'One does not uproot the pumpkin of the homestead'
~P'Bitek
Sharing one man—legally or illegally—is a
source of conflict in many cultures, religions and societies all over the
world. Many books filled with such interesting stories are all over—from the
Desperate Housewives to the Mexican Soaps and real life dramas having sexual
intrigues and marital discord as their selling point. The setting in the poetic
narrative, Song of Lawino, is no different. Set in the dim pre-colonial Acholi
community from the Northern Uganda, a village woman, Lawino, laments the loss
of her husband Ocol, to her ‘rival’ Clementina.
Lawino fights to keep her man in her bosom,
and keep at bay her rival, Tina, ‘the beautiful one’ who has a head start for she’s
educated, westernised and a modern woman. Lawino uses the weapon of tradition.
She’s not against sharing her man, for polygamy is endorsed in her traditional
community—whereas Tina who has seen the light, is single—but for the fact that
her rival is having an affair with a married man by laying her ‘boob traps’
that ensnare any rich man through her wiles.
Polygamy is prestigious and admirable in
Acholi culture, and there are well-defined rights and duties of a husband and
wife. But a modern woman, her rival, her problem, is taking short cuts instead
of coming out in the open and consummating her illicit affair. Lawino has no
problem with polygamy—it’s not a big deal to share a man—but has a bone to pick
with the character of her rival who is destroying the traditional marriage
institution.
Her husband gives her unfair demands—she
has to learn how to read, become a Christian and modernize herself—a poor
criteria of a good woman, if her own definition and qualification of an African
woman is to go by. She finds it odd, for example, that the modern man, through
Ocol, is preoccupied with time. He seems to be possessed and controlled by
time, and not the other way round. In her traditional setting, she doesn’t even
have a fixed time for breastfeeding. Time seem to control Ocol. He is left at
the mercy of its elements and her time-conscious rival takes this into her
stride.
She admits her ignorance with anything
modern but still needs a man she’s lost. In his rejoinder the husband, through his
wry song (Song of Ocol), dismisses her and her tradition and confirms her assessment
of negative character and experiences of the ordered western lifestyle. Ocol is
incapable of responding to Lawino’s song and he is genuine in his lamenting song
for the dying tradition. He confirms what Lawino suspects, that culture is
unable to resist the glamour of civilisation. He celebrates the dying of
culture—and its minions like Lawino—and embraces the new world without
apologies. He agrees with Tina that not only must the old culture be destroyed but
is also an inevitable necessity.
Meanwhile, Lawino has to sing in her
strange melody, without chorus and accompaniment. Indeed hard to sing for a
woman jilted, and an impossible song to orchestrate on stage—lawino’s song. Her
lamentations, like the traditions that have been trampled by the new
civilisation, cries that if you abandon your culture in one hill, then it will
be expecting you on the next hill!
The modern African woman must be
overwhelmed the new culture, while the old one may have died, but a woman
scorned, perhaps not just yet.
©Roundsquare
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