false faiths in religious elements of South Africa and Botswana, were she lived and also from elements from the Bible. By making clear this point it is evident that she wants the reader to reflect on the desperate actions that the people use as remedy to their problems. Bessie exhorts the reader to not fallow the characters resolution of sacrifices or false faiths. These religious practices, for example, the sacrifice, the talismans and the herbs present in the story can be classified as false faiths because at the end the rain did not fell, the sacrifices of the girls were in vain. At the end such mechanism of defense and of remedy did not work, the desperation did not justify the deaths of the girls as it says in the end of the story, "The subtle story of strain and starvation and breakdown was inadmisible evidence at the court" (1233). Definitively, Bessie wrote this story to show that people should not let themselves be driven by false solutions in harassement; they should overcome such remedies because at the end they do not work.
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