Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol

Okot p�Bitek

• Publisher: East African Educational Publishers
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9789966566096
• Topic: Littérature
• Subtopic: Poésie africaine

Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol are among the most successful African literary works. Song of Lawino is an African womans lamentation over the cultural death of her western educated husband - Ocol. In Song of Ocel the husband tries to justify his cultural apostasy. These songs were translated from Acholi by the author. They evince a fascinating flavour of the African rhythmical idiom.

Song of Lawino

1
My Husband’s Tongue is Bitter

Husband, now you despise me

Now you treat me with spite

And say I have inherited the stupidity of my aunt;

Son of the Chief,

Now you compare me

With the rubbish in the rubbish pit.

You say you no longer want me

Because I am like the things left behind

In the deserted homestead.

You insult me

You laugh at me

You say I do not know the letter A

Because I have not been to school

And I have not been baptised

You compare me with a little dog,

A puppy.

My friend, age-mate of my brother,

Take care,

Take care of your tongue,

Be careful what your lips say.

First take a deep look, brother,

You are now a man

You are not a dead fruit!

To behave like a child does not befit you!

Listen Ocol, you are the son of a Chief,

Leave foolish behaviour to little children,

It is not right that you should be laughed at in a song!

Songs about you should be songs of praise!

Stop despising people

As if you were a little foolish man,

Stop treating me like salt-less ash^*

Become barren of insults and stupidity;

Who has ever uprooted the Pumpkin?

My clansmen, I cry

Listen to my voice:

The insults of my man

Are painful beyond bearing.

My husband abuses me together with my parents;

He says terrible things about my mother

And I am so ashamed!

He abuses me in English

And he is so arrogant.

He says I am rubbish,

He no longer wants me!

In cruel jokes, he laughs at me,

He says I am primitive

Because I cannot play the guitar,

He says my eyes are dead

And I cannot read,

He says my ears are blocked

And cannot hear a single foreign word,

That I cannot count the coins.

He says I am like sheep,

The fool.

Ocol treats me

As if I am no longer a person,

He says I am silly

Like the ojuu insects that sit on the beer pot.

My husband treats me roughly.

The insults!

Words cut more painfully than sticks!

He says my mother is a witch,

That my clansmen are fools

Because they eat rats,

He says we are all Kaffirs.

We do not know the ways of God,

We sit in deep darkness

And do not know the Gospel,

He says my mother hides her charms

In her necklace

And that we are all sorcerers.

My husband’s tongue

Is bitter like the roots of the lyonno lily,

It is hot like the penis of the bee,

Like the sting of the kalang!

Ocol’s tongue is fierce like the arrow of the scorpion,

Deadly like the spear of the buffalo-hornet.

It is ferocious

Like the poison of a barren woman

And corrosive like the juice of the gourd.

My husband pours scorn

On Black People,

He behaves...