PERHAPS Lawino’s fiercest attack on her enlightened husband is on the cultural scheme of things when she describes what she calls foreign dances in comparison to her local ones – the acquired dances which are now part of her husband’s way of life.
In her deep-seated odium for anything white, she cannot differentiate between the Acholi dances and other dances from other parts of Africa including the Diaspora.
One would give her a benefit of a doubt for her ignorance of the fox-trot and ball room dances of the western world.
There could even be an excuse for her ignorance of the Brazilian samba of the African slave descendants but to indiscriminately attack and disassociate herself from the Congolese rumba right on her door steps is the greatest irrationality in her understanding or otherwise of cultural synthesis.
For the rumba, of the Congolese people, can probably be an integral part of the Acholi people, at least if not in whole, it could be in part, that is, if Lawino appreciates any cultural fusion; a sort of intertwining of two cultures or more from other bantu-speaking societies.
One would also expect her and her people to be familiar with the most cultured and elegant kitenge dress of the Congolese women.  But, no, instead Lawino launches a sustained attack on her husband who is associated with such alien dances and dress codes (p 20):

It is true
I am ignorant of the dances of
Foreigners
And how they dress
I do not know.
Their games
I cannot play,
I only know the dances of my people.

I cannot dance the rumba,
My mother taught me
The beautiful dances of the Acholi.
I do not know the dances of
White people
I will not deceive you,
I cannot dance the samba!
You once saw me at the orak
Dance
The dance of the youths
The dance of our people.

There is a sense in which Lawino’s world view in so far as the understanding of culture is concerned is skewed towards parochialism. She cannot see beyond her homestead,
appears her family socialisation is all she needs and cherishes; after all, her mother taught her all she needs to know. And taught she was – because Lawino is at her best when she describes the dances of her people; no-one can take way her transcendent knowledge of her people’s rigor and exuberance in dance and song handed down from generations past. This is how she puts it to us (p 20):

When the drums are throbbing
And the black youths
Have raised much dust
You dance with vigor and
Health
You dance naughtily with pride
You dance with spirit,
You compete…you provoke
You challenge all!
And the eyes of the young men
Become red!

You dance with confidence
And you sing
Provocative songs,
Songs of praise
Sad songs of broken loves
Songs about shortage of cattle.
Most of the songs make
Someone angry

Such is the agility and dust-raising dances of Lawino and her generation. It is a sort of participatory dance of impromptu configurations, compositions that recount the history of a people, its woes and joys; all expressed in a flashy moment of ecstasy.
The songs are heroic, of praise and provocation sung with confidence under the throbbing drums of primordial ancestry. Okot himself was a renowned dancer and singer; one would most likely associate him with this kind of thing. Lawino continues, though, with her narration (p 21):

When the daughter of the Bull
Enters the arena
She does not stand here.
Like stale beer that does not
Sell,
She jumps here
She jumps there.
When you touch her
She says ‘Don’t touch me!’
The tattoos on her chest
Are lie the palm fruits,
The tattoos on her back
Are like stars on a black night;
Her eyes sparkle like the
Fireflies

Poetic lines like this one identify Okot the Negritudinist, ingratiating a borrowed philosophy of the late, Monsieur Senghor, the poet- president of Senegal and his companion, Aime Cesaire, of the West Indies and their coterie of Francophone camaraderie.
They launched a clarion call for a renascence of abductive cultures of the black people in Africa, the Americas and Europe during the long night of imperial rule.
It was then that tribal tattoos on black bodies would take on a special significance under the twinkle of a partial moon, palm trees would sing sweetly in the wind and fireflies become an extended metaphor of the brilliance of eyes African.
There is always a repertoire of flora and fauna to embellish the descriptive power of a Negritude poet in the homesteads of yesterday’s Africa.
Okot’s heroine, Lawino, takes advantage of this and creates an unbelievable atmosphere of a village under the spell of an Acholi spirit.
The reader should notice the swift movement of young dancers, nimble-footed, exotic and impatient. There is, however, a sudden bathos in the drama as Lawino invokes another’s dance; the newly-acquired dance of Ocol (p 22):

Women through their arms
Around the necks of their partners
And put their cheeks
On the cheeks of their men.
Men hold the waists of the
Women
Tightly, tightly…
They cannot breathe!
There is no respect for relatives:
Girls hold their fathers,
Boys hold their sisters close,
They dance even with their
Mothers
Modern girls are fierce
They coil around their nephews
And lie on the chests of their
Uncles…

It is hot inside the house
It is hot like inside a cave
Like inside a hyena’s den!
And women move like fish
That have been poisoned,
They stagger
They fall face upwards…

The sharp contrast of the dances is startling. Lawino is at her best, her diction is unmistakable, and her pace is enticing.
Her reservoir of metaphors is derived from a rural setting close to her heart; little wonder hyenas find their place here and so is the poisoned fish.
Okot’s subtle use of senses can only be the work of a genius. In one moment, the reader inhales the stench of alcohol, in another it is the feel of scotching heat, and yet in another it is the sight of immoral acts among men, women, boys and girls.
And still another, the sound of crumbling thuds of women belly-wise under the intoxication of alcohol. There is also the sight and the smell of sweat.
In a stroke of a few lyric lines Lawino (and I suspect, Okot himself) laments the disintegration of a culture by another culture, a western culture.
Taboos are broken, family life is threatened, respect and discipline dashed on to the altar of modernity. If that were so, one would notice a weakness in Okot’s structure of his work, for what Lawino accuses another of being guilt of; she is guilt of the same too.
The reader need only consider Lawino’s village night dances where sensual provocation of the opposite sex is alluded to amidst hurls of insults. Listen again to Lawino in a similar strain (p 25):

My husband laughs at me
Because I cannot dance white
Men’s dances;
He despises Acholi dances
He nurses stupid ideas
That the dances of his people
Are sinful,
That they are mortal sins.

I am completely ignorant
Of the dances of foreigners
And I do not like it.
Holding each other
Tightly, tightly
In public.

I cannot.
I am ashamed.
Dancing without a song
Dancing silently like wizards,
Without respect, drunk…

Taban lo Liyong once remarked that African literature’s chief purpose are two, namely, to teach culture to children or stranger and to teach wisdom.
In respect to entertainment as explored in literature, Taban observed that it was merely a means to an end, which end is the imparting of knowledge.
If the reader is in agreement, then Okot’s ‘Song of Lawino’ is a treasure of wisdom, a collection of knowledge of African way of life, social codes, riddles and stories.
There is no doubt, however, that in our time all this is at the cross- roads, receiving intense assault from alien cultures to even seem unable to survive over time.
But there are lessons one can learn, treasure, apply and perhaps in a cultural synthesis attain some sort of social equilibrium. For writers and readers of poetry, there are lessons too.
One can learn about how traditional stories are structured, the consistent use of idioms by the story -teller so as to make the tale memorable.
There is also the use of phenomena and noumena in respect of Lawino’s Acholi community. There is plenty to entertain the reader in Okot’s poetry – his incredible humor. And perhaps, it is the humor, true to the traditional story-telling technique, that would keep the reader/listener on tenterhooks.
Okot uses other devises: exaggeration, animal metaphors and participation. Dear reader, we may take another study of Lawino’s case before we summon Ocol to the dock to answer alleged charges of neglect, irresponsibility, imprudence and cultural criminality of an innocent Acholi tribe.
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