Song of Lawino / Song of Ocol

"Woman, Shut up! Pack your things, Go!" with such harsh words begins the Song of Ocol. Ocol is the westernized husband of Lawino and he responds to her lament with unabashed cruelty. Okot p'Bitek's Song of Lawino is an African book for Africans. It is also a book for those of us who come from former colonies, a protest against the blind rejection of old beliefs and customs, an argument for faith over western empiricism. Lawino's speech is emotional and complex. She does not make her case constrained by an analytical framework. Rather, she lashes out at her husband's wholesale rejection of his people and their mores. In some places she resorts to logic and in others she snickers with innuendo.

Ocol's faith in the white man's religion is show more as irrational, or depending on your perspective, rational, as Lawino's beliefs in the ways of her people, the Acoli. She argues that Ocol has lost his individuality, he has become a dog of the white man, an obedient servant of no consequence. Ocol's sins are many but they amount to the same thing, a disdainful rejection of his community. He has fallen for another woman, who dresses and behaves like white women. He does not like the food he grew up eating, he hates the wailing of his children and he gives them bastardized western names.

Lawino's song has references to African culture and the introduction provides important context. There are many things to appreciate in Lawino's lament and there are things that you just cannot agree with. Her rejection of western medicine and of books for example.

Ocol's response to Lawino is interesting in several ways. First, it isn't really a different perspective, it is Okot p'Bitek pointing out the inherent absurdity in the philosophy of people like Ocol, through the Song of Ocol. Second, though Lawino's song is focused on Ocol, his response addresses the society and not her concerns. Of her, he is dismissive. If he had his way, Ocol would wipe the slate clean of African culture and start off with the "founders of modern Africa" Leopold II of Belgium, Bismarck, David Livingstone and the like. p'Bitek highlights Ocol's cognitive dissonance, who, while praising Bismarck and Livingstone, rejects communism by arguing that Karl Marx and Lenin were not from Africa. Ocol's ambition of building a new Africa on the ashes of his people's ancient systems seems blindly foolish and that's the message p'Bitek seems to want to convey.

I was recommended the book by an immigrant from Sierra Leone and I found in it many parallels with my own experiences. Recommended. show less