When you go to dance
You adorn yourself for the dance,
If your string-skirt
Is ochre-red
You do your hair
With ochre,
And you smear your body
With red oil
And you are beautifully red all over!
If you put on a black string-skirt
You do your hair with akuku[3]
Your body shines with simsim oil
And the tattoos on your chest
And on your back
Glitter in the evening sun.
And the healthy sweat
On your bosom
Is like the glassy fruits of acuga[4]. (SoL, 55)
This stanza is one of the best poetic uses of indigenous knowledge by Okot. As readers we can visualize and even smell the traditional perfumes on the girls.
And as the fragrance
Of the ripe wild berries
Hooks insects and little birds,
As the fishermen hook the fish
And pull them out mercilessly,
The young men
From the surrounding villages
And from across many streams,
They come from beyond the hills
And the wide plains
They surround you
And bite off their ears
Like jackals. (SoL, 56)
The irresistible ‘fragrance’ of the body perfumes draws ‘young men’ from near and far just like the insects and birds cannot resist the fragrance from flowers which contain the nectar they are after. Lawino and the Acoli girls’ beautification with traditional fragrances is contrasted with Tina’s excessive use of synthetic foreign cosmetics in her quest to look ‘like a white woman’. The slimming chemicals have caused her anorexia and hence her thinness making her walk noiselessly like a ghost (SoL, pp.39-44).
[3] Odonga in Lwo –English Dictionary (2012 ed.) defines Akuku as, ‘a black sand (iron ore with mica) used for smearing the head and female loin dresses (cip ki ceno).
[4] Acuga are small black wild fruits/berries that grow on shrubs. They are sweet and edible.