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Okot p'Bitek Quotes

1931–1982 Uganda

Okot p'Bitek (7 June 1931 – 19 July 1982) was a Ugandan poet, who achieved wide international recognition for Song of Lawino, a long poem dealing with the tribulations of a rural African wife whose husband has taken up urban life and wishes everything to be westernised.

Uganda
Poets

Also known as: Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol

Random Okot p'Bitek quote

24 quotes

Perhaps she has aborted many children, or maybe she has even thrown her twins into the pit latrine!

Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol (1966)

In the wisdom of the Acoli, time is not stupidly split up into seconds and minutes. It does not flow like beer in a pot that is sucked until it is finished.

Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol (1966)

I really hate the charcoal stove! Your hand is always charcoal-dirty and anything you touch is blackened; and your finger nails resemble those of a poison woman.

Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol (1966)

Each man, though not necessarily with his wife, dances inside a dark house. They shamelessly hold each other tightly, so tightly that it feels as if they can barely breathe.

Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol (1966)

I am terribly afraid of the electric stove, I do not like using it because you stand up when you cook.

Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol (1966)

I may not fully understand the ways of foreigners, but I do not despise their customs.

Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol (1966)

The electric fire kills people: they say it is lightning...

Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol (1966)

The pumpkin in the old homestead. Must not be uprooted.

Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol (1966)

I have no wish. To look like a white woman.

Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol (1966)

Ocol, in his arrogance, does not know how to welcome visitors. When they appear at his door, he tries to get rid of them quickly with the question: 'What can I do for you?

Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol (1966)

I confess, I do not deny! I do not know how to cook like a white woman.

Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol (1966)

I do not know how to cook like white women; I do not enjoy white men's foods; and how they eat, how could I know? And why should I know it?

Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol (1966)

I do not complain that you eat white men's foods. If you enjoy them, go ahead. Shall we just agree to have freedom to eat what one likes?

Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol (1966)

He says that I look extremely ugly when I am fully adorned for the dance, and that I make his bed-sheets dirty and his bed smelly.

Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol (1966)

He says Black people are primitive. And their ways are utterly harmful. Their dances are mortal sins. They are ignorant, poor and diseased!

Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol (1966)

I am proud of the hair with which I was born and as no white woman wishes to do her hair like mine, because she is proud of the hair with which she was born.

Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol (1966)

You kiss her on the cheek, as white people do. You kiss her lips, even if they have open sores, as white people do. You exchange slimy saliva from each other's mouths, just like white people do.

Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol (1966)

My husband says he no longer desires a woman with a gap in her teeth. He has fallen in love with a woman whose teeth completely fill her mouth, like those of war captives and slaves.

Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol (1966)

When the beautiful one with whom I share my husband returns from cooking her hair, she resembles a chicken that has fallen into a pond; her hair looks like the python's discarded skin.

Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol (1966)

Forgive me, brother, for I am not insulting the woman with whom I share my husband. Do not think that my words are sharpened by jealousy. It is the sight of Tina that stirs sympathy in my heart.

Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol (1966)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Okot p'Bitek (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.