First composed in 1956 in Acoli, a Ugandan language, Okot p’Bitek converted this book-length poem into English, and it was published a decade later. The author’s note informs readers that the English-language version “clipped a bit of the eagle’s wings and rendered the sharp edges of the warrior’s sword rusty and blunt, and has also murdered rhythm and rhyme” (4), but the work still soars and is pointed enough to be considered “a biting yet compassionate satire on virtually every aspect of modern African life: love, sex, fear, hate, politics, and the relationship between black and white, African and European” (back cover).
The work comprises 13 sections, each titled provocatively to hint at its content and composed in irregular, free-verse stanzas:
(1) My Husband’s Tongue is Bitter,
(2) The Woman with Whom I Share My Husband,
(3) I Do Not Know the Dances of White People,
(4) My Name Blew Like a Horn among the Payira,
(5) The Graceful Giraffe Cannot Become a Monkey,
(6) The Mother Stone Has a Hollow Stomach,
(7) There Is No Fixed Time for Breast Feeding,
(8) I Am Ignorant of the Good Word in the Clean Book,
(9) From the Mouth of Which River?,
(10) The Last Safari to Pagak,
(11) The Buffalos of Poverty Knock the People Down,
(12) My Husband’s House Is a Dark Forest of Books,
and (13) Let Them Prepare the Malakwang Dish.
The poem’s speaker is Lawino, a spirited Acoli woman and a chieftain’s daughter, a leader among the young women with whom she grew up. She deplores her husband’s turn to newfangled fashions and his predictable, postcolonial adherence to Western manners, ideologies, and mores. She denigrates the false values of copy-cat behaviors and rails literally and symbolically against those who would “uproot the pumpkin in the old homestead” (9), the reliable and traditional source of community sustenance.
Throughout the work Lawino most often directly addresses Ocol, her husband—only now and again turning her words to other listeners, who are appealed to for support in turning Ocol around and away from what Lawino considers mentally and socially unhealthy behaviors.
In the first section Lawino complains of the way her husband insults and berates her for her traditional ways: His tongue “is fierce like the arrow of the scorpion, / It is ferocious / Like the poison of a barren woman / And corrosive like the juice of the gourd” (16). She objects when Ocol “pours scorn / On Black People” (16) and accuses her of “blocking his progress” (17) because he suddenly considers her “primitive” and “ignorant, poor and diseased!” (17).
In the next section Lawino describes the absurdity of “the modern girl” whom Ocol has chosen as his second wife and laughs at Clementine’s efforts to look European by powdering her face and wearing blood-red lipstick: “She looks as if she has been struck / By lightning; / Or burnt like the knogoni / In a fire hunt” (24). Lawino describes the absurdity of pointy Western brassieres on flat-chested, barren African women, and she summarizes the traditional idea of a good wife; she expresses no jealousy, instead imploring Ocol “to refrain from heaping abuses” on her head, “stop being half-crazy,” and recognize that “the ways of [their] ancestors / Are good” (29).
The third section contrasts the behaviors of the Acoli with those of whites—their dances, attire, gatherings, games. In section 4 Lawino proudly touts her family’s prestige and history and describes Ocol’s sincerity when he was courting her, in contrast to his present demeanor, behind dark glasses, “the scabies on [his] buttocks” covered by hot, inappropriate European clothing (49). Section 5 is a praise song to her own beauty, and Section 6 a celebration of the traditional home and hearth.
In Section 7 Lawino defends her Acoli sense of time, which is natural, not regimented by clocks and calendars that have no awareness of real-life processes and their irregular durations.
Sections 8 and 9 contrast the religious practices of Africa with those of white people; and in Section 10—in which she shows how white practices seem to her like superstition and witchcraft—Lawino carefully describes Acoli hygiene, medicine, and psychology and Acoli attitudes toward death.
Section 11 pokes fun at the Western-style political campaigns in which Ocol participates, frenzied contests between “brothers” that bring forth no benefits to the people. Here Lawino reveals a sophisticated understanding of postcolonial political practices and of the sorts of power maneuvers that brought Ugandan dictator Idi Amin to power.
In Section 12 Lawino describes the effects of Western-style higher education: “Ocol has lost his head / In the forest of books” (199). Lawino grumbles that the manhood of young males “was finished / In the classrooms, / Their testicles / Were smashed / With large books!” (208).
Section 13, the work’s exhortation, appeals to Ocol to submit to an Acoli cleansing ritual that can cure him of his deadly infatuation with white ways. The ritual is described in picturesque detail, each part of it involving physical actions and psychological effects. Lawino tells Ocol that once he is cured, he needs to pray to the ancestors, “Ask them to forgive / Your past stupidity . . . / For when you insulted me, / . . . / You were insulting your grandfathers / And grandmothers, your father and mother!” (213). The work ends with a declaration of love for Ocol and with an expression of hope for the future, so long as “no one uproot the Pumpkin” (216).
Bibliography
p’Bitek, Okot. Song of Lawino: An African Lament. New York: Meridian Books, 1969.
Categories: Literature, World Literature
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