Saturday, February 07, 2004
In December I had been working with Erasto as my Kiswahili instructor. Erasto is a very nice guy, young, soft spoken and mild. We have become friends. But he is to forgiving as my language instructor, and he seems to fumble on some grammer questions. So I had a talk with Anna Unpronounceable Name today. She teaches English Lit to the upper grade. She opted out of being my instructor, but in the course of discussing who would be good in this capacity, we talked about her course. She uses African authors who write in English to develop and express African issues, and offered to loan some books to me.
So this evening I was sitting out on a rock with a distant vista of Lake Victoria, reading aloud the poetry of Okot p’Bitek: Song of Lawino. This is powerful stuff! It presents the feelings of a traditional African wife whose husband has studied abroad and returned to take a second “modern” wife and who now berates his original wife as uneducated, dirty, stupid and worthless.
This is a long poem – a small book, really. Think Walt Whitman. Let me quote a rather small section of one of the tamer parts for you, and of course it is best to read it aloud. This section the European and the traditional relationships to time.
Time has become
My husband’s master
It is my husband’s husband.
My husband runs from place to place
Like a small boy,
He rushes without dignity.
And when visitors have arrived
My husband’s face darkens,
He never asks you in,
And for greeting
He says
‘What can I do for you?’
I do not know
How to keep the white man’s time.
My mother taught me
The way of the Acoli
And nobody should
Shout at me
Because I know
The customs of our people!
When the baby cries
Let him suck milk
From the breast.
There is no fixed time
For breast feeding.
When the baby cries
It may be he is ill,
The first medicine for a child
Is the breast.
Give him milk
And he will stop crying,
And if he is ill
Let him suck the breast
While the medicine-man
Is being called
From the beer party.
Children in our homestead
Do not sleep at fixed times.
When sleep comes
Into their head
They sleep,
When sleep leaves their head
They wake up.
When a child is dirty
Give him a wash,
You do not first look at the sun!
When there is no water
In the house
You cannot wash the child
Even if it is time
For his bath!
Listen
My husband,
In the wisdom of the Acoli
Time is not stupidly split up
Into seconds and minutes,
It does not flow
Like beer in a pot
That is sucked
Until it is finished.
It does not resemble
A loaf of millet bread
Surrounded by hungry youths
From a hunt;
It does not get finished
Like vegetables in the dish ...
I don’t know whether this book is available from some place like amazon.com, but my copy was printed in 2001: Song of Lawino, by Okot p’Bitek, ISBN 9966-46-708-4.
So this evening I was sitting out on a rock with a distant vista of Lake Victoria, reading aloud the poetry of Okot p’Bitek: Song of Lawino. This is powerful stuff! It presents the feelings of a traditional African wife whose husband has studied abroad and returned to take a second “modern” wife and who now berates his original wife as uneducated, dirty, stupid and worthless.
This is a long poem – a small book, really. Think Walt Whitman. Let me quote a rather small section of one of the tamer parts for you, and of course it is best to read it aloud. This section the European and the traditional relationships to time.
Time has become
My husband’s master
It is my husband’s husband.
My husband runs from place to place
Like a small boy,
He rushes without dignity.
And when visitors have arrived
My husband’s face darkens,
He never asks you in,
And for greeting
He says
‘What can I do for you?’
I do not know
How to keep the white man’s time.
My mother taught me
The way of the Acoli
And nobody should
Shout at me
Because I know
The customs of our people!
When the baby cries
Let him suck milk
From the breast.
There is no fixed time
For breast feeding.
When the baby cries
It may be he is ill,
The first medicine for a child
Is the breast.
Give him milk
And he will stop crying,
And if he is ill
Let him suck the breast
While the medicine-man
Is being called
From the beer party.
Children in our homestead
Do not sleep at fixed times.
When sleep comes
Into their head
They sleep,
When sleep leaves their head
They wake up.
When a child is dirty
Give him a wash,
You do not first look at the sun!
When there is no water
In the house
You cannot wash the child
Even if it is time
For his bath!
Listen
My husband,
In the wisdom of the Acoli
Time is not stupidly split up
Into seconds and minutes,
It does not flow
Like beer in a pot
That is sucked
Until it is finished.
It does not resemble
A loaf of millet bread
Surrounded by hungry youths
From a hunt;
It does not get finished
Like vegetables in the dish ...
I don’t know whether this book is available from some place like amazon.com, but my copy was printed in 2001: Song of Lawino, by Okot p’Bitek, ISBN 9966-46-708-4.
