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Song of Lawino
Okot P'Bitek
(First published 1966)
My husband
Looks down upon me;
He says
I am a mere pagan,
I do not know
The way of God.
He says
I am ignorant
Of the good word
In the clean Book
And I do not have
A Christian name.
Ocol dislikes me
Because, he says,
Jok is in my head
And I like visiting
The diviner-priest
Like my mother!
He says
He is ashamed of me
Because when the Jok
In my head
Has been provoked
It throws me down
As if I have fits.
Ocol laughs at me
Because I cannot
Cross myself properly
In the name of the Father
And the Son
And the Clean Ghost
And I do not understand
The confession,
And I fear
The bushy-faced, fat-bellied padre
Before whom people kneel
When they pray.
*
I refused to join
The Protestant catechist class,
Because I did not want
To become a house-girl,
I did not want
To become a slave
To a woman with whom
I may share a man.
O how young girls
Labour to buy a name!
You break your back
Drawing water
For the wives
Of the teachers,
The skin of your hand
Hardens and peels off
Grinding millet and simsim.
You hoe their fields,
Split firewood,
You cut grass for thatching
And for starting fires,
You smear their floors
With cow dung and black soil
And harvest their crops.
And when they are eating
They send you to play games
To play the board game
Under the mango tree!
And girls gather
Wild sweet potatoes
And eat them raw
As if there is a famine,
And they are so thin
They look like
Cattle that have dysentery!
You work as if
You are a newly eloped girl!
The wives of protestant
Church teachers and priests
Are a happy lot.
They sit with their legs stretched out
And bask in the morning sun,
All they know
Is hatching a lot of children.
*
My elder sister
Was christened Erina,
She was a Protestant
But she suffered bitterly
In order to buy the name.
And her loin beads
No longer fitted her.
One Sunday
I followed her
Into the Protestant church:
A big man stood
Before the people.
His hand was lifted up,
My sister said
He was blessing the people.
The man had no rosary,
He wore a long black gown
And a wide white robe
He held a little shiny saucer:
It had small pieces of something.
The name of the man
Was Eliya
And he was calling people
To come and eat
Human flesh!
He put little bits
In their hands
And they ate it up!
Then he took a cup,
He said
There was human blood
In the cup
And he gave it
To the people
To drink!
I ran out of the Church,
I was very sick!
O! Protestants eat people!
They are all wizards,
They exhume corpses
For dinner!
*
I once joined
The Catholic Evening Speakers’ Class
But I did not stay long
I ran away,
I ran away from shouting
Meaninglessly in the evenings
Like parrots
Like the crow birds
Maria the Clean Woman
Mother of the Hunchback
Pray for us
Who spoil things
Full of graciya.
The things they shout
I do not understand,
They shout anyhow
They shout like mad people.
The padre shouts words,
You cannot understand,
And he does not seem
To care in the least
Whether his hearers
Understand him or not;
A strange language they speak
These Christian diviner-priests,
And the white nuns
Think the girls understand
What they are saying
And are annoyed
When the girls laugh.
One night
The moon was very bright
And in the distance
The ‘get-stuck’ dance drums
Were throbbing vigorously,
The teacher was very drunk
His eyes were like rotting tomatoes.
We guessed he was teaching
Something about the Clean Ghost.
He shouted words at us
And we shouted back at him,
Agitated and angry
Like the okwik birds
Chasing away the kite
From their nest.
He shouted angrily
As if he uttered abuses,
We repeated the same words
Shouting back at him
As when you shout
Insults at somebody’s mother!
We repeated the meaningless phrases
Like the yellow birds
In the lajanawara grass.
The teacher was an Acoli
But he spoke the same language
As the white priests.
His nose was blocked
And he tried
To force his words
Through his blocked nose.
He sounded like
A loosely strung drum.
The teacher’s name
Was Bicenycio Lagucu.
He was very drunk
And he smiled, bemused.
The drums of the ‘get-stuck' dance
Thundered in the distance
And the songs came floating
In the air.
The milk
In our ripe breasts boiled,
And little drops of sweat
Appeared on our foreheads,
You think of the pleasures
Of the girls
Dancing before their lovers,
Then you look at the teacher
Barking meaninglessly
Like the yellow monkey.
In the arena
They began to sing my song,
We could hear it faintly
Passing through the air
Like the thin smoke
From an old man’s pipe:
O! Lawino!
Come let me see you
Daughter of Lenga-moi
Who has just shot up
Young woman come home!
O Lawino!
Chief of the girls
My love come
That I may elope with you
Daughter of the Bull
Come that I may touch you.
