On translating the 'untranslated': Chapter 14 of 'Wer pa Lawino' by Okot p'Bitek.

When Okot came to North America in 1967, he was already the Director of the National Theatre in Kampala, Uganda. He had already published Song of Lawino. And he was leading the Ugandan National Dance Troupe: the celebrated "Heartbeat of Africa" at the Canadian International Exposition (Expo '67). I was already in the University of Iowa when he arrived in New York. He rang me up from there. And told me my copy of Song of Lawino was on the way. It came, and at one sitting I made a running commentary as I read along. That commentary, without revision, looking back, or second opinion, was re-produced in to to and intact as "Lawino is Unedu (cat Ed)" in my 1969 collection of essays, The Last Word. I thought Lawino did not have the intellectual background to discourse on some of the issues that Okot wanted to debate. On Acholi culture, fair enough, a chief's daughter, a sage's daughter, a chief of women, would be able to know, understand, and restate the Acholi view. But, on matters on time, of Christian theology, I thought Lawino could not do more than to cavil and make fun. Much more to the point: what about |development'? Fair enough, Ocol is not highly educated, and we do not hold him up as a model "new" Acholi or "new" Ugandan; and Clementine was the model ape, if there was any. Whether it was the Democratic Party or the Uganda People's Congress, the major parties in Uganda were always claiming that they would bring about development. I thought Lawino was negative, as far as development was concerned.

When I returned to East Africa from Iowa and published The Last Word, I was often Okot's guest in Kisumu, and he was often mine in Nairobi. When he himself returned from Iowa Writers' Workshop and joined the Institute of African Studies, he also began to teach Oral Literature in the Literature Department. Okot laughed off my remarks; but he and our joint publisher, the now defunct East Africa Publishing House, took it as a publishing opportunity to produce Song of Ocol as a response to Lawino's criticism. Okot's heart was for Lawino and what Lawino stood for. Ocol and Kele were the butt's ends. And, of all the people, it was not Okot who should have written Ocol's rejoinder. Later, in oblique way, Kele justified herself in Song of Malaya. When Ocol was metamorphosed into a gun-wielding soldier, Okot again wanted to "celebrate" him. But he found it hard-going. For the "soldier" whom we all know is Idi Amin, who was well-known or …