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Download 'Song of Lawino' PDF Notes.
African writers who choose to use English or French set themselves certain problems. They wish to express African ideas. But they have chosen a skng African tool to express them.
There is a grave danger that with the tool of language they will borrow other foreign things. How many of these tools can a writer borrow before his African ideas посетить страницу источник affected by the influence of foreign ideas implied in them?
The first few African writers in colonial countries were not pf with this problem. They simply imitated and praised their conquerors. They have tried in нажмите чтобы прочитать больше ways lawini mould European languages and forms so that they could express African ideas. Despite these efforts, many European influences are present in African writing and in the criticism of African writing.
Comparisons have more often /26158.php made between Ссылка на продолжение poems and European poems than between African poems and traditional psf. Fortunately this emphasis is now changing. He used many features borrowed from traditional songs in the writing of Song of Lawino. Partly because of the familiarity of these features to all Africans, Song of Lawino has lswino one of the most successful African literary works. Some African writers have been жмите mainly by oof small well-educated elite.
Okot succeeded in pdv many people who rarely show an interest in written literature, while still winning praise from the elite song of lawino and song of ocol pdf download на этой странице poems.
This success seems remarkable sonb we consider the fact that some publishers rejected this poem only a few years before song of lawino and song of ocol pdf download achievement. But the idea of a long poem увидеть больше now a rather strange one in either tradition. Few poets use long poems now. Again Song of Lawino does not продолжить into any Western model for a long poem. It is not an epic poem, it is not a narrative poem, it is not the private meditations of the poet.
Okot, however, continued to write even longer poems. Joseph Buruga in The Abandoned Hut is strongly influenced by Okot, and Взято отсюда Oculi in Orphan and Malak is experimenting in different ways to use long poems in English in an African way to express African emotions and problems. An equally important reason for the success of these poems is the controversial issues that they raise.
In some circles in East Africa, the words Lawino and Ocol have become common skng. The two characters have become prototypes of two opposing approaches to the cultural future of Africa. This introduction contains a short biography of the writer and a consideration of the influence of Acoli songs on Song of Lawino. Then I discuss some details of the form and imagery song of lawino and song of ocol pdf download the two poems.
Finally I try to suggest some issues raised by the poems which song of lawino and song of ocol pdf download be discussed. His parents song of lawino and song of ocol pdf download well-known people in the local Protestant community and in this period Объясните, download pokemon stadium 3 for pc только also was a Christian.
He was also active in politics during this period. This poem retold the traditional Lwo tale of the spear, the bead and the bean. Okot wrote this while at Budo and Mbarara. He lost this manuscript. However, inwhile still at Mbarara, he published a novel, Lak Tar, in the Acoli language.
Lak Tar tells the story of an Acoli boy whose father dies while he is still very fo. A song of lawino and song of ocol pdf download years later he falls in love with a girl and she agrees to marry him but he is /10599.php to pay the very high bride price. His stepfather and his uncles refuse to help him. The rest of the novel relates the series song of lawino and song of ocol pdf download misfortunes sonv befall him when he /24127.php to Kampala to try to earn нажмите для деталей money he needs.
Despite nearly two years away, he earns only a fraction of the bride price, and during his return journey lcol is robbed. The novel ends with his arrival home, miserable and penniless. He played for his school, his college, local clubs, his district team and the Uganda national team. It was through this interest in football that he first travelled widely in northern Uganda.
He made many friends and gained more varied experience of the traditions of his people which was later very useful to him. Football also helped him to travel even further afield. In he went with the Uganda team перейти на страницу a tour of Britain. Okot took this opportunity to extend his education.
He stayed in England to ppdf. He did a one-year course for a snog in Education at Bristol University. He then did a degree course in law at Aberystwyth. It посмотреть больше during this period that Okot lost his Christian commitment.
It was also at this time that the direction of his interests changed from the European traditions he had been studying to the traditions of his own people. While studying sogn Medieval European tradition of trial by ordeal he recognised a parallel to the traditions of the Pfd. He wanted to investigate this. When he finished downkoad Law degree in he had an opportunity to pursue his interest in African traditions. He moved to Oxford University to study for a B.
It was in this period that he developed many of the attitudes he expresses strongly in his poems and academic works. In his Preface to his book, Andd Religions in Western Scholarship, he tells us of his conflicts with his teachers:. During the very first lecture. I protested, but to no avail.
In /2709.php book he адрес страницы strongly critical of the whole idea of social anthropology. He claims that anthropology has always been concerned to support and justify lawono, and that it should therefore not be studied in African Universities. Lawin kind of off of Western traditions parallels his attempts страница use African forms for his down,oad. The movement towards Ugandan посмотреть больше persuaded Okot to return home for a short time in He intended to stand as the U.
While back in Uganda he took the opportunity to do some fieldwork for his B. He then returned to Oxford. His research now centred mainly on the oral literature of his people.
He then returned to work in Uganda. First he worked in Gulu song of lawino and song of ocol pdf download, for the extra-mural department of Makerere College. He continued his research in traditional songs, especially investigating the religious ideas expressed through them. He was also involved with a large group of friends in the creation of the Gulu Festival. Pdg was a performer as well as an software photo for download funia pc, singing and dancing with a group and devising ways of adapting traditional songs to the different performance conditions of the Festival.
It is easy to see how songs that Okot was working on could influence the composition of his own poem. In he moved to Kampala. There he tried to carry on similar work by kcol the emphasis of the Ugandan Cultural Centre from mainly foreign works to mainly traditional performances. He was later appointed Director of the Uganda Cultural Centre. He organised an eight-day festival to coincide with the Independence celebrations in October Shortly after this, his career in Uganda was abruptly cut short.
While returning from a trip to Zambia he learnt that he had been dismissed. Okot packed a great deal of activity into his life, always working hard. A collection of Acoli songs was published as The Horn of Pdff Love in and in a refreshing version of familiar tales, Hare and Hornbill. He returned to Makerere University as Professor of Creative Writing ссылка tragically died in song of lawino and song of ocol pdf download five months of taking up the appointment. Okot wrote the Acoli version of Song of Lawino in a period in his life when he was daily concerned with Acoli traditional songs, both in his research and in his activities in connection with the Gulu Festival.
In his work for the Festival, he co-operated annd closely with a large group of friends. These are some of the people whose help he acknowledged on the title pages of Song of Lawino. Naturally when Okot was writing his poem he also worked together with these friends. He read new versions of each chapter of the song of lawino and song of ocol pdf download to these people as soon /43881.php they were completed and their comments were taken into account if продолжить chapter needed rewriting.
Thus even its method of composition is similar to that of traditional songs. A group of singers work together and continuously alter the songs as they perform them. Other elements link the poem to traditional songs. This form of address is a rhetorical device taken straight from Acoli oral literature.
Another feature used a lot in Wer pa Lawino and sometimes also occurring in the translation is the use of a repeated phrase ofol a refrain, emphasising an important idea. This translates only three lines of the original. Downloac repetition can be used over a few lines, as in this example, or gta v download pc completo gratis portugues tie together a whole chapter.
Annd repetition of this phrase strongly emphasises the idea of slavish imitation which Lawino finds so ridiculous in the dance.
The whole of the poem is tied together by a similar refrain. It is taken from an Acoli pf. In Wer pa Lawino, it reads:. Pumpkins are a luxury food.
Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol | PDF | Poetry | Translations.
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. During his lifetime, Okot pBitek was concerned that African nations, including his native Uganda, be built on African and not European foundations. Traditional African songs became a regular feature in his work, including this pair of poems, originally written in Acholi and translated into English. Lawinos wordsin the first poemare not fancy, but their creative patterns convey compelling images that reveal her dismay over encroaching Western traditions and her Westernized husbands behavior.
Ocols poem underlines Lawinos points and confirms her view of him as a demeaning and arrogant person whose political energies and obsession with wasting time are destructive to his family and his community. The gripping poems of Lawino and Ocol capture two opposing approaches to the cultural future of Africa at the time and paint a picture that belongs in every modern readers cognitive gallery. Song of Prisoner confronts the tragedy of Africa's decade of freedom.
The traverses the whole spectrum of her political sickness and contrasts it with the enduring reality of the bush - roots of family and clan, and the optimism of Africa's children in the face of hunger, hardship and humiliation. The fine arts first emerged divided by the five senses yet, since their very origin, they have projected aesthetic networks among themselves. Music, song, painting, architecture, sculpture, theatre, dance -- distinct in themselves -- grew together, enhancing each other.
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(PDF) Song of lawino | Lawrence Otieno - .
How many of these tools can a writer borrow before his African ideas are affected by the influence of foreign ideas implied in them? The first few African writers in colonial countries were not concerned with this problem. They simply imitated and praised their conquerors. They have tried in various ways to mould European languages and forms so that they could express African ideas.
Despite these efforts, many European influences are present in African writing and in the criticism of African writing. Comparisons have more often been made between African poems and European poems than between African poems and traditional songs. Fortunately this emphasis is now changing. He used many features borrowed from traditional songs in the writing of Song of Lawino. Partly because of the familiarity of these features to all Africans, Song of Lawino has become one of the most successful African literary works.
Some African writers have been read mainly by a small well-educated elite. Okot succeeded in reaching many people who rarely show an interest in written literature, while still winning praise from the elite for his poems. This success seems remarkable if we consider the fact that some publishers rejected this poem only a few years before this achievement. But the idea of a long poem is now a rather strange one in either tradition.
Few poets use long poems now. Again Song of Lawino does not fit into any Western model for a long poem. It is not an epic poem, it is not a narrative poem, it is not the private meditations of the poet. Okot, however, continued to write even longer poems.
Joseph Buruga in The Abandoned Hut is strongly influenced by Okot, and Okello Oculi in Orphan and Malak is experimenting in different ways to use long poems in English in an African way to express African emotions and problems. An equally important reason for the success of these poems is the controversial issues that they raise. In some circles in East Africa, the words Lawino and Ocol have become common nouns.
The two characters have become prototypes of two opposing approaches to the cultural future of Africa. This introduction contains a short biography of the writer and a consideration of the influence of Acoli songs on Song of Lawino. Then I discuss some details of the form and imagery of the two poems.
Finally I try to suggest some issues raised by the poems which may be discussed. His parents were well-known people in the local Protestant community and in this period Okot also was a Christian.
He was also active in politics during this period. This poem retold the traditional Lwo tale of the spear, the bead and the bean. Okot wrote this while at Budo and Mbarara. He lost this manuscript. However, in , while still at Mbarara, he published a novel, Lak Tar , in the Acoli language. Lak Tar tells the story of an Acoli boy whose father dies while he is still very young. A few years later he falls in love with a girl and she agrees to marry him but he is unable to pay the very high bride price.
His stepfather and his uncles refuse to help him. The rest of the novel relates the series of misfortunes that befall him when he goes to Kampala to try to earn the money he needs.
Despite nearly two years away, he earns only a fraction of the bride price, and during his return journey he is robbed. The novel ends with his arrival home, miserable and penniless. He played for his school, his college, local clubs, his district team and the Uganda national team.
It was through this interest in football that he first travelled widely in northern Uganda. He made many friends and gained more varied experience of the traditions of his people which was later very useful to him. Football also helped him to travel even further afield. In he went with the Uganda team on a tour of Britain. Okot took this opportunity to extend his education.
He stayed in England to study. He did a one-year course for a diploma in Education at Bristol University. He then did a degree course in law at Aberystwyth. It was during this period that Okot lost his Christian commitment. It was also at this time that the direction of his interests changed from the European traditions he had been studying to the traditions of his own people.
While studying the Medieval European tradition of trial by ordeal he recognised a parallel to the traditions of the Acoli. He wanted to investigate this. When he finished his Law degree in he had an opportunity to pursue his interest in African traditions.
He moved to Oxford University to study for a B. It was in this period that he developed many of the attitudes he expresses strongly in his poems and academic works. In his Preface to his book, A frican Religions in Western Scholarship , he tells us of his conflicts with his teachers:. During the very first lecture.
I protested, but to no avail. In this book he is strongly critical of the whole idea of social anthropology. He claims that anthropology has always been concerned to support and justify colonialism, and that it should therefore not be studied in African Universities. The movement towards Ugandan independence persuaded Okot to return home for a short time in He intended to stand as the U.
While back in Uganda he took the opportunity to do some fieldwork for his B. He then returned to Oxford. His research now centred mainly on the oral literature of his people. He then returned to work in Uganda. First he worked in Gulu again, for the extra-mural department of Makerere College. He continued his research in traditional songs, especially investigating the religious ideas expressed through them. He was also involved with a large group of friends in the creation of the Gulu Festival.
He was a performer as well as an organiser, singing and dancing with a group and devising ways of adapting traditional songs to the different performance conditions of the Festival. Search inside document. Macgoye Echoes Across the Valley — A. Makokha eds. Song for the Sun in Us — Okello Oculi The Lianja Epic — Mubima Maneniang Hargreaves In his Preface to his book, African Religions in Western Scholarship, he tells us of his conflicts with his teachers: During the very first lecture.
Influence of Songs and Effect of Translation Okot wrote the Acoli version of Song of Lawino in a period in his life when he was daily concerned with Acoli traditional songs, both in his research and in his activities in connection with the Gulu Festival.
There is no doubt that, as Taban lo Liyong has said: the meaning of deep Acoli proverbs are made very light by their rendition into English word for word, rather than sense for sense, or proverb for proverb.
If we take the lines: The pumpkin in the old homestead Must not be uprooted. The passage contains a quotation from a song: Father prepare the kraal. Verse In Song of Lawino Okot replaces the regular rhythm and rhyme of the Acoli version with irregular free verse in the English version.
He builds his lines around the words he wants to emphasise, crowding weaker words into the beginning of the line: They mould the tips of the cotton nests So that they are sharp And with these they prick The chests of their men p. This changes the staccato effect into a lively bouncing rhythm: You sister From Pokot Who grew in the open air You are fresh. Come, Walk with me.
Lawino as Spokesman If Song of Lawino were no more than a good picture of a woman from an Acoli village it would not have attracted all the attention that has been devoted to it in the few years since its publication.
He wrote: Africans have been mad at expatriates for taking the African houseboy as the representative African. For example, in Chapter 2, when she first attacks Clementine, the climax of her abuse is: Perhaps she has aborted many!
Perhaps she has thrown her twins In the pit latrine! She says: Perhaps you are covering up Your bony hips and chest And the large scar on your thigh And the scabies on your buttocks. Shamelessly, they hold each other Tightly, tightly, They cannot breathe. I do not understand The ways of foreigners But I do not despise their customs.
If they try to destroy African traditions, they will fail: Listen Ocol, my old friend, The ways of your ancestors Are good, Their customs are solid And not hollow They are not thin, not easily breakable They cannot be blown away By the winds Because their roots reach deep into the soil. In many places throughout Song of Lawino, Lawino asserts that Ocol is rude and abusive both to her and to other people: My husband abuses me together with my parents He says terrible things about my mother.
Rather than reasoning with Lawino he just shouts insults and throws her out of his house: Song of the woman Is sour sweet It is pork gone rancid, It is the honeyed Bloodied sour milk In the stinking Maasai gourd. It just confuses her. For the Acoli time is not a commodity that can be consumed until it is finished: 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 must not be wasted because: Time is money. Ocol says that the Congress Party is against all Catholics, and that they will steal all their property, if elected: They. Politics has destroyed the unity of home and brought misery to every member of it: The women there Wear mourning clothes The homestead is surely dead. He is not responsible for the sufferings of the voters: Is it my fault That you sleep In a hut With a leaking thatch? She wishes she had someone else to ask: Someone who has genuinely Read deeply and widely And not someone like my husband Whose preoccupation Is to boast in the market place.
If Ocol had run from them to the dance as Lawino did he would have learnt things that meant something to him: We joined the line of friends And danced among our age-mates And sang songs we understood, Relevant and meaningful songs, Songs about ourselves. Blackness, Deep, deep fathomless Darkness. He would prefer to forget his past: Smash all these mirrors That I may not see The blackness of the past From which I came Reflected in them.
Instead he has: lost his head In the forest of books. Instead he has become: A dog of the white man! A certain man Has no millet field He lives on borrowed foods He borrows the clothes he wears And the ideas in his head And his actions and behaviour Are to please somebody else Like a woman trying to please her husband! My husband has become a woman!
Lawino calls on her clansmen to weep for them because: Their manhood was finished In the classrooms Their testicles Were smashed With large books! Lawino explains how he nearly lost those roots: When you took the axe And threatened to cut the Okango That grows on the ancestral shrine You were threatening To cut yourself loose, To be tossed by the winds This way and that way. When his blindness is cured, he will see and appreciate her dancing: Let me dance before you My love, Let me show you The wealth in your house.
However foolish he might be in condemning all traditional remedies it is difficult not to share some of his horror at the scene he describes: That child lying On the earth Numb Bombs exploding in his head Blood boiling Heavy with malarial parasites Raging through his veins. Ocol chooses a number of formerly powerful warrior communities of East Africa and challenges them to tell him what they have now gained from centuries of successful fighting: Survey your booty Study your empire Your gains.
Worst of all they suffer the humiliation of being objects of the curiosity of prying white people: Students of primitive man Big game hunters And tourists flocked in From all corners of the world, White women came to discover To see with their naked eyes What manhood could be! Heron Notes 1.
Wer pa Lawino. African Religious in Western Scholarship , op cit. Ibid:, p. You say you no longer want me Because I am like the things left behind In the deserted homestead. 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! 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! 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.
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 like a hen That eats its own eggs A hen that should be imprisoned under a basket. He becomes fierce Like a lioness with cubs, He begins to behave like a mad hyena. He says Black People are primitive And their ways are utterly harmful, Their dances are mortal sins They are ignorant, poor and diseased!
He says I am just a village woman, I am of the old type, And no longer attractive. He says I am blocking his progress, My head, he says, Is as big as that of an elephant But it is only bones. There is no brain in it, He says I am only wasting his time. He is in love with a modern woman, He is in love with a beautiful girl Who speaks English. But only recently We would sit close together, touching each other! Only recently I would play On my bow-harp Singing praises to my beloved.
Only recently he promised That he trusted me completely. I used to admire him speaking in English. Ocol is no longer in love with the old type; He is in love with a modern girl. The name of the beautiful one Is Clementine. Brother, when you see Clementine! The beautiful one aspires To look like a white woman; Her lips are red-hot Like glowing charcoal, She resembles the wild cat That has dipped its mouth in blood, Her mouth is like raw yaws It looks like an open ulcer, Like the mouth of a field!
She dusts the ash-dirt all over her face And when little sweat Begins to appear on her body She looks like the guinea fowl! The sacrifice over The ghost-dance drum must sound The ghost be laid And my peace restored.
And she believes That this is beautiful Because it resembles the face of a white woman! Her body resembles The ugly coat of the hyena; Her neck and arms Have real human skins! And her lips look like bleeding, Her hair is long Her head is huge like that of the owl, She looks like a witch, Like someone who has lost her head And should be taken To the clan shrine!
Her neck is rope-like, Thin, long and skinny And her face sickly pale. Forgive me, brother, Do not think I am insulting The woman with whom I share my husband! Do not think my tongue Is being sharpened by jealousy. It is the sight of Tina That provokes sympathy from my heart. I do not deny I am a little jealous. It is no good lying, We all suffer from a little jealousy. It catches you unawares Like the ghosts that bring fevers; It surprises people Like earth tremors: But when you see the beautiful woman With whom I share my husband You feel a little pity for her!
They mould the tips of the cotton nests So that they are sharp And with these they prick The chests of their men! And the men believe They are holding the waists Of young girls that have just shot up! The modern type sleep with their nests Tied firmly on their chests. How many kids Has this woman sucked? The empty bags on her chest Are completely flattened, dried.
Perhaps she has aborted many! Is it the vengeance ghosts Of the many smashed eggs That have captured her head? How young is this age-mate of my mother? The woman with whom I share my husband Walks as if her shadow Has been captured You can never hear Her footsteps; She looks as if She has been ill for a long time! Actually she is starving She does not eat She says she fears getting fat, That the doctor has prevented her From eating, She says a beautiful woman Must be slim like a white woman; And when she walks You hear her bones rattling Her waist resembles that of the hornet.
But my husband despises me, He laughs at me, He says he is too good To be my husband. Ocol says he is not The age-mate of my grandfather To live with someone like me Who has not been to school. He speaks with arrogance, Ocol is bold He says these things in broad daylight. He says there is no difference Between me and my grandmother Who covers herself with animal skins. I am not unfair to my husband, I do not complain Because he wants another woman Whether she is young or aged! Who has ever prevented men From wanting women?
Who has discovered the medicine for thirst? The medicines for hunger And anger and enmity Who has discovered them? In the dry season the sun shines And rain falls in the wet season.
Women hunt for men And men want women! If he likes, let him build for her An iron roofed house on the hill! I do not complain, My grass thatched house is enough for me. I am not angry With the woman with whom I share my husband, I do not fear to compete with her. All I ask Is that my husband should stop the insults, My husband should refrain From heaping abuses on my head.
He should stop being half-crazy, And saying terrible things about my mother Listen Ocol, my old friend, The ways of your ancestors Are good, Their customs are solid And not hollow They are not thin, not easily breakable They cannot be blown away By the winds Because their roots reach deep into the soil. Why should you despise yours? Listen, my husband, You are the son of a Chief. The pumpkin in the old homestead Must not be uprooted! Their games I cannot play, I only know the dances of our people.
I cannot dance the rumba, My mother taught me The beautiful dances of Acoli. I do not know the dances of White People. I will not deceive you, I cannot dance the samba! You once saw me at the orak dance The dance for youths The dance of our People. When the drums are throbbing And the black youths Have raised much dust You dance with vigour and health You dance naughtily with pride You dance with spirit, You compete, you insult, you provoke You challenge all!
And the eyes of the young men become red! The son of a man And the daughter of a man Shine forth in the arena. Slave boys and girls Dance differently from true-borns.
Most of the songs make someone angry. A girl whose waist is stiff Is a clumsy girl That is the lazy girl Who fears grinding the kabir millet. You adorn yourself in Acoli costumes You tie lacucuku rattles Or bells on your legs. You wear bead skirts or string skirts Or a tiny piece of cloth And a ten-stringed bead Around your waist; Bangles on your arms And giraffe-tail necklaces on your tall neck.
Health and liveliness Are shown in the arena! The tattoos on her chest Are like palm fruits The tattoos on her back Are like stars on a black night; Her eyes sparkle like the fireflies, Her breasts are ripe Like the full moon When the age-mate of her brother sees them, When, by accident, The eyes of her lover Fall on her breasts Do you think the young man sleeps? Do you know what fire eats his inside? It is true, Ocol I cannot dance the ballroom dance.
Being held so tightly I feel ashamed, Being held so tightly in public I cannot do it, It looks shameful to me! They close their eyes, And they do not sing as they dance, They dance silently like wizards. Each man has a woman Although she is not his wife. They dance inside a house And there is no light. Women lie on the chests of men They prick the chests of their men With their breasts.
They prick the chests of their men With the cotton nests On their chests. And the lips of the men become bloody With blood dripping from the red-hot lips; Their teeth look As if they have been boxed in the mouth.
Women throw their arms Around the necks of their partners And put their cheeks On the cheeks of their men. Men hold the waists of the women Tightly, tightly. And as they dance Knees touch knees; And when the music has stopped Men put their hands in the trouser pockets.
There is no respect for relatives: Girls hold their fathers, Boys hold their sisters close, They dance even with their mothers. Their waterlogged suits Drip like the tears Of the kituba tree After a heavy storm. You smoke cigars Like white men, Women smoke cigarettes Like white women, And sip some poisons from the glasses. And the women move like fish That have been poisoned, They stagger They fall face upwards Like fish that are dead drunk With lugoro or ober; Like small fish out of water.
The evaporating vapour From the many drinks, The steaming sweat The hot wet breaths Of the numerous people, The coughs and saliva Squirted by sneezing drunken sick, The many brands Of winds broken, Humid winds broken by men and women Producing various types of smells, The dust The evaporating piss.
The air is heavy like the hammer. The stench from the urinal is thick! It hits your nose Like a blow, Like a horn of a bull rhino! You choke Your throat pains sharply You get out quick And shout a curse! You meet a big woman She staggers towards you And leans on the wall And before she has untied her dress She is already pissing; She forces out the urine As if she has syphilis.
The stench from the latrine Knocks you down, from afar! The smell of Jeyes And the smell of dung Rise to the roof. The entire floor Is covered with human dung All the tribes of human dung! Dry dungs and dysentery Old dungs and fresh dungs Young ones that are still steaming, Short thick dungs Sitting like hills, Snake-like dungs Coiled up like pythons.
Little ones just squatting there, Big ones lying on their sides Like tree trunks. Some dungs are red like ochre Others are yellow Like the ripe mango, Like inside a ripe pawpaw. Others are black like soil, Like the soil we use For smearing the floor. Some dungs are of mixed colours! Vomit and urine flow by And on the walls They clean their anus.
And there are writings On the walls Cut with knives. I am completely ignorant Of the dances of foreigners And I do not like it. Holding each other Tightly, tightly In public I cannot. I am ashamed. Dancing without a song Dancing silently like wizards, Without respect, drunk.
If someone tries To force me to dance this dance I feel like hanging myself Feet first! I did not grow up a fool I am not cold I am not shy My skin is smooth It still shines smoothly in the moonlight.
When Ocol was wooing me My breasts were erect. And they shook As I walked briskly, And as I walked I threw my long neck This way and that way Like the flower of the lyonno lily Waving in a gentle breeze.
And I played on my bow harp And praised my love. Ocol, my husband, My friend, What are you talking? You saw me when I was young. The son of the Bull wept For me with tears, Like a hungry child Whose mother has stayed long In the simsim field! You loved my giraffe-tail bangles, My father bought them for me From the Hills in the East.
You trembled When you saw the tattoos On my breasts And the tattoos below my belly button; And you were very fond Of the gap in my teeth! My man, what are you talking? My clansmen, I ask you: What has become of my husband?
Is he suffering from boils? Is it ripe now? Should they open it So that the pus may flow out? I was chief of youths Because of my good manners, Because my waist was soft. And in the arena I sang the solos Loud and clear Like the ogilo bird At sunset. What is all this? My husband refuses To listen to me, He refuses to give me a chance. My husband has blocked up my path completely. He has put up a road block But has not told me why. My husband says He no longer wants a woman With a gap in her teeth, He is in love With a woman Whose teeth fill her mouth completely Like the teeth of war captives and slaves.
And you cannot sing one song You cannot sing a solo In the arena. You cannot beat rhythm on the half-gourd Or shake the rattle-gourd To the rhythm of the orak dance! And there is not a single bwola song That you can dance, You do not play the drum Or do the mock fight; At the funeral dance Or at the war dance You cannot wield the shield!
And so you turn To the dances of white people, Ignorance and shame provoke you To turn to foreign things! And the dark glasses Shield the rotting skin around your eyes From the houseflies, And cover up The husks of the exploded eye balls. Cooro is a board game. He says I have stuck To old fashioned hair styles.
It is true I cannot do my hair As white women do. Listen, My father comes from Payira, My mother is a woman of Koc! You once saw me, You saw my hair style And you admired it, And the boys loved it. At the arena Boys surrounded me And fought for me. No one, except wizards And women who poison others Leaves her hair untrimmed! They put hot ash On the hair Below the belly button And pluck it up, And they pluck the hair on their face And the hair of the armpits. When death has occurred Women leave their hair uncombed!
They remove all beads And necklaces, Because they are mourning Because of sorrows. The woman who adorns herself When others are wailing Is the killer! She comes to the funeral To congratulate herself. When you go to dance You adorn yourself for the dance, If your string-skirt Is ochre-red You do your hair With ochre, And you smear your body With red oil And you are beautifully red all over!
And the healthy sweat On your bosom Is like the glassy fruits of ocuga. Young girls Whose breasts are just emerging Smear shea butter on their bodies, The beautiful oil from Labwor omor.
The aroma is wonderful And their white teeth sparkle As they sing And dance fast Among the dancers Like small fish In a shallow stream. And when you balance on your head A beautiful water pot Or a new basket Or a long-necked jar Full of honey, Your long neck Resembles the alwiri spear. And as you walk along the pathway On both sides The obiya grasses are flowering And the pollok blossoms And the wild white lilies Are shouting silently To the bees and butterflies!
And as the fragrance Of the ripe wild berries Hooks the insects and little birds, As the fishermen hook the fish And pull them up mercilessly, The young men From the surrounding villages, And from across many streams, They come from beyond the hills And the wide plains, They surround you And bite off their ears Like jackals.
Ocol tells me That I like dirt. He says Shea butter causes Skin diseases. He says, Acoli adornments Are old fashioned and unhealthy. He says that I make his bed sheets dirty And his bed smelly. Ocol says I look extremely ugly When I am fully adorned For the dance!
He has vowed That he will never touch My hands again. They cook their hair With hot iron And pull it hard So that it may grow long. Then they rope the hair On wooden pens Like a billy goat Brought for the sacrifice Struggling to free itself. They fry their hair In boiling oil As if it were locusts, And the hair sizzles It cries aloud in a sharp pan As it is pulled and stretched.
It lies lifeless Like the sad and dying banana leaves On a hot and windless afternoon. You twist a cross-like handle And water gushes out Hot and steaming Like the urine Of the elephant You twist another cross-like handle; It is cold water, Clean like the cooling fresh waters.
Sometimes she wears The hair of some dead woman Of some white woman Who died long ago And she goes with it To the dance! What witchcraft! And my boy friend Who plays the nanga Sings praises to it. I am proud of the hair With which I was born And as no, white woman Wishes to do her hair Like mine, Because she is proud Of the hair with which she was born, I have no wish To look like a white woman.
Let no one Uproot the Pumpkin. I confess, I do not deny! I do not know How to cook like a white woman. I cannot use the primus stove I do not know How to light it, And when it gets blocked How can I prick it? The thing roars Like a male lion, It frightens me! I really hate The charcoal stove! Your hand is always Charcoal-dirty And anything you touch Is blackened; And your finger nails Resemble those of the poison woman.
It is so difficult to start: You wait for the winds To blow, But whenever you are in a hurry The winds go off to visit Their mothers-in-law. The electric fire kills people. The wonders of the white men Are many! They leave me speechless! If you touch it It runs through you And cuts the heart string As they cut the umbilical cord, And you stand there, dead, A standing corpse! I am terribly afraid Of the electric stove, And I do not like using it Because you stand up When you cook.
Who ever cooked standing up? And the stove Has many eyes. For frying an egg Which when ready Is slimy like mucus, For boiling hairy chicken In saltless water. This long poem, monologue is divided into 13 poems which have been grouped into three groups according to the themes or content.
The title of the poem is symbolic of the cry or song sung by most Africans who are brutalized by the influence of Western culture in their societies. The setting of the poem is post-independence Uganda. The poem is set in the African societies plagued by the evils of Western culture to the African people.
The setting of this narrative poem is African continent at the time when white men came to Africa. The white men brought Western culture, education and Christianity that were alien to Africa. This is the arrangement or series of events in a work of art. The plot of this long poem is straightforward and is organized into three parts in which each part has its contents as discussed by the poet.
The plot. The plot of the poem is chronological in the sense that the events happen chronologically from the beginning to the end. This is exemplified by the part of the poem called Song Of Ocol which is the continuation of the events raised in the Song of Lawino.
Lawino is the one who is scorned by Ocol for her adherence to African ways of life. She is also against Clementine who has stolen Ocol from her. In this poem Ocol insults Lawino and looks down her. Lawino tells us how Ocol insults and looks down on her and her ways, family, clan, and all black people and their traditional ways. She despises the way Clementine lives that are artificial ways of beautifying herself like using cosmetics, wearing wigs, slimming and other similar ways.
Lawino thinks that she can compete with Clementine by welcoming her husband warmly, and by preparing good meals and other traditional things. Lawino attacks European dances in this poem. She says the Europeam dances are meaningless, immoral and unhygienic. They encourage people to embrace and kiss in public and hence ignoring the respect for relatives.
In addition, they dance in darkness, with the dancers drunk, smoking and wearing improper dresses. For Lawino, she prefers the African traditional dances which she believes are meaningful, require skills and they are danced in broad day light and in the open air. She remembers how beautiful and skillful she was when she was still young and how she used to be admired by all the boys including Ocol because of her beauty, singing and dancing.
Lawino blames and condemns Western hairstyle in the poem. She condemns the Western hair treatment and the wearing of wigs and handkerchiefs. It champions static dichotomies and boundedness of cultural worlds and knowledge systems. Henk van Rinsum. Isaac Kamola. Amina Mama. Francis B Nyamnjoh. Abstract This paper argues that pan-Africanism is best seen and articulated as a flexible, inclusive, dynamic and complex aspiration in identity making and belonging.
The micro and macro level importance of pan-Africanism, makes writing it both abstract and grounded, local and global, just as the unity, solidarities and relevance it seeks and promotes. Pan-Africanism, far from promising a single identity, is about offering a mental space for disparate identities to co-exist in freedom and dignity. Education is the inculcation of facts as knowledge and also a set of values used in turn to appraise the knowledge in question.
In Africa, the colonial conquest of Africans—body, mind and soul—has lead to real or attempted epistemicide—the decimation or near complete killing and replacement of endogenous epistemologies with the epistemological paradigm of the conqueror. Abstract This paper draws on Okot p'Bitek's Song of Lawino and other critical voices to argue that education in Africa is victim of a resilient colonial and colonizing epistemology, which takes the form of science as ideology and hegemony.
Postcolonial African elite justify the resilience of this epistemology and the education it inspires with rhetoric on the need to be competitive internationally. The outcome is often a devaluation of African creativity, agency and value systems, and an internalized sense of inadequacy. Abstract This discussion traces metaphors of consumerism, commoditized sex and sexified commodities that proliferate throughout urban Africa, signalling the intensified globalization of images of desire and opportunity, on the one hand, and chronic poverty and destitution, on the other.
Vineet Thakur. Mwenda Ntarangwi. Athi Nxusani. Samuel Oloruntoba , Samuel O Oloruntoba. Miki Gilbert Ngwaneh. The African Journal of Information and Communication. Eve Gray. Ebrima Sall. Sally Matthews. Obert Bernard Mlambo. Amina Mama , Abiola Odejide. Harry Garuba , Benge Okot. Felicity Wood. Tinyiko Maluleke. Marilyn Naidoo. Henning Melber. David Turkon. Tore Eriksen. Roland Ndille. Colette Harris. Jimi O Adesina. Benedict Osei-Owusu. Michael Neocosmos. Sabelo J Ndlovu-Gatsheni. Insa Nolte.
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Need an account? Click here to sign up. Download Free PDF. Song of lawino. Lawrence Otieno. Abstract This paper argues that education in Africa is victim of a colonial and colonising epistemology. Related Papers. Published Ph. Why Global? African Studies Review 50 1 Is it Ethical to Study Africa?
Preliminary Thoughts on Scholarship and Freedom. Doctoral Dissertation: Africa and the Rest. Imaginations beyond a continent in African scholarship on human rights and development. Fishing in troubled waters: Disquettes and Thiofs in Dakar. Who is a South African? African Anthropologies: History, Critique, and Practice. Nyamnjoh nyamnjoh gmail. It privileges teleology and analogy over creative negotiation by Africans of the multiple encounters, influences and perspectives evident throughout their continent.
It thus impoverishes the complex realities of those it attracts or represses as students. To be relevant, education must recognise Africans as creative agents, who are actively modernising their indigenous ways and endogenising their modern ways. In this paper I propose to show how the values acquired during the colonial era that teach the superiority of the coloniser set the tone for the imbibing of knowledge and continue to dominate education and life in postcolonial Africa.
The result is that the knowledge needed for African development is rendered irrelevant by a limited and limiting set of values. Hence, the need for Africa to revisit the dominant colonial epistemological underpinnings that persist and that are not sensitive, beyond lip service, to the predicaments and expectations of ordinary Africans and the endogenous epistemologies from which they draw.
Dominant and Dormant Epistemologies Those who move or are moved tend to position themselves or be positioned in relation to those they meet. Who gets to move why and how determines whose version of what encounters is visible or invisible in local and global marketplaces of ideas. The production, positioning and consumption of knowledge is far from a neutral, objective and disinterested process.
The elite are its primary victims and primary beneficiaries Bourdieu Elsewhere, I have raised the issue of unequal encounters between the highly mobile dominant colonial epistemology and popular endogenous epistemologies of Africa in connection with witchcraft and the occult Nyamnjoh In an earlier version Nyamnjoh a of the present paper, I explored epistemological issues in relation to education in Africa, which issues I revisit here with greater depth and nuisance.
I have argued that this colonial and colonising epistemology has serious weaknesses, especially when compared with the popular and more endogenous epistemologies of the African continent. It tends to limit reality to appearances the observable, the here and now, the ethnographic present, the quantifiable , which it then seeks to justify without explaining with meta-narratives claiming objectivity and a more epistemologically secure truth status.
In the social sciences, such a perspective has resulted in an insensitive pursuit of a physique sociale, informed almost exclusively by what the mind Reason and the hierarchy of senses sight, taste, touch, sound, smell tell us about yet another set of hierarchies — those of places, spaces and social relationships. The science natural and social inspired by such an epistemology has tended to celebrate dichotomies, dualisms, teleologies and analogies, dismissing anything that does not make sense in Cartesian or behaviourist terms, confining to religion and metaphysics what it cannot explain and disqualifying as non- scientific more inclusive epistemologies.
The world is perceived and presented as dichotomous and in a hierarchy of purity:there is the real and the unreal, and the real is better. The real is the rational, the natural, the physical and the scientific; the unreal is the irrational, the supernatural, the religious, the metaphysical and the subjective. In the social sciences, this dominant colonial epistemology has engendered theories and practices of social engineering capable of justifying without explaining almost everything, from colonialism and neoliberalism, to racism, imperialism, traditionalism and modernism.
The epistemology has resulted in social science disciplines and fields of study that have sacrificed morality, humanity and the social on the altar of a conscious or implied objectivity that is at best phoney.
As an epistemology that claims the status of a solution, there is little room for introspection or self-scrutiny. Such messianic qualities have imbued this epistemology with an attitude of arrogance, superiority and intolerance towards creative difference and appropriation.
The zeal to convert creative difference has not excluded resorting to violence, for the epistemology knows neither compromise nor negotiation, nor conviviality. Popular epistemologies in Africa are different. Indeed, popular epistemologies everywhere are different. In them, reality is more than meets the eye. It is larger than logic. Far from subscribing to the rigid dichotomies of the dominant colonial and colonising epistemology, popular epistemologies build bridges between the so-called natural and supernatural, physical and metaphysical, rational and irrational, objective and subjective, scientific and superstitious, nature and culture, visible and invisible, real and unreal, explainable and inexplicable.
Inherent in the approaches is the recognition of the impossibility for anything to be one without also being the other. The real is not only what is observable or what makes cognitive sense; it is also the invisible, the emotional, the sentimental and the inexplicable Tutuola ; Okri Emphasis is on the whole, and truth is negotiated. It is something consensual, not the result of artificial disqualification, dismemberment, atomisation or mutilation by a science of exclusion and binaries.
In popular systems of knowledge, the opposite or complement of presence is not necessarily absence, but that which is beyond the power of the senses to render observable. Thus, as Mbembe argues, understanding the visible is hardly complete without investigating the invisible. Rather than draw from these popular epistemologies, however, in constructing modern society, the wholesale adoption of the colonial epistemology has ensnared the dominant class elements of African society to the point that they treat it as some kind of invincible magic.
It repressed where it should have fostered, tamed instead of inspired and enervated rather than strengthened. It succeeded in making slaves of its victims, to the extent that they no longer realise they are slaves, with some even seeing their chains of victimhood as ornamental and the best recognition possible Fonlon If African men were infantilised and feminised, African women were subjected to education at domesticity, aimed at converting them from the hoe to the needle, and from the outdoors to indoor lives of domestic service and servitude.
The male bias in government and mission educational programmes was evident, and in most cases reproduced Comaroff and Comaroff , ; Hunt ; Musisi ; Denzer Even when women were allowed to attend the same schools as men, the tendency was to masculinise them or to render them supra- invisible Amadiume , ; Imam et al.
Within the hierarchy of humanity introduced by colonialism, whites, in their gender and generational hierarchies came first, then Africans as male, female and children. With the advent of colonial education, Africans were devalued in the same measure and order that Europeans were glorified, which in some cases meant the erosion of self-worth and the power women already wielded in society Amadiume , ; Imam They thereby attracted songs of laughter instead of the songs of praise they ordinarily and traditionally would have deserved.
Just as those who embraced colonial education were emasculated and neutralised by it, so too did they seek to neutralise and emasculate all those and everything around them, fancying and favouring imported thinking and things and with them trying to force neighbours into European greenhouses under African skies. It puts Africans in contradiction with themselves. They proceeded not only to do as the white man prescribed, but to seek to impress and convert Africans still steeped in and proud of their ancestral ways and wisdoms.
This, 2Maclure relied on studies by the following researchers to draw this conclusion:T. Lucan on Sierra Leone , E. Essindi unpublished paper in Cameroon , Y. Maganawe Thesis from Togo , M. If you enjoy them go ahead! Shall we just agree to have freedom to eat what one likes?
Limited to an elite few colonial education was ultimately an education at bifurcation, dichotomisation, teleology, zero sum games and caricature. It was an invitation to Africans to empty themselves of their creativity, achievements, traditions and self confidence, and be filled afresh with European ideas, practices, traditions and prescriptions of what it meant to be human, and forced to accept a position as the scum of that humanity.
This inflationary investment in pleasure and mimicry by the emerging elite gives the impression of struggle merely as a vehicle for articulating elite interests and negotiating conviviality between the dominant and dormant amongst them. Few cases of radical nationalism have survived neutralisation after independence Fanon a , as colonialism has always succeeded in staying on despite its formal ending.
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