Lwimbu lwo Kusyoma: A Lamentation

By -
When I was a little girl, I learnt a song from my sisters. It was a Maragoli folk song, the sad lament of a monkey who had just lost his pregnant partner, Shinyosi. She was carrying sextuplets (inside her) when she was killed by the farmer, Marangaranga, who had caught her plucking a cob of maize from his garden:

LWIMBU LWO KUSYOMA (Maragoli Original) 
Nonoji kaduma kalala kalala kalala 
Ma Marangaranga ahenzelitsanga, atunyelitsanga: 
"Ndori ingugi! Ndori ingugi!" 

Marangaranga unyeri vutswa, unziti vutswa! 
Mbugi vutswa! 
Yita Shinyosi naheridzi; avana vatano na mulala. 
Mbugi vutswa! 

LAMENTATION (Approximate English Translation) 
When you pluck just one piece of maize 
And Marangaranga sees you, he gets agitated: 
"I have seen a monkey! I have seen a monkey!" 

Marangaranga has killed me; he has finished me! 
I can't believe this! 
He has killed Shinyosi, who was pregnant; five children and one. 
I am full of grief!


Although I didn't think about it at the time, I now realize that this is a remarkable song. It humanizes the wildlife, our fellow creatures and reminds us of their struggle to survive as we encroach on their natural habitats. In this way, and in other subtle ways, the song reminds us just how precious life is. Today, when I sing the song to myself, I think about our role as stewards of the earth's resources and wonder whether we are living up to our God-given responsibility.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

In America, everything is politicized

By -
When I read this article , I had to laugh. It brought to mind a conversation I once had with my friend, Maina, a Kenyan living in the US. We were both attending an event organized by an African American student group. Some of the African American women attending the event were dressed in the best of African couture, but there was a distinct difference between the way they carried themselves and the way a Kenyan or Tanzanian woman dressed in a similar outfit would have carried herself. I put it down to the fact that the American women probably felt self-conscious in their dresses. Maina, who had lived in the country longer, had another theory. He figured that Americans didn’t know how to simply be. Everything they took up, every cultural practice or idea they picked up from another nation, they had to repackage, politicize and turn into a movement . I shook my head in doubt, but Maina smiled. “Believe me,” he said, “this lady in the Kitenge is probably wearing it to express politi
Read more

Salvaging The Help, a film worth watching

By -
The Melissa Harris-Perry Show On Saturday morning (yesterday) I watched the Melissa Harris-Perry show on MSNBC. The segment of the show that struck me the most was the one during which Harris-Perry and her panel of guests focused their attention on the film, The Help . The discussion was of interest to me because I had read many critiques of the film last year, shortly after it had been released. They had been tremendously negative, and had highlighted many of the film’s flaws. One of them had been the fact that the film hadn't been a historical portrayal of life for black domestic workers and their families. The critics had pointed out that the film glossed over the absolute brutality of racism in the Jim Crow South, and had emphasized that the physical violence and sexual abuse suffered by black women in the homes where they worked received no direct attention. Additionally, they had highlighted the fact that the black men featured in the film tended to be abusive spouses, in
Read more

Believe it or not, polygamy isn't evil

By -
It intrigues me greatly that mainstream American society, which is open to all sorts of ideas about sexual identity and different family types, is so intolerant of polygamy. I can understand, to some degree, where this intolerance comes from. Polygamy, as it has been practiced in the United States and elsewhere, has done its fair share to create rigid hierarchies, inequality and resentment within families. It is precisely the sort of situation that could facilitate exploitation and abuse, and in the case of Warren Jeffs of the FLDS Church, it has done just that. In sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, where polygamy is part and parcel of various communities’ traditional practices, there are many cases where the institution has been abused to force teenage girls into marriage to older men. However, it would be dismissive to run up a catalog of all the evils that have been committed in the name of polygamy and then say that was the full story about it. The truth of the matter is
Read more