Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol

“Lawino is free to turn the Western weapon of ‘dirty gossip’ back on its users. It is natural for her to express the prejudices of her people. And these prejudices are simply the negative expression of her positive beliefs. By using Lawino, Okot is able to present Acoli ideas without the awareness of the other side’s case which hampers some of the more intellectual approaches.”

Heron suggests that p’Bitek saw intellectualism as a barrier to conveying his intended message in Song of Lawino—an apprehension that may have derived from his personal experiences as a scholar of anthropology. In Song of Ocol, p’Bitek addresses Ugandan politicians’ vehement dislike of intellectuals (particularly scholars of the humanities) from the perspective of one such politician. The poems thus have an ambivalent relationship with Uganda’s intellectual culture, which p’Bitek tries to eschew using Lawino’s voice but also implicitly (though vehemently) defends through his portrayal of Ocol’s unjustified hatred.

“Both ways of life are open to criticism, both ways of life are valid. […] But Lawino doesn’t believe that the two ways of life are equally valid for Africans, and neither does Okot.”

Heron summarizes Lawino’s belief in The Equal Value of Different Cultures, which comes with a major caveat about which cultures belong to which peoples. In many ways, this point is Song of Lawino’s central thesis, the core social argument that p’Bitek seeks to convey to the broader East African public.

“If Song of Ocol is a reply to Song of Lawino then it is a bad one. Okot raises controversial issues in his poems, but he only puts one point of view in the controversy.”

Heron expresses his personal opinions about the text, presenting the two poems as an imbalanced call-and-response due to p’Bitek’s greater sympathy for Lawino. This is an important example of how Heron’s introduction to the text not only contextualizes but editorializes p’Bitek’s work for English-language readers.

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

Songs about you should be songs of praise!”

Lawino opens her song with metacommentary, telling Ocol that it is unfortunate she has to sing a derisive song about him. P’Bitek’s use of exclamations here conveys her conviction on this point and her internal conflict over how to respond to Ocol’s abusive treatment of her.

“I do not like dusting myself with powder:

The thing is good on pink skin

Because it is already pale,

But when a black woman has used it

She looks as if she has dysentery”

Lawino’s description of European beauty products such as face powder illustrates the fundamental lack of accommodation for Black women under colonial beauty standards. Ocol expects Lawino to adopt European makeup, but she cannot because no products are manufactured with her in mind. Clementine’s decision to use the European makeup anyway and Lawino’s decision to reject it represent the two possible responses to this dilemma, and both women are judged by others for their decisions, underscoring that there is no “right” way to exist as an African woman under colonialism.

“The pumpkin in the old

Homestead

Must not be uprooted!”

This is the central refrain of Song of Lawino, derived from an Acholi proverb, which Lawino repeats in different iterations throughout her song. While the pumpkin fruit has symbolic resonance throughout the poem, its roots are another important component of the proverb’s figurative meaning, as they tether the fruit to the Ugandan soil. In both Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol, repetitions of the verb “uproot” and other references to the roots of plants invoke the idea of a person’s intrinsic ties to their homeland (both culturally and physically).

“And so you turn

To the dances of white people,

Ignorance and shame provoke you

To turn to foreign things!”

Lawino assesses Ocol’s character, identifying his insecurities as the source of his desire to become more like a white man. Later, Ocol will inadvertently confirm this characterization, wailing in shame over his own Blackness and touting racist talking points.

“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.”

P’Bitek utilizes parallelism to illustrate Lawino’s belief in the equal value of white hair and Black hair. These lines also have a chiastic structure, as the concepts of pride and wishes (both Black and white) alternate with one another in a way that syntactically echoes the idea that both cultures have equal value.

“O how I miss my sister

And how I miss the singing

While grinding millet in my mother’s house!”

Lawino’s relationship with her family is a key part of how she conveys her tribal patriotism, thus developing the theme of Patriotism in Tribalist and Nationalist Contexts. Her use of an interjection (“O”) at the beginning of the stanza conveys her feelings of longing and wistfulness surrounding this memory, as well as the raw emotions associated with her patriotism more generally.

“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.”

This metaphor is similar to one in which Lawino calls Ocol a white man’s dog (115). Both insults take aim at Ocol’s subservient relationship to Europeans, calling into question his masculinity. Here, the personified version of time acts as a European man would within the colonial culture of Uganda, becoming a domineering force in Ocol’s life.

“Ocol laughs at me

Because I cannot

Cross myself properly

In the name of the Father And of the Son

And the Clean Ghost.”

P’Bitek’s literal translation of the Acholi word for “Holy Spirit” helps give English-language readers a sense of Christianity’s foreignness to traditional Acholi culture, underscoring how strange it must seem to Lawino. This translation technique, therefore, seeks to bring readers out of their own cultural perspectives and into Lawino’s, even if the reader has no prior familiarity with Acholi culture.

“And all the teachers

Are alike,

They have sharp eyes

For girls’ full breasts;

Even the padres

Who are not allowed

To marry

Are troubled by health,

Even the fat-stomached

Who cannot see

His belly button

Feels better

When he touches

A girl’s breasts,

And those who listen

To the confessions

Peep through the port-hole

And stab the breasts

With their glances.”

Lawino’s characterization of all Catholic authority figures as being predatory toward women verges on the “dirty gossip” that Heron describes in his introduction, except that it is based on her own experiences as a student at the Catholic evening classes. As with many moments in Song of Lawino, readers are left to determine for themselves where Lawino’s honesty ends and her slander begins. Regardless, Lawino suggests not only the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church but also its violence as a colonial institution by framing the priests’ harassment of women in terms that evoke weapons and warfare (“sharp,” “stab,” etc.)—a variation on the theme of National Conflict on a Domestic Scale.

“I think about these questions

In my head

And my head begins to ache,

And my neck begins to pain,

But who can I ask?

Where can I go?”

Although Ocol and authority figures in the church continually underestimate Lawino’s capacity for deep thought, the intense nature of her philosophical questions is made manifest to readers through the physical pain the questions cause her. The desperate tone of the questions at the end of this quote illustrates the extreme loneliness she feels over not being able to have substantive discussions with her husband or others.

“A large snake

Once fell down from the roof

Of the cold hall!

The Nun who was teaching The Evening Speakers’ Class

Grabbed her large crucifix

And pressed it on her bosom,

Closed her eyes

And said something

We could not understand.”

Lawino observes the nun’s use of the crucifix as a talisman against evil without any judgment, letting the similarity between it and non-Christian talismans remain pointed subtext. Observations such as this one support her overarching argument about the equal value of different cultures without actively criticizing Eurocentrism as she does in other parts of the poem.

“White diviner priests,

Acoli herbalists,

All medicine men and medicine

Women

Are good, are brilliant

When the day has not yet

Dawned

For the great journey

The last safari

To Pagak.”

Lawino applies her belief in the equal value of different cultures to all fields, including medicine, where death serves as the equalizer of all doctors and healers. This is a conviction that p’Bitek does not share and expresses disagreement with in Song of Ocol. Nevertheless, Lawino’s descriptions of the inevitable journey to Pagak (the place where Death resides) provide non-Acholi readers with insight into traditional Acholi approaches to understanding death, and this context is important to the text’s overall defense of Acholi culture.

“He shouts

His brother will bring

Communism!

I do not know

What this animal is!”

Lawino’s exclamations give the sense that she is shouting back at Ocol. Her misunderstanding of the word Communism (which she believes is an animal) reminds readers of her lack of Western education relative to Ocol and suggests that Ocol’s political rants will go entirely unappreciated by the people he is supposedly serving as a politician.

“Ocol says

They want Uhuru,

His brother says

They want Uhuru and Peace,

Both of them say

They fight ignorance and disease!

Then why do they not join hands,

Why do they split up the army

Into two hostile groups?

The spears of the young men

And their shields,

Why are the weapons

And the men and women

Dispersed so uselessly?”

Lawino observes Ocol’s conflict with his brother as a neutral third party, innocently asking questions about their political goals and thus serving as an unwitting mouthpiece for p’Bitek’s social critiques. By examining national political conflicts on a domestic scale through the allegorical relationship between Ocol and his brother, p’Bitek highlights the absurdities that he perceives in the dispute between the DP and UPC. As such, this critique has a satirical effect, although p’Bitek keeps his observations rooted in the realistic voice of Lawino.

“For all our young men

Were finished in the forest,

Their manhood was finished

In the class-rooms,

Their testicles

Were smashed

With large books!”

Lawino ties Western education to what she perceives as an ongoing feminization of Acholi men. She hyperbolically imagines the books themselves being used as tools for inflicting genital mutilation, literally altering their male sex organs. This interpretation is notably different from Ocol’s, who consistently views men living traditional African lifestyles as more feminine than Westernized African men. The very divergence of their opinions supports the poem’s overall cultural relativism; there is no “correct” way to perform masculinity, though there may be a correct way to perform it as an Acholi man specifically.

“I see a large Pumpkin

Rotting

A thousand beetles

In it;

We will plough up

All the valley,

Make compost of the Pumpkins

And the other native vegetables,

The fence dividing

Family holdings

Will be torn down,

We will uproot

The trees demarcating

The land of clan from clan,

We will obliterate

Tribal boundaries

And throttle native tongues

To dumb death.”

Ocol subverts the proverb used by Lawino throughout her song, “The pumpkin in the old homestead must not be uprooted,” asserting that the pumpkin is itself rotten and therefore harmless to uproot. He then reuses the verb “uproot,” applying it to how he plans to destroy tribal differences in Uganda, relishing the very action that Lawino has warned him against. By opening the poem with such a flagrant disregard for Lawino’s words, Ocol establishes that he does not respect his wife’s perspective and even enjoys contradicting it.

“Mother, mother,

Why,

Why was I born

Black?”

Ocol’s tone turns desperate and pained as he addresses his mother for the first and only time in the poem. P’Bitek utilizes apostrophe like this throughout both poems to emulate the structure of traditional Acholi songs and also to provide insight into the speakers’ intended audiences. That Ocol turns to his mother in this moment of racial dysphoria (the intensity of which is emphasized by his repetition of “why”) suggests an emotional connection to his family that is otherwise obscured by his violent and demeaning language throughout the poem.

“It is taboo

To throw down water pots

With water in them,

But taboos must be broken,

Taboos are chains

Around the neck,

Chains of slavery.”

Ocol treats traditional culture as the force that has enslaved Black Africans rather than the white colonizers (who have, in many instances, literally enslaved Black Africans). His preoccupation with this figurative slavery, rather than the literal kind, renders him (ironically) fond of European culture and politics and ignorant of the ways in which his own politics contribute to the racial subjugation of the Acholi community.

“Did someone tell you

That on the morning of uhuru

The dew on the grass

Along the village pathways

Would turn into gold,

To be collected by the women

Going to the well

To fetch water,

Or by the early morning hunters

Laying traps for the duikers

At the water holes?

And the leaves

Of the olam tree

That fall off

At the start of the droughts,

Did you dream

That the leaves

Would become banknotes

And be scattered by the wind

Among the villagers?”

Ocol takes a sarcastic tone when addressing common people who expected to receive economic gains after independence but did not. Despite expressing contempt for the East African landscape throughout the poem, he uses natural imagery that is distinctly African here; duikers (a type of small antelope) and olam (sycamore fig) trees clearly evoke the landscape of Acholiland. His use of this imagery suggests an attempt at replicating the thoughts of those he believes to be more “backward” than he is and, by extension, more attached to traditionally African ways of life. At the same time, it conveys his own internal conflict, as he clearly retains deep knowledge of his cultural roots.

“We will uproot

Each tree

From the Ituri forest

And blow up

Mount Kilimanjaro,

The rubble from Ruwenzori

Will fill the Valleys

Of the Rift,

We will divert

The mighty waters

Of the Nile

Into the Indian Ocean.”

Ocol turns his violent language toward the landscape of Eastern Africa, vowing to destroy some of the region’s most imposing geographic features: the Ituri rainforest, Mount Kilimanjaro, the Ruwenzori Mountains, and the Nile River. The certainty with which he speaks about achieving these enormous feats (using the simple future tense) reveals his godlike self-image, as he imagines sculpting the landscape much like Lawino imagined the Christian god doing so during creation.