p’Bitek Okot Quotes

The smell of carbolic soap; Makes me sick; And the smell of powder; Provokes the ghosts in my head; It is then necessary to fetch a goat; From my mother's brother; The sacrifice over; The ghost -dance drum must sound; The ghost be laid; And my peace restored.

My husband abuses me together with my parents. He says terrible things about my mother. And I am so ashamed! ...

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

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.

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.

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.

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?

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

No leopard would change into a hyena, and the crested crane would hate to be changed into the bold-headed. Dung-eating vulture, The long-necked and graceful giraffe. Cannot become a monkey. Let no one. Uproot the pumkin.

I don't know how to dance the rumba or samba, as my mother taught me the traditional dances of the Acoli people. I haven't learned the dances of the white people. I won't deceive you; you once saw me participate in the Orak dance, the dance for youths, the dance of our people.

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.

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

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.

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

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.