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Okot p'Bitek (1931-1982) |
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Ugandan poet, anthropologist, and social critic, who wrote in Luo and in English. Okot P'Bitek was one of the most vigorous and original voices in East African 20th-century poetry. His satirical monologues dealt with the conflict between European and African cultures. In his most famous poem, The Song of Lawino (1966), p'Bitek introduced a style that became known as "comic singing." Husband, now you despise me Okot p'Bitek was born in Gulu, Northern Uganda, into a family of Luo people. At that time Uganda was a protectorate of the British Empire. P'Bitek's mother was a gifted singer, composer, and leader of her clan. Under the influence of his mother, p'Bitek grew up learning the tales, proverbs and songs of Acholi folklore (sometimes referred to as Lwo or Luo). P'Bitek himself was an accomplished dancer and drummer. He attended Gulu High School and King's College, Budo, where he wrote and produced theatre and opera. Budo was patterned along the educational tradition of English boy's schools. Later he said that he learned very little from his literary tutors – Shakespeares and Shelleys were irrelevant to his experience. However, during this period he became familiar with many Acholi songs. After a two-year course at the Government Training College in Mbarara, p'Bitek taught at Sir Samuel Baker's School near Gulu. While still a student, p'Bitek published his first poem, 'The Lost Spear,' based on a traditional Luo folk story, but also influenced by Longfellow's poem The Song of Hiawatha (1855). His first and only novel, Lak Tar Miyo Kinyero Wi Lobo, p'Bitek published in Luo in 1953. Its title is a proverb, meaning "Our teeth are white, that's why we laugh at the sorrows of the world." The story tells about the tragedy of a poor Acholi lad, who struggles hard to save money to marry his sweet heart, but eventually loses his savings. An adept soccer player and a member of the Uganda national
team, he
toured Britain in 1956 for a series of games, and decided stay there to
study. P'Bitek took a diploma in education in Bristol, and later he
studied law at the University of Wales at Aberystwyth and social
anthropology at Oxford, where he completed in 1963 a B.Litt. thesis on
the traditional songs of Acoli and Largo. During this period he lost his Christian commitment. P'Bitek recalled his
experiences: "During the very first lecture in the Institute of Social
Anthropology, the teacher kept referring to Africans or non-western
peoples as barbarians, savages, primitives, tribes etc. I protested but
no avail. All the processors and lecturers in the institute, and those
who came from outside to read papers, spoke the same insulting
language." ('African Religions in Western Scholarship'
by Okot p'Bitek, in The Lawino's
People: The Acholi of Uganda by Frank Knowles Girling, Okot
p'Bitek, edited and introduced by Tim Allen, Zürich: Lit Verlag GmbH
& Co., 2019, p. 521) Returning to
Uganda at the age of 33, p'Bitek joined the
staff of the Department of
Sociology at Makerere University College in Kampala, the capital city.
Two years later he became a tutor with the Extra-Mural department.
P'Bitek also founded the Gulu and was appointed director of the
National Theatre and National Cultural Centre in Kampala. Later in 1968
in Kenya he founded Kisumu Arts Festivals. Besides being an organizer,
p'Bitek was also a performer, singer and dancer at the Gulu Festival.
His wide circle friends and
acquaintances included such leading poet-musicians of Acholiland as
Omal Adok Too, Goya, Yona Acwaa, Acamu Lubwa Too, Oloyo Acil and Abonga
Bongomin Lutwala. As a poet p'Bitek made his breakthrough with The Song of
Lawino. It was first composed in Luo in rhyming couplets and was
translated into English by the author, who according to his own words
clipped a bit of the eagle's wings of the original Acholi poem "and
rendered the sharp edges of the warrior's sword rusty and blunt, and
also murdered rhythm and rhyme". (quoted in 'Okot p'Bitek' by Awuor Ayodo, in Postcolonial African
Writers, edited by Pushpa Naidu Parekh and
Siga Fatima Jagne, foreword by Carole Boyce Davies, London and New
York: Routledge, 1998, p. 397) Although the work was turned down by several British
publishers, in 1966 it became a bestseller. A separate American
edition, by the World Publishing Company, was issued in 1969. The Luo
original was published in 1971. P'Bitek's friend and colleague Taban lo
Liyong published in 2001 a new translation of the poem, The Defense
of Lawino,
which aimed to be more faithful to the Acholi original. "It may seem ironical that the first important poem in English
to
emerge in Eastern Africa should be a translation from the vernacular
original," wrote Gerald Moore. ('Grasslands Poetry' by
Gerald Moore, a review of Song of
Lawino, Transition, No.
31, June-July, 1967) Like p'Bitek's other long poems, it was
written
as a story, narrated by one person. However, there are divisions in the
general frame, that suggest individual poems. Lawino, a non-literate
woman, laments her fate in 'My Husband's Tongue is Bitter'. Her
university-educated
husband Ocol has adopted Western ways, rejected her, and taken another,
Westernized woman. Lawino claims that he has lost his manhood by
reading books: "Bile burns my inside! / I feel like vomiting! / 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!" (Ibid., p. 117) Paralles have been drawn between The Song of Lawino and Longfellow's Hiawatha, that p'Bitek has read when he was a student. "Lawino, the woman narrator, castigates her husband for abandoning the ways of his people, comparable to a Minnehaha castigating a Hiawatha. And yet these literary products were not derivates. They are a synthesis forged in resistance." Ngugi wa Thiong'o noted. (Globalectics: Theory and the Politics of Knowing by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, New York: Columbia University Press, 2012, p. 43) The Song of Lawino was followed by Song of Ocol
(1970),
in which Lawino's husband respons to her. "Mother, mother, / Why, / Why
was I born / Black?" says Ocol at the end of Chapter 2. (The Song of Lawino & The Song of Ocol, p. 126) By denying his
Africanness, Ocol reveals
his true alienated character; later in his speech in Chapter he
promises to "erect monuments / To the founders / Of modern Africa: /
Leopold II of Belgium, / Bismarck . . . " (Ibid., p. 151) "Okot has made 'the
foundation' on which he wishes to build African nations abundantly
clear throughout this book. In these last pages he is challenging all
concerned with the nation building to reassess their own activities in
the light of his ideas. If they don't accept the challenge . . . those
like Nyerere and Senghor who are looking for an African mould for
nation-building will be 'utterly defeated' by the continuing cultural
influence of Europe on Africa." ('Introduction' by G.
A. Heron, in Song of Lawino & Song of Ocol, p. 32) Song of Lawino has been a required text in the Ugandan educations system. Following the popular success of the work, the names Lawino
and Ocol became common nouns, prototypes of two opposing types. P'Bitek
gives no clear answer to the
question, what it means to be African, but in Ocol's
Africa age-old
traditions give way to modern values, whereas Lawino is proud of the
traditional way of life and he rejects foreign intrusion. Together
these books form a polemic, oratorical account of the changing times,
dramatized through the accusing voices of marriage conflict. Song
of Ocol was directly written in English. Ngugi wa Thiong'o wrote that "Song of Lawino
is a satiric assault on the African middle-class élite that has so
unbashedly embraced Western bourgeois values and modes of life." ('Okot p'Bitek and Writing in East Africa,' in Homecoming: Essays on
African and Caribbean Literature, Culture and Politics by Ngugi
wa Thiong'o, London: Heinemann, 1972, p. 74)
The narrators of
the poem are not only representatives of certain values and attitudes,
but lively personalities, with their
deficiencies, humor, bitterness, and need of understanding. The author
himself belonged
to the generation, that had absorbed early native culture during the
colonial period, but then had received a British education. P'Bitek's
own choice was to take a stand against Western infiltration and defend
Acoli traditions and customs. "The vast majority of our people in the
countryside, have a full blooded literary culture, so deep, so vivid
and alive that for the moment the very little written stuff appears
almost irrelevant," he wrote in the much quoted essay 'Future of the
Vernacular Literature' (1966). (quoted in Decolonisations of Literature: Critical Practice in Africa and Brazil after 1945 by Stefan Helgesson, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2022, p. 139) Two Songs (1971) included Song of a Prisoner, apparently born as a response to the assassination of the Kenyan politician Tom Mboya, and Song of Malaya, about hypocrisy and sexual morals (malaya means "prostitute"). The book, dedicated to Patrice Lumumba (1925-1961), the murdered prime minister of the Republic of the Congo, was awarded the inaugural Kenyatta Prize for Literature in 1972. All these early collections were published by the East African Publishing House. Although p'Bitek had dismissed Shelley at Budo as "irrelevant," this revolutionary poet, especially his The Mask of Anarchy (1819/1832), written after the Peterloo Massacre carried out by British soldiers, influenced his Song of Prisoner and Song of Soldier, which he never finished. Idi Amin (also known as Idi Amin Dada), the ruthless dictator of Uganda from 1971 to 1979, is widely believed to be the "soldier" of the latter song. P'Bitek also published a collection of Acoli traditional songs, The Horn of My Love (1974), and a collection of Acoli folktales and short stories, Hare and Hornbill (1978). His major academic studies were Religion of the Central Luo (1971), African Religions in Western Scholarship, and Africa's Cultural Revolution (1973). P'Bitek was a frequent contributor to Transition, a journal published at Makerere, and other journals. His essays varied from literary criticism, such as 'The Self in African Imagery,' to articles on anthropological, sociological, and philosophical topics. P'Bitek's direct poems and his academic works caused much debate. He attacked both reactionary modes of thought and the uncritical acceptance of modernization, and was criticised by British observers for his Afrocentric views and cultural nationalism, and by feminist observers, who had trouble in accepting p'Bitek's sexual jokes and one-sided satirical portrayal of African women. Uganda became an independent member of the Commonwealth in
1962 with
Milton Obote as prime minister. After criticizing the government of
Uganda in Zambia, p'Bitek became persona non grata in his own country
and moved to Kenya. His disillusionment he expressed in the poem 'They
Sowed and Watered': "They sowed and watered / Acres of cynicisms /
Planted forests of laughters /
Bitter laughters that flowed in torrents / And men shed tears as they
rocked / And held their chests / And laughed and laughed / The floods
of tears turned red". (Poems from East Africa, edited by
David Cook & David Rubadiri, Nairobi: East African Educational
Publishers, 2009, p. 130) The following years of his life
p'Bitek spent teaching in Kenya and in the United States. Obote was
overthrown in a miliary coup in 1971, and Idi Amin seized power. During
his reign a huge number of Ugandans were killed and the economy
collapsed. In 1971 p'Bitek became a senior research fellow at the
Institute of African Studies in Nairobi. He also lectured in sociology
and literature at the university. The Amin years P'Bitek spent in
exile, and then returned to Makerere University as Professor of
Creative Writing. P'Bitek died of a liver infection on July 19, 1982.
His daughter,
Jane Okot p'Bitek, is also a writer, whose Song of Farewell
(1994), a volume of poetry, was dedicated "To the memory of Dad / Late
Prof Okot p'Bitek / Who left me / An iota of his Poetry." For further reading: The Last Word Cultural Synthesism by Taban lo Lijong (1969); 'Introduction' by Edward Blishen, Song of Prisoner by Okot p'Bitek (1971); A Reader's Guide to African Literature, edited by Hans M. Zell and Helene Silver (1972); Homecoming: Essays on African and Caribbean Literature, Culture, and Politics by Ngugi wa Thiong'o (1972); The Poetry of Okot p'Bitek by George A. Heron (1976); Uhuru's Fire: African Literature East to South by Adrian Roscoe (1977); 'Okot p'Bitek: Literature and Cultural Revolution' by S.O. Asein, in Journal of African Studies , Vol. 5, No. 3 (1978); Twelve African Writers by Gerald Moore (1980); Thought and Technique in the Poetry of Okot p'Bitek by Monica Nalyaka Wanambisi (1984); 'Okot p'Bitek: A Checklist of Worls and Criticism' by Ogo A. Ofuani, in Review of African Literatures , Vol. 16, No. 3 (1985); New Poetry from Africa: A Poetry Course for Senior Secondary Schools, edited by R. Johnson, D. Ker, C. Maduka, O. Obafemi (1996); 'Okot p'Bitek' by Awuor Ayodo, in Postcolonial African Writers: A Bio-bibliographical Critical Sourcebook, edited by Pushpa Naidu Parekh and Siga Fatima Jagne (1998); The Penguin Book of Modern African Poetry, edited by Gerald Moore and Ulli Beier (1998); Oral Traditions As Philosophy: Okot P'Bitek's Legacy for African Philosophy by Samuel Oluoch Imbo (2002); A Study of Okot p'Bitek's Poetry by Monica Mweseli (rev. and rejigged ed., 2004); The Sublime in the Imagery of Solomon’s Song of Songs: and Okot P’Bitek’s Song of Lawino by Halimah Hannah Nambusi (2019); 'Validating the Subversive: A (Re)reading of Sex Images in Okot p'Bitek's Song of Malaya' by Barasa Remmy Shiundu, in Sexual Humour in Africa: Gender, Jokes, and Societal Change, edited by Ignatius Chukwumah (2022); 'Intercultural Critique of Subalternization: Parody in Okot p'Bitek's Song of Lawino' by Lorna Fitzsimmons, in Teaching Comedy, edited by Bev Hogue (2023) Selected works:
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