African Theatre 16: Six Plays from East & West Africa 1847011721, 9781847011725

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African Theatre 16 Six Plays from East & West Africa Volume Editors Jane Plastow & Martin Banham Reviews Editor Martin Banham

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Published titles in the series: African Theatre in Development African Theatre: Playwrights & Politics African Theatre: Women African Theatre: Southern Africa African Theatre: Soyinka: Blackout, Blowout & Beyond African Theatre: Youth African Theatre 7: Companies African Theatre 8: Diasporas African Theatre 9: Histories 1850–1950 African Theatre 10: Media & Performance African Theatre 11: Festivals African Theatre 12: Shakespeare in & out of Africa African Theatre 13: Ngug˜ ˜ ı wa Thiong’o & Wole Soyinka African Theatre 14: Contemporary Women African Theatre 15: China, India & the Eastern World African Theatre 16: Six Plays from East & West Africa Forthcoming:

African Theatre 17: Contemporary Dance Articles not exceeding 5,000 words should be submitted preferably as an email attachment. Style: Preferably use UK rather than US spellings. Italicize titles of books or plays. Use single inverted commas and double for quotes within quotes. Type notes at the end of the text on a separate sheet. Do not justify the right-hand margins. References should follow the style of this volume (Surname date: page number) in text. All references should then be listed at the end of article in full: Surname, name, date, title of work (place of publication: name of publisher) Surname, name, date, ‘title of article’ in surname, initial (ed./eds) title of work (place of publication: publisher). or Surname, name, date, ‘title of article’, Journal, vol., no: page numbers. Reviewers should provide full bibliographic details, including extent, ISBN and price. Copyright: Please ensure, where appropriate, that clearance has been obtained from copyright holders of material used. Illustrations may also be submitted if appropriate and if accompanied by full captions and with reproduction rights clearly indicated. It is the responsibility of the contributors to clear all permissions. All submissions should be accompanied by a brief biographical profile. The editors cannot under­ take to return material submitted and contributors are advised to keep a copy of all material sent in case of loss in transit. Editorial address African Theatre, c/o Jane Plastow, Workshop Theatre, School of English, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK • [email protected] Books for review & review material for future volumes: Sola Adeyemi, Reviews Editor, African Theatre, 107 Windmill St, Rochester, Kent ME2 3XL

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African Theatre 16 Six Plays from East & West Africa Series Editors Martin Banham, James Gibbs, Yvette Hutchison, Femi Osofisan & Jane Plastow

Reviews Editor Martin Banham Associate Editors Omofolabo Ajayi-Soyinka

Dept of Theatre, 1530 Naismith Dr, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045–3140, USA

Awo Mana Asiedu

School of Performing Arts, PO Box 201, University of Ghana, Legon, Ghana

David Kerr

Dept of Media Studies, Private Bag 00703, University of Botswana, Gaborone, Botswana

Patrick Mangeni

Head of Dept of Music, Dance & Drama, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda

Christine Matzke

Dept of English, University of Bayreuth, 95440 Bayreuth, Germany

Olu Obafemi

Dept of English, University of Ilorin, Ilorin, Nigeria

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James Currey is an imprint of Boydell and Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF (GB) and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620-2731 (US) www.boydellandbrewer.com www.jamescurrey.com © Contributors 2017 Playscripts copyright information. For all enquiries for performance or reproduction please contact the copyright holders: Morountodun © Femi Osofisan. First published in Morountodun & Other Plays, 1982, Longman Nigeria Limited. The Guest (Engida) © Manyazewal Endeshaw. Not previously published. If: A Tragedy of the Ruled © Rotimi Foundation. First published 1983. Heinemann ­Educational Books (NIG.) Ltd. Mother Uganda & Her Children © Rose Mbowa. First performed 1987, first transcribed for publication 2017. See pp. 3–4. Majangwa: A Promise of Rain © The Estate of Robert Serumaga. First published 1974 East African Publishing House The Legend of Wagadu as Seen by Sia Yatabere by Moussa Diagana © L’Harmattan. First p­ ublished in French by L’Harmattan as La Légende du Wagadu Vue par Sia Yatabéré, 1989; translated into English by Richard Miller, 1991 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library ISBN 978-1-84701-173-2 ( James Currey Africa-only paperback edition) ISBN 978-1-84701-172-5 ( James Currey cloth edition) This publication is printed on acid free paper

Typeset in 10/11 pt MBembo by Kate Kirkwood, Cumbria, UK

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Contents

Notes on Contributorsvii Obituary: Adieu Alain Ricard FEMI OSOFISAN  ix Preface JANE PLASTOW & MARTIN BANHAM  xiii THREE PLAYS FROM EAST AFRICA

1

The translation & transcription of Mother Uganda & Her Children

3



PATIENCE NITUMWESIGA & TEAM

Mother Uganda & Her Children

The context & making of Rose Mbowa’s  Mother Uganda & Her Children

98

MANYAZEWAL ENDESHAW

An Absurdist in Addis Ababa: Manyazewal  Endeshaw’s Engida

88

DON RUBIN

The Guest (Engida): A One Act Play 

62

ROBERT SERUMAGA

Notions of indigeneity: Uganda’s Robert Serumaga

50

PATRICK MANGENI & JANE PLASTOW

Majangwa: A Promise of Rains

5

ROSE MBOWA

129

ZERIHUN BIREHANU & JANE PLASTOW

v

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vi  Contents THREE PLAYS FROM WEST AFRICA

139

If: A Tragedy of the Ruled

141



OLA ROTIMI

Ola Rotimi: creating theatrical spaces 

Morountodun 

199

FEMI OSOFISAN

Morountodun: a retrospective commentary

193

MARTIN BANHAM

249

BIODUN JEYIFO

The Legend of Wagadu as Seen by Sia Yatabere

262

MOUSSA DIAGANA

Moussa Diagana & The Legend of Wagadu as Seen by  Sia Yatabere: Advocating anarchy in Mauritania?

303

JANE PLASTOW

Book Reviews

Michael Walling on  Robert Mshengu Kavanagh, A Contended Space – The Theatre of Gibson Mtutuzeli Kente Jane Plastow on Edward Wilson-Lee, Adventures with the Ever-Living Poet: Shakespeare in Swahililand ’Funmi Adewole on Francis Nii-Yartey, African Dance in Ghana: Contemporary Transformations Abdullahi S. Abubakar on Olu Obafemi, Dark Times Are Over? and Running Dreams

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311 315 318 320

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Notes on Contributors

Martin Banham is Emeritus Professor of Drama and Theatre Studies in the University of Leeds, and founder editor, with James Gibbs, of African Theatre. Publications include (ed.) The Cambridge Guide to World Theatre, African Theatre Today (with Clive Wake), The Cambridge Guide to African and Caribbean Theatre (ed. with Errol Hill and George Woodyard), A History of Theatre in Africa (ed.). Between 1956 and 1966 he taught at the University of Ibadan.   Zerihun Birehanu studied for his BA in theatre at Addis Ababa University where he is now a lecturer. He pursued his graduate degree at the University of Warwick, UK and University of Arts in Belgrade, Serbia in International Perform­ance Research. His research interests are the relation­ship between theatre and politics in Ethiopia and Africa more broadly, the link between perform­ance and theatre art and site specific performances. He is now research­ing and experi­menting with various theatre genres alongside his teaching. Biodun Jeyifo is Emeritus Professor of English at Cornell University and Professor of African and African American Studies and Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard University. He has published many books, monographs and essays on Anglophone African and Caribbean writings, drama, Marxist and postcolonial literary and cultural studies. Wole Soyinka: Politics, Poetics, and Postcolonialism (Cambridge University Press) which he published in 2005, won one of the American Library Association’s Outstanding Academic Texts (OATS) awards for that year. His most recent book-length publication is Against the Predators’ Republic: Cultural and Political Journalism, 2007-2013 (Carolina Academic Press).   Patrick Mangeni is currently Dean of the School of Liberal and Performing Arts at Makerere University in Uganda. He has postgraduate degrees from Leeds University (UK) and Griffith University (Australia). He has written a vii

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viii  Notes on Contributors number of plays including work for TV and radio, and has published poetry, a short story collection and a novel for children as well as many academic articles. He has also directed and acted internationally.   Femi Osofisan is a well-known Nigerian poet, playwright and dramatist with over fifty plays to his name. Since his retirement from the University of Ibadan, Prof. Osofisan has continued to write, guest-direct his own plays and teach at universities and professional theatres around the world, including Canada, Germany and, recently, in China. Jane Plastow is Professor of African Theatre at the University of Leeds. She has worked, made theatre, researched, taught and trained widely – mainly across East Africa – for more than 30 years. She is currently working on community-based arts and activism projects in Uganda and Malawi and writing a book about the History of Theatre in East Africa.   Don Rubin is a Professor of Theatre Studies at Toronto’s York University where he has taught courses on African theatre and drama for many years. The series editor of Routledge’s six-volume World Encyclopedia of Contemporary Theatre, he was a co-editor of the WECT volume on Africa. Prof. Rubin was the founding editor of Canada’s national theatre quarterly, Canadian Theatre Review and has served as President of the Canadian Centre of the International Theatre Institute and the Canadian Theatre Critics Association.  He is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the webjournal Critical Stages.

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Obituary Adieu Alain Ricard (1945–2016)

The news came in a terse message from Olabiyi Yai – our friend, Alain Ricard, had left. He had succumbed on the 27 August last year, to leukaemia. I was devastated. Although the news rightly aroused a cry of shock and lamentation everywhere, it could not but come to me with a personal edge of pain, for Alain and I had been close friends for more than three decades. Our last meeting in fact had been just a couple of months earlier, in June, at the most recent conference in Bayreuth of the ALA – the Association of African Literature in America, which he had helped set up in 1975, and to which he was assiduously committed, never missing any of its annual reunions. I had received no inkling whatsoever of his illness, not to talk of his imminent demise. True, he did look somewhat pale and fragile, but he was throughout his usual cheerful and teasing teetotaller self, as full as ever of mischievous banter and anecdote, and of delicious laughter. Berenice, his faithful companion of many years, was with him as usual, and we parted with me promising to repeat soon the visit I had made in 1990 to their home in Bordeaux, this time to sample the grapes that Berenice had begun experimenting with in their garden. But now, quite abruptly, he was gone! Alain and I met for the first time in 1981/82 in Ibadan when, at the prompting of my old mentor and teacher, Abiola Irele, I undertook the translation into English of his first book, a comparative study of Wole Soyinka and Leroi Jones, titled, Théâtre et nationalisme: Wole Soyinka et Leroi Jones (Theatre and Nationalism: Wole Soyinka and Leroi Jones), 1983. From that time on, inevitably, our careers became intertwined, as I began to develop as a scholar-artist, and he as a fast-rising Africanist scholar. After that book on Soyinka which ignited in him a passionate love for Africa that was to be life-long, Alain then encountered the work of the so-called ‘concert parties’ in the south of Togo and Ghana, itinerant theatre groups very much in the genre of the Yoruba Popular Travelling Theatre and, as well, the fiction of chapbook writers like Félix Couchoro, the Francophone equivalent of Onitsha market literature. Through these, he became enamoured of both indigenous and modernist movements in

ix

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x  Obituary contemporary culture in Africa, and in particular of the oft-suppressed but vital interfaces between the oral and the written – an apprehension that was to lead him in later years to propose an interesting if controversial theory of cultural anthropology that he fancifully named ‘intellectual in-discipline’ (see Études littéraires africaines 2016, No. 42, 107-124). This development was to take him on numerous journeys from France to the USA and to various African countries, as he began to write profusely, while at the same time teaching and carrying out research. In the early 1980s for example, he lectured at the Université de Bénin in Lomé, while also working as Research Associate at the Institut de recherche pour le développement / Research Institute for Development. Then, later, from 1989 to 1991, he moved to Nairobi as the director of the then fledgling IFRA, (the Institut Français de recherches sur l’Afrique / French Institute for Research on Africa). Returning to France in 1992, Alain joined the Faculty of the Victor Segalen University, teaching courses on transition from the oral to the written, on translations and transcriptions, and on cultural production in Africa generally. It was a measure of the growing importance of his work that, in 2002, he was rewarded with the Humboldt Prize. Afterwards, for ten years up till 2009, Alain was affiliated with the LLACAN, (Langues, littératures, cultures d’afrique noire), while he supervised doctoral theses in collaboration with others. One important aspect of his commitment was the fact that he never tired of promoting the culture of Africa in all of its multiple dimensions, from the literary to the oral, the indigenous to the foreign, the political to even the economic spheres. The list of associations linked to Africa that he was involved in, either as founder or active member, and of important journals on whose editorial boards he sat, is long indeed. He was there at the inception of AEGIS, the European network for scholars in African studies, in 2005 and, together with Jean-François Bayart and Christian Coulon he was a co-founder of ACPA the French Association for researchers in political science in Africa, for which from 1993 till 1996 he served as both the publications editor and the editor-in-chief of Politique Africaine (PELAF) their influential journal. In addition to these, Alain was on the Editorial Board of RAL (Research in African Literatures) published by the Indiana University Press, and of Black Renaissance Noire, published by the New York University. For five years, (2008-2012), Alain and Francis Bart at the ANR, ran ‘Dimensions de l’objet swahili’, a programme which brought together researchers from several countries including France, Germany, Czech­ oslovakia, Kenya, Tanzania and Congo DR, on projects in the indigenous language that eventually culminated in the publication of more than fourteen major books in Swahili. In 2009, Alain became the President of MC2a (Migrations culturelles Aquitaine Afrique), and, the following year, of APELA (Association pour l’étude des littératures africaines). At his death, Alain was emeritus research

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Obituary  xi professor at the National Centre for Scientific Research in France (CNRS), and also with the Laboratoire les Afriques dans le monde (LAM) at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques. It is a matter of personal regret for me, caused by the usual negligence with which one treats friends and colleagues, that I had not paid sufficient atten­tion to Alain’s work while he was alive. But his unexpected departure has made me plunge back a bit more deeply into his thoughts about African studies and to appreciate his worth. I can see now – in accord with his frequent collaborator, Xavier Garnier – that Alain’s prodigious writings and activities can be put into three main areas of interest. The first was the place and the importance he gave to indigenous languages (notably, Le kiswahili, une langue moderne, 2009; Le sable de babel, traduction et apartheid, 2011; and in particular, Histoire des littératures de l’Afrique subsaharienne, 2006), especially in coming to terms with the current of events in contemporary society. The second was the curiosity, which many of us share, in pre-colonial travel narratives, in the exploits of those daring and unscrupulous explorers and missionaries to our land in the nineteenth century (Voyages de découvertes en Afrique, 2000; Excursion missionnaire dans les montagnes bleues, 2000; and La Formule Bardey, voyages africains, 2005). The third, and obviously the most important, were the numerous studies he published on the theatre, among which, in addition to the book on Wole Soyinka mentioned above, were the following: L’invention du théâtre: le théâtre et les comediens en Afrique noire, 1986; Mister Tameklor, suivi de Francis-le-Parisien, par le Happy Star Concert Band de Lomé, with N. Akam, 1981; Ebrahim Hussein, théâtre swahili et nationalisme tanzanien, 1998; Wole Soyinka et Nestor Zinsou: de la scène á l’espace public, 2015; and contributions to West African Popular Theatre (with Karin Barber and John Collins), 1997. To these must still be added a series of films, such as Le Principe d’Asihu, 1980, one of a triad on the concert parties in Togo; and the two recent documentaries made in Bayreuth: Aquitaine, Afriques: Contact, Zones on the grand exhibition he curated at the Iwalewahaus in 2012; and Nestor Zinsou à Bayreuth, 2013. Yet these do not exhaust the list of his output. Alain’s was obviously a restless intelligence at work. His motivating principle was the idea which, as I indicated earlier, he tried to develop into a theory – this idea that, because indigenous languages are central to the ongoing dynamic, process of quotidian life in Africa, all cultural phenomena are inevitably, fundamentally, interlinked, such that no serious scholar can take any of them in isolation and yet arrive at a complete profile of the continent. Because of this the orthodox dichotomies usually erected in intellectual disciplines, such as that between the oral-traditional and the written-modern, are nonsensical and ultimately self-erasing. According to Alain they should be replaced by a comprehensive, multi-disciplinary approach (the ‘in-discipline’) that breaks down the orthodox formal divisions between academic disciplines. It was an inspired and unusual, even revolutionary suggestion at the time in cultural anthropology and, on this,

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xii  Obituary Alain has left at least two important, pioneering works: Littératures d’Afrique noire: des langues aux livres, 1995, and Histoires des littératures d’Afrique subsaharienne, 2006. The departure of Alain has left a big hole in the ranks of enlightened intellectuals all over the world, and he will be sorely missed among our respected Africanists. For his close friends, it is the beginning no doubt of the usual rites of help­ less rage and bewilderment. For me personally, I know it is going to be hard. Since that first meeting in Ibadan, long ago, Alain and I have been together on many other occasions in different parts of the world – Camb­ridge, New Orleans, Bayreuth, Accra, etc.,– such that it has become a familiar habit for me to look forward to seeing him on my journeys out of the continent, in order to share the latest news and gossip in our fields – for I, too, am indisciplined. I recall with great nostalgia that period, from 1991 till 1993, when Alain and I ran a programme for Africréation, an arm of the French cultural depart­ ment, training theatre amateurs from the countries of the Gulf of Guinea. This meant that, for six to ten weeks in those three years, Alain and I shared the same apartment in Lomé or Cotonou, and spent our days and evenings together. It was natural then, as two kindred spirits and as ‘expatriates’ involved on the same project in a ‘foreign’ land, for us to develop a very close relationship, till we became almost like siblings. Except for Biodun Jeyifo, I have not shared this kind of intimacy with anyone else. But now he is gone. I take consolation in the hope that there is a place, surely, in the hereafter, where people meet again with dear ones, and old friendships are recovered, restored.

Femi Osofisan April 2017

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Preface

JANE PLASTOW & MARTIN BANHAM

If you asked a room full of African theatre people to choose six plays to publish you would have, not consensus, or even amicable argument, but trouble. So we didn’t ask: we decided. We did have a few guiding principles. Given that African Theatre only recently – in 2014 – published a volume on the work of Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Wole Soyinka we would not include these most famous of names. However we would, given that these are the regions of our best knowledge, focus on West and East Africa. We would only include plays we really liked, but we would try to offer a wide variety of authorship, form and subject matter; and we would try to bring to wider notice some works, notably plays not written in English, that we thought would be of interest to an international audience. There are not many anthologies of African plays in circu­la­tion. We edited one many years ago (Methuen, 1999), Biodun Jeyifo edited another in 2002 (Norton), and Ubu Repertory Theatre Publications brought out two volumes of francophone plays in 1987 and 1991; and that’s it for collec­ tions that are not the work of one playwright or drawing on work from just one country. We thought the world might like another place to access some of the best of African theatre in one volume. We also thought that people coming new to the work might appreciate a little help in understanding and contextualizing the plays they were encountering. So we asked a range of theatre scholars, many leading voices in the field along with a few newcomers to keep things fresh, to write us accompanying essays for each play. We asked them to tell us something about the playwright, her or his times, work and thought, and then to discuss, in whatever terms they chose, the play in question. The results, several by people who have known the playwrights, or else by scholars deeply knowledgeable on their chosen playwright, are hugely informative and thought provoking. It is sadly true that the number of women playwrights in Africa, though significantly growing, is still limited. African playwriting remains dominated by men. It is therefore a particular pleasure to be able to publish here, for

xiii

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xiv  Jane Plastow & Martin Banham the first time, even though the play was created in 1987, the Ugandan, Rose Mbowa’s, Mother Uganda and Her Children. This innovative, multi-lingual play, created to promote national reconciliation after years of civil war, by a woman who was for some twenty years the most influential voice in Ugandan theatre, was never written down, let alone published. It has been recovered from two old and imperfect versions, rescued from VHS tapes, by a small host of Ugandans who have helped us with translations from the eleven languages used in the production, led by the indefatigable efforts of Patience Nitumwesiga who contributes a small piece on the joys and trials of the project. Without translation, a mono-lingual English speaker can know only a minute fraction of Africa’s theatre, so we have prioritized translation in this volume. We are delighted to republish the English language translation (from an original French language playscript) of Mauritanian Moussa Diagana’s retelling of an old myth of human sacrifice from the perspective of the woman being sacrificed, The Legend of Wagadu as seen by Sia Yatabere. We are also privileged to include Engida (The Guest), an absurdist play from Ethiopia, by leading contemporary playwright Manyazewal Endeshaw. The playwright translated his work from Amharic to give us access to a play that at the time of writing had been drawing record crowds for many months to Addis Ababa’s City Hall Theatre. Morountodun by Femi Osofisan from Nigeria and Majangwa by Uganda’s Robert Serumaga, were both written in the 1970s, each by an indubitably world-class playwright. They are plays that have been published before, and in English, but they have not featured in international anthologies and they are no longer available to buy. We think this is a very bad thing, and wanted others to have the opportunity to share our admiration for two searing plays critiquing, with huge theatrical inventiveness, the political issues then tearing their respective nations apart. Finally we profile the work of a man who, while greatly revered in Nigeria in his lifetime, has seen his prolific portfolio of plays fall out of publication and performance. Ola Rotimi was not only a leading playwright of the 1970s and 1980s, he was also arguably the most innovative director, and the man, of all Nigerian playwrights, most concerned with the acting space. From among the riches of Rotimi’s oeuvre we chose a cry for Nigerian unity in the face of rampant capitalist oppression, If: A Tragedy of the Ruled. We hope you enjoy the richness of this volume.

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Three Plays from East Africa

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The Translation & Transcription of Mother Uganda & Her Children PATIENCE NITUMWESIGA

I think we normally underestimate the value of preservation. Organizing the transcription and translating of Mother Uganda and Her Children made me realize just how much of an issue this is for Ugandan theatre. Firstly, I was thrilled when Jane Plastow contacted me about the translation. I had heard so much about Professor Rose Mbowa while I was studying theatre at Makerere University, and participating in preserving one of her works has been an absolute pleasure. When I watched the broken bits of the recording of the play – a poor quality and partial VHS tape transferred onto DVD – I was even more excited. I thought to myself; this is going to be easy, and fun. Although I was right about the latter, I was very wrong about the former. The play centres around folk songs and dances from ten languages and sub-regions from across the country including West Nile, Acholi, Buganda, Busoga, Samia, Bugisu, Ankole, Kigezi, Karamoja and Bunyoro. However, although this was a large number, I was confident I could find people who spoke those languages easily. Uganda is a place that prepares you for such diversity, being such a daily canvas of multiple ethnic groups. The first step I made was to contact a friend of mine who teaches at the Performing Arts and Film Department at Makerere University, Ms Lillian Mbabazi. She put me in touch with people from the Dance and Music sections who spoke most of the languages from the regions mentioned above. I contacted them and this was a very good start. I wanted to contact musicians because I believed they would understand the folk music best, many having investigated local music cultures. It was also a consideration that the poor quality of the recording meant it was likely that experts would most easily recognize and be able to translate the songs. Apart from a few of these academics who were incredibly helpful, the rest were very busy and we had very few weeks to get the work done. I moved from one contact to another, meeting dead ends everywhere. Sometimes a person would take the work home and after a few days call back to say they couldn’t hear a single discernible word. Others would just not communicate after our first meeting, and I’d learn later that they had

3

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4  Patience Nitumwesiga been either too busy or had found the work too unclear to understand. Where I had first thought it would be simple to understand the folk music, I found myself faced with words that were too ancient to discern and part of an oral culture that had not been preserved. Most of the lyrics are deeply cultural and need contextual understanding to be translated and a lot of this background information was not available. To make matters worse, the play was produced by people from the south and a lot of the music from the north was mostly correct in rhythm but words were often mispronounced by non-native speakers. This means that someone who did not recognize the music could not rely on the video alone but needed to know the given song in order to translate it. This was highly problematic. Even some southern songs faced the same challenge. Some contacts really moved around, calling people they knew to see if they could find somebody who could expound more on the music but, given the short time, many of our efforts still left us with gaps and shortcomings in the translation. If there had been an archive of folk music from all regions of Uganda this would have been an easier job. What this undertaking has shown to me is that the artists, academics and researchers of this country need to invest more in the preservation of our oral culture. With the elderly population slowly dwindling, I am afraid we might reach a point when there is no one who can remember certain folk songs or their music, and this would be a huge loss to our national cultural, artistic and social being.

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Mother Uganda & her Children ROSE MBOWA

[Editor’s note. This play was never written down or published. The script has been recuperated by the below transcription and translation team from two partial VHS recordings, which explains why occasionally certain words or phrases have proved undecipherable.] Transcript and translation coordination by Patience Nitumwesiga Lusoga songs translated by Robert Kijogwa Luganda songs translated by Diplock Ssegawa and Job Tezigatwa Runyoro songs translated by Milton Wabyona Karamojong songs translated by Joel Ojok Lugisu songs translated by Dominic Makwa West Nile (Alur) songs not translated Ankole songs translated by Patience Nitumwesiga Samia songs translated by Patrick Mangeni Acholi songs translated by Bonny Ocen

(Fade in. Instruments playing to the tune of the Bunyoro folk dance – Rwakataka – are heard in the distance. Enter a procession of Banyoro female singers from stage right. They sing and dance gracefully towards centre stage. Enter their male counterparts from stage left, playing the Bunyoro trumpets and drums, and dancing towards centre stage as well.) Song 1. Rwakataaga (Amakondere – Royal Trumpets from Bunyoro) Soloist Chorus Soloist Chorus

Runyoro English Rwakataaga … Rwakataaga (The King) Ee- e-e-e Ee- e-e-e e kangugwo there he is Bamulekere agenzire They have let him go

5

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6  Rose Mbowa

Context translation Rwakataaga (One of the titles of the King) is there. They have let him go and he has left. This song is played when the King is leaving the palace. (When the male and female musicians meet, the males stop playing and dance with their instruments. One of the female singers comes forward.) Female Singer Welcome, children of Mother Uganda. Mother Uganda has heard the sound of her royal trumpet, amakondere, from Bunyoro and Tooro, western Uganda. And she’s very happy. Let us sing and dance as I and my sisters usher her in with Entogoro dance from Bunyoro, western Uganda. (The musicians transition from the Rwakataka dance into Entogoro, a Kinyoro folk dance. The boys put the royal chair, draped with the Ugandan flag, in front of their drums.) (Enter Mother Uganda, flanked by female dancers. Enter male dancers. Mother Uganda takes her seat centre stage, on her royal chair, and enjoys the Entogoro dance.) INSERT ENTOGORO DANCE (Not decipherable.) (When the dance reaches its climax, Mother Uganda gets up and joins in. The dance ends. By the time it ends, she has sat back down. She gets up.) Mother Uganda Thank you! Thank you all my children. I love you all. (The children – all dancers and singers – who have all sat down, clap and laugh and ululate.) I am happy when you are happy. For you are all my children. – (The sound here is very unclear. There are some missing words), My soil, and the – (Unclear missing word.) All teeming with peace. I am proud of everything that I am. (She turns, recognizing one of her children.) Oh! My daughter from Arua, North-West Uganda! Arua Daughter (Lugbara greetings.) (The daughter from Arua greets her in Lugbara. The rest of the children jubilate. She turns to a boy near her feet.) Mother Uganda Acholi and Lango! Lango Son Kopango! (Langi greetings.) All Children Kope! (Langi responses to greetings.)

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Mother Uganda  7 (One of the other children stands up, impatient to get attention. Mother Uganda rushes to him and hugs him.) Mother Uganda Ooooh my son from Karamoja! Karamoja Son (Karamojong greetings.) Mother Uganda I love you all. And all those over there. (To the audience.) You are all welcome. (They applaud her, thanking her in their different languages. She pauses, looks around, unhappy.) Mother Uganda But... All Children What? What? Mother Uganda I can see that my youngest son ... Tabu Sana, is not here. (The children look around, confused and unsure where he is.) Karamoja Son Mother Uganda. Mother Uganda Yes? Karamoja Son Tabu Sana is outside playing with the birds. (The children laugh.) Mother Uganda But I know he will soon come to join us. When he hears the sound of the drum. For he is eager for proof that he has reached the stage of manhood. Now my children go back into the royal court. And prepare for amaggunjju (A Kiganda folk dance.) (The children transition into amaggunjju musicians. Some go off to change into amaggunjju dancers. Exit Mother Uganda, dancing, while the dancers enter. Amag­ gun­jju Dance.) Soloist: Gano amaggunjju Gano amaggunjju Banange nail ntema Ne ntema akatiko

Chorus Gano amaggunju Gano amaggunjju gazinibwa abo’ butiko Be ppo Aka Nnamulondo

English translation The dance ‘Maggunjju’ The dance ‘Maggunjju’ As I was cutting, I accidentally cut

The dance ‘Maggunjju’ The dance ‘Maggunjju’ is performed by the mushroom clan just like that a mushroom that belongs to the royal clan

(Mother Uganda re-enters near the end of the dance but goes off with the ladies, leaving only males behind. The dance ends as one of the boys, Tabu Sana, tries to join in and the other boys flee the stage. Enter Mother Uganda. She finds Tabu Sana frustrated.) Tabu Sana Mother! Mother! I wanted to dance with the men. Mother Uganda Ooh!

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8  Rose Mbowa Tabu Sana But I was rejected. Mother Uganda What happened? Tabu Sana I was rejected! Mother Uganda I thought you were out there playing with the birds? Tabu Sana I was rejected … Mother Uganda My son, you are not yet a man. We have to initiate you into manhood. Let me call your uncle to prove whether you have reached that stage. (Two men dress Tabu Sana up for the initiation ceremony. His uncle gives him a stick and raises his hand.) Uncle He is ready! Mature! (The crowd ululates and rejoices. The drummers sound the drums. Enter Kadodi dancers (from Bugisu). They perform an imbalu (circumcision) folk dance. The Lugisu folkdance (imbalu) begins as a dialogue between the mother and her son (and this dialogue is in English). Mother My son … Son I wanted to dance with men. But I was rejected. Mother What happened? I thought you were outside playing with the ball. Son I was rejected. Mother My son, you are not yet a man. We have to initiate you into manhood. Let me call your uncle to prove that you have to do something. My son, you … (After about two seconds, a man and a youth come forward. The youth has on head­ gear known as lilubisi. The man who is dressed in a white tunic gets the headgear and puts it on the head of the son. They prepare the son for initiation then announce that the boy is ‘ready’.) The older man He is mature. (The audience ululates. Then people begin drumming.) People Shoo shoo shoo. (The drumming comes in and men, with some of them carrying tree leaves, dance with the circumcision candidate. The mother also joins. Other women join and dance from the background.) Other Women Ukuuma, ukuuuma ukuuma. (They ululate.) Son (Takes five leaps in the air. Each of these leaps is accompanied with the word ‘indi’. He stands still as he is surrounded by other men. The circumciser, known as umukhebi in Lugisu and dressed in animal skins, enters the ‘enclosure’ to circumcise the boy.) People surrounding the son Ooooooooooh! Men Ukuuma, kuuma. Kuuma, kuuma mwana wo Masaba. Ukuuma, kuuma. (This is literally interpreted as Be firm, firm. Be firm, be firm son of Masaba. Be firm, firm.) (Female relations sit on the fringes. Some of them join the mother, to ‘grieve’ with her as the son is being circumcised. The operation goes on successfully. People begin singing. Women sing and ululate.) Women Yaya keene khwilokho. Yaya keene wilokho. (This chorus is sung five

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Mother Uganda  9 times. They sing rotating round the initiate as they give him gifts of money. After this song, they switch to the next one entitled, Sheela umwilna afaane papa we – Cut the son to resemble the father. This song is sung in call and response form. The leader is known as uranjilira and those who respond are called babelamu.) Uranjilira Lele Zele Babelamu Heeeeee, sheeta umwana afaanepapa we (Repeat x 20) (Exit kadodi dancers after the folk dance.) Mother Uganda (To the drummers) Oh! Thank you. Exit drummers. Mother Uganda Now my son Waduka. While your brother heals, come and play a soothing tune for him, Abana Uganda (Ugandans), from Busoga. (Enter Waduka, playing a thumb piano. Solo.) ABANA UGANDA Abana Uganda imwe muleke obwibi Abana Uganda imwe muleke obuyaye Abana Uganda imwe muleke okwita banaife mbakobera Mulime bulime nze banange mberakungira Woyenda sente ogema mbago Woyenda sente olima pamba Woyenda sente olima ebidandali Woyenda sente olima emwani Tuleke okwita banaife mbakobera Tuzimbe Uganda yaife mbera kungira Tuleke okukotoigera Govument yaife Imwe abana Uganda imwe tulundebulunde Abaita Uganda imwe tulund ‘ebisolo ebyo nzebanange mbakobera Bwoyenda emirembe mbera kungira Tuleke kukotoigera Govument yaife Tuzimbe Uganda yaife mbera kungira Imwe abasomi musome busome Abasomi musome busome nzebanange mbalabula Woyenda ekitibwa olinakusoma Woyenda egali muko tolinakusoma Woyenda obufuzi olinakusoma Tuleke obwibi nzebanange mbera kungira Tuleke obuyaye nzebanange mbera kungira Nzembasibwire banange mweraba Abanenda munonyanga e lganga English Translation You Ugandans stop theft You Ugandans stop cheating

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10  Rose Mbowa You Ugandans stop killing fellows I tell you Just cultivate I stay along the road When you want money, get a hoe When you want money, grow cotton When you want money, grow beans When you want money, grow coffee Let us stop killing our fellows tell you Let us build this Uganda of our stay along the road Let us stop failing our government. You Ugandans, let us just rear You Ugandans let us rear animals, fellow I tell you When you want peace I stay along the road Let us stop failing our government. Let us build our Uganda I stay along the road You students just read I warn you When you want respect, you have to read When you want a bicycle, son-in-law, you have to read When you want politics, you have to read Let us stop theft fellows, I stay along the road Let us stop cheating fellows, I stay along the road I have bid farewell bye Those who want me, look for me in Iganga (Exit Waduka. Enter Acholi dancers. They perform an Acholi folk dance. Near the end of the dance, the male dancers keep one girl behind and dance with her. Exit Acholi dancers. Enter two girls, imitating the last motif of the Acholi dancers. They laugh deliriously.) Girl 1 Did you see that? Female singer Of course I see it! He has already fallen in love with Santina. Girl 1 Of course he has. But … you look jealous. Hmm! Female singer No. Girl 1 You do. Female singer I’m not jealous. Girl 1 You are. Female singer I promise, I am not jealous. (The second girl rushes to downstage centre and faces the audience.) Female singer Please welcome … (missing word), with Youwaru, from Samia, Eastern Uganda. (Her colleague pulls her off and they run off stage.) Girl 1 You never know it might be you next time. Female singer Maybe you. (Exit the girls. Enter Samia female dancers. The two girls have joined them. Enter a boy. He sees

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Mother Uganda  11 the girls and admires them. Exit boy. The girls perform a Samia folk dance. Exit Samia female dancers. Enter two boys.) Boy 1 Did you see those beautiful girls from Samia? Boy 2 Yes! I saw them. Boy 1 Would you like to marry one of them? Boy 2 To marry one of them? Boy 1 Yes! Boy 2 No! Boy 1 Why? Boy 2 I’ve got a very beautiful girl from Kigezi. Boy 1 From Kigezi? Boy 2 Yes. Boy 1 What’s her name? Boy 2 Her name? Boy 1 Yes. Boy 2 Uh…um …um … her name? Boy 1 Yeah.Tell me. Boy 2 Her name is… um … Kalawudia. Boy 1 Kalawudia! Boy 2 Kalawudia. Boy 1 How beautiful is she? Boy 2 You want to know how beautiful she is? Boy 1 Yes! Boy 2 Get your stool. (They both get their stools.) Boy 1 Okay… Boy 2 Now I’m going to sing with my guitar from Kigezi, South West Uganda. Boy 1 Uh-huh … (They bring their stools forward and sit. Boy 2 performs a solo from Kigezi about the beauty of Kalawudia. He’s accompanied by Boy 1, who plays a Kigezi thumb piano.) KALAWUDIA Soloist Partner Kalawudia Eh eh Ka-kalawudia yee Eh eh Kalawudi aaah Eeego Ka-kalawudia Ego Omuhara murungi Eh eh Kalawudia Akabeere kaawe eyieee Eego Kalawudia Aah ah Ka-kalawudia aaah Ego

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12  Rose Mbowa Kalawudia Eego Akabeere kaawe eyiyee Eh eh Kabeire nyamunaga Kananagire aboojo Buganda eyiyee Eego Kalawudia Ego Eishokye ryaawe Eego Ninkobugaara eyiyee Ego English Translation Kalawudia Dear Kalawudia Little Kalawudia Such a beautiful girl Kalawudia Your small firm breasts Have become the cause for straying Boys of Kiremba have strayed for them Kalawudia Your hair Is as long as papyrus flowers. EKYEVUGO (TRADITIONAL POETRY) Kikuru na kirumuna, Kikuru na kirumuna Enjara yaheta orura Nkareetwa omukibuga kyarubaremwa Empungu zaacwa ebisibo Nit muhuumure ninye Otatiina tinyizire kurwaana Nkagiteera akashana kaatagata Akeirima kankwaata ahameisho Manya empuungu ziirukira empanga. Nkarubata mpora mpora Naashenshebuza Ndimu nindabamu ninye na Mureeba Niturya nituteera enanga Tweena tukyeemereire aho na Kalawudia Irooko, irooko, irooko. Mweena ngu eh Eh Mweena ngu eh Eh Kabarabara kaata macupa Akatatiina bajungu Kakandeetera ente yangye Kyoozi Mweine kanyomoozi yareeta eireeba Eh Kabarabara·kata macupa Akate kangye akatatiina bajungu

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Mother Uganda  13 Kakandeetera ente yangye Kyooz Muka kanyomoozi niwe arigireeba. Bakagira ngu obutwe bwekibingo tibabureega Naabureega banyeta omwana w’omurwaani. Bakagira ngu orwamba rw’enimi Omusheija tarushama Ayiiiii Kalawudia Kalawudia aah Akatsya kaawe eyiyee Nakorubango yee Ekibunu kyaawe eyiyee Nekyekishaabo eyiyee Nyakishenyi wee Owa Kanyihamba eyiyee Yashuuma kisiizi yee

Eh Eh Eshi ori omusheija! Eego Eh eh Eh eh Eh eh Eego Hurira! Ayiii Ego Eh eh Eh eh

English Translation Like brothers, alike. Like brothers, alike. Hunger squeezes at your intestines. I showed up at Rubaremwa’s compound, Birds broke loose from their cages, I said “Relax, it’s me!” Don’t be afraid, I didn’t come to fight, I played and the day became warmer. A darkness covered my face, Birds fled to valleys below. I strolled gently, Stealthily, Walking past with with Mureeba, Feeding on the music of our thumb pianos, And we stood in Kalawudia’s presence. Go on, go on, go on. Say eh. Say eh. Cracking, breaking glass, Incapable of being scared by foreigners, They brought me my cow Kyoozi (The Black One.) Kanyomoozi’s child knows it all. Cracking, breaking glass, My bold cow, that’s not scared of foreigners, They brought me my cow Kyoozi, Kanyomoozi’s wife will see it all. They said you don’t stretch a reed’s buds,

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14  Rose Mbowa But I did and they called me a warrior’s child. They said, of a bull’s fresh blood That a man can’t juggle it. Aiii Kalawudia, Kalawudia Aiii. Your pretty neck Is like a royal stick. Your bottom Is huge as a gourd. In Nyakishenyi, At Kanyeihamba’s, He slopes down to Kisiizi. (Enter an old woman (near the end of the song) sweeping. She eavesdrops on the boys’ singing and rhymes. When the song ends she approaches them.) Woman So it’s been Kalawudia all this time? Boy 2 Yes, it has been Kalawudia. Woman I thought it was the other girl I left you at the river with. Boy 2 No. Kalawudia. Boy 1 Yeah. Kalawudia. Woman You people… Boy 2 Yes… (Enter a boy. He takes out some drums, brings in some others and arranges them. He’s eaves­dropping on the conversation.) Woman While you are talking about Kalawudia, Tabu Sana is getting married to his Santina right now. Boy 1 Eh! Boy 2 I told you. Woman The boy has really suffered. Boy 1 Eh! Woman He has already paid the dowry. And he has decided to go and marry her in the tradition of his great ancestors from Ankole. Boy 2 The tradition of Ankole? Woman Yes. And now the girl is crying as if… (Exit woman and the boys. The boys take their stools back near the drums as they leave. Enter Santina and a group of girls, her bridal entourage, and Mother Uganda. They perform an Ankole Kuhingira (give-away) folk song. The girl sings farewell to her people. Enter male singers/dancers.They escort the groom in and join in the folk song.) ANKOLE KUHINGIRA FOLK SONG Omutongyerezi (Santina) – Soloist Chorus (Abandi) (Fading in from off stage)…mwena Eh (Enter Santina and her bridal entourage) Musiibegye Eyi eeh

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Mother Uganda  15 Bakanyanya Eh Musiibegye Eyi eeh Ab’oweitu Eh Musiibegye Eyi eeh Muraaregye Eh Musiibegye Eyi eeh Bakanyanya Eh Musiibegye Eyi eeh Ab’oweitu Eh Musiibegye Eyi eeh Muraaregye Eh Bakanyanya Eh Musiibegye Eyi eeh Ab’oweitu Eh Musiibegye Eyi eeh Iii iii iii i Iiii iii iii i (Crying) Iii iii iii i Iiii iii iii i Iiiiii iii i Iiiiiiiiii i Iiiiii iii i Iiii iii iii i Iii iii iii i Iiii iii iii i Iii iii iii i Iiii iii iii i Muraaregye Eh Musiibegye Eyi eeh Bakanyanya Eh Musiibegye Eyi eeh Ab’oweitu Eh Musiibegye Eyi eeh Bakanyanya Eh Yaarira nk’enyonyi ezeirwe Yaayaka nk’amatabaza Beine kahenda rugingo Naarira Nyowe entaama nyowe Naarira Eeeyi eeeh Naarira Mundereere nyowe Naarira Yaarira nk’enyonyi ezeirwe Yaayaka nk’amatabaza Beine kahenda ggo Naarira Nyowe entaama nyowe Naarira Eeeyi eeeh Naarira Mundereere nyowe Naarira (Enter boys. They join in the song. Santina is left alone kneeling on the floor, sobbing.)

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16  Rose Mbowa Chorus Yaarira nk’enyonyi ezeirwe Yaayaka nk’amatabaza Beine kahenda rugingo Naarira Santina’s brother Iyaarira wee Naarira Yaarira yamawe Naarira Owabandi iwee Naarira Twamushenda kugyenda Naarira Yaarira Naarira Yaarira nk’enyonyi ezeirwe Yaayaka nk’amatabaza Beine kahenda rugingo Naarira Omusheija ayiwe Naarira Nemanzi rugaba Naarira Owabandi iwe Naarira Owomureeta kweera Naarira Owabandi iwe Naarira Nibahinga iwe Naarira Nibateeka iwe Naarira Owomureeta kweera Naarira Eego yamawe Yaarira nk’enyonyi ezeirwe Yaayaka nk’amatabaza Beine kahenda rugingo Naarira Mumuhingire Mumureke amuhingire agyende Omweishiki ku akura ashweerwa yeiwe Mumuhingireee, mumureke amuhingire agyende Mwamureeba yaakura Enyamwonyo ku ekura eriibwa Mumuhingire Santina’s father Haza kamwakituuraho eimwee Mumuhingire agyende Amaryo gaanyu nageira bantu mwee Mumuhingire agyende Muhara wangye tokyimutwaara eiwe Mumuhingireee, mumureke amuhingire agyende Mwamureeba yaakura Enyamwonyo ku ekura eriibwa Bamuhingire Tabu Sana’s father Bakeikuru munte ahabitebe Mumuhingire Santina’s father

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Mother Uganda  17 Amaryo gaanyo nageira bantumwe Mumuhingyire Muhara wangye tokimutwaara Mumuhingyireee Ente Zange nkazireeta aha eiweee Mumuhingyire Ente zangyi okazirya zombi eiwe Mumuhingyire Omweishi nimutwaara eiweee Mumuhingireee, mumureke amuhingire agyende Mwamureeba yaakura Enyamwonyo ku ekura eriibwa Bamuhingire Santina’s father Omweishiki baakumutwara mbwenu eiwe Mumuhingyire Tabu Sana’s father Yebareeee Mumuhingireee, mumureke amuhingire agyende Mwamureeba yaakura Enyamwonyo ku ekura eriibwa Bamuhingire (Santina’s mother helps her sit on her father’s lap.) Santina’s mother Obwiire bwahika iwe Mwaana wamaawe Waaza kugyenda iwe Mwaana wamaawe Otandike kuraara owe Mwaana wamaawe Omuzaarire abaana wee Mwaana wamaawe Omusheija neizooba iwee Mwaana wamaawe Niryeija kurenga iwe Mwaana wamaawe Santina’s father Zamutwaara ezabatsyaabaaaa Zamutwaara ezabatsyaaba Bamushagatiire Zamutwaara ezabattsyaabaaa . Zeija neironda obuzaare Zamutwaara ezabatsyaaba Ezabatsyaaba baamutooza omuruhanga Bamushagatiire Zamutwaara ezabattsyaabaaa. English translation Soloist Chorus (Fading in from off stage)…you all Eh (Enter Santina and her bridal entourage) Fare well My people Fare well Sleep well Fare well My brothers and sisters Fare well My people

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18  Rose Mbowa Fare well Sleep well My brothers and sisters Fare well My people Fare well Iii iii iii i Iiii iii iii i (Crying) Iii iii iii i Iiii iii iii i Iiiiii iii i Iiiiiiiiii i Iiiiii iii i Iiii iii iii i Iii iii iii i Iiii iii iii i Iii iii iii i Iiii iii iii i Sleep well Fare well My brothers and sisters Fare well My people Fare well My brothers … She breaks down Like a newly born chick, she cries She glows like royal lamps Oh offsprings of the joint breaker! She’s crying! I am a stupid sheep oh my She’s crying She’s crying She’s crying Please let me be Like a newly born chick, she cries She glows like royal lamps Oh offsprings of the joint breaker! She’s crying! I am a stupid sheep oh my She’s crying She’s crying Please let me be She’s crying (Enter boys. They join in the song. Santina is left alone kneeling on the floor, sobbing.) Like a newly born chick, she cries She glows like royal lamps Beine kahenda rugingo Oh offsprings of the joint breaker! She’s crying! Santina’s brother She cries, oh She’s crying! She cries, dear mother She’s crying! To a stranger’s home She’s crying!

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Mother Uganda  19 We send you off to go She’s crying! She cries, oh She’s crying! Like a newly born chick, she cries She glows like royal lamps Oh offsprings of the joint breaker! She’s crying! The man, my dear She’s crying He’s brave, truly She’s crying To a stranger’s home She’s crying To the one who brings winnowing She’s crying To a stranger’s home She’s crying You’ll have to cultivate She’s crying To cook She’s crying For the one who brings winnowing She’s crying e Like a newly born chick, she cries She glows like royal lamps Oh offsprings of the joint breaker! She’s crying! The girl’s father is heartbroken, doesn’t want his daughter to go. Give her away Let him marry her off and let her go When a girl grows up she marries Marry her off, let him give her away He should let her go See, she has matured When a plantain ripens, it’s eaten Marry her off Santina’s father Let it go! Let her go! Your stubbornness preceeds you Let her go! You won’t take my daughter now Marry her off, let him give her away He should let her go See, she has matured When a plantain ripens, it’s eaten Marry her off Tabu Sana’s father Old women, give me a seat Let her go! Santina’s father Your arrogance preceeds you Let her go! You won’t take my daughter now Let her go! Tabu Sana’s father I brought my cows here Let her go! You took both my cows already! Let her go! I’m taking your daughter, old friend! Marry her off, let him give her away

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20  Rose Mbowa He should let her go See, she has matured When a plantain ripens, it’s eaten Marry her off Santina’s father They’re going to take my girl Let her go! Tabu Sana’s father Thank you Marry her off, let him give her away He should let her go See, she has matured When a plantain ripens, it’s eaten Marry her off (Santina’s mother helps her sit on her father’s lap.) Santina’s mother It’s time My mother’s child You’re about to go My mother’s child You’ll stay there My mother’s child Bear him children My mother’s child A man is the day’s sun My mother’s child It will set, my dear My mother’s child Santina’s father The cows of the Abatsyaaba clan have taken her She’s surrounded The cows of the Abatsyaaba clan have taken her They come seeking companionship The cows of the Abatsyaaba clan have taken her Down the valley they take her She’s surrounded The cows of the Abatsyaaba clan have taken her (Exit all dancers and singers, with the girl’s sad father at the rear.) (Enter BOY 3. He goes to the drummer who’s still lost in song.) Boy 3 Gwe! (Hey!) Tamale. What has been happening here? Drummer My friend, if you want real war … Boy 3 War? What do you mean? Drummer: Tabu Sana got married to Santina. And he’s taking her to the western part of Uganda, to Bunyoro. And the wife … she is going to do all the work. And the husband … (He crosses his legs and smiles. His friend imitates him. They laugh.) Boy 3 Problem, I tell you. (They stand back up and laugh.) Boy 3 I wish I were the one. They hear singing. (Exit Boy 3. Enter another drummer who takes his place behind the drums. The first drummer

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Mother Uganda  21 joins him, and takes up a different drum. Enter Santina, with a hoe and basket. Followed by Tabu Sana with a stool. They are a married couple now, dressed in tradi­tional wear for adults. The crowd of boys and girls, men and women, follows. With Santina as the lead soloist, they perform a Busoga folk song about planting, which is done by the woman. Exit singers. ) FADE OUT

ACT II (Same backdrop as before. Two birds walk around the stage. Enter a girl. She notices the birds and is frustrated.) Girl 2 This millet is ready for harvest. (She picks up stones and throws them at the birds. The birds don’t budge. She runs around chasing them but the birds move around, not away.) Girl 2 Yiiii … These birds can’t even run away! (The birds jump around and settle back in the garden.) I will go to Arua and call my people from there. To come and help my… (Missing/unclear word.) until I chase away these wretched birds. (She starts a bird-chasing folk song from West Nile. Enter boys and girls. They join her and sing the bird chasing folk song from West Nile.) CAST SING ALUR BIRD CHASING SONG (Once they chase the birds away, the song transitions into a harvest folk song from Arua, led by Santina. CAST SING ALUR HARVEST SONG (The harvest is carried home, and the big family shares a meal. Enter Buyer. The buyer talks to Tabu Sana, who sells to him a huge load of the harvest. Exit Buyer. Santina taps her husband Tabu Sana.) Tabu Sana What? Santina Money. Tabu Sana Money … Money. Did you make money here? (The children protest. Tabu Sana scares them away and they scatter in different directions. Enter Mother Uganda. She takes Santina to Tabu Sana and stretches her hand to him.) Tabu Sana What? Mother Uganda Money. Tabu Sana What? Mother Uganda Money. Tabu Sana Money … Money. Did you make money here? (The two women persist.) Tabu Sana Reka, reka, reka, reka! (Stop, stop, stop, stop!) (He chases them off stage. Mother Uganda flees. Santina follows. He grabs Santina’s hand and brings her back.) Tabu Sana Now, you woman. Why do you ask for money like this? Do

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22  Rose Mbowa you know that I paid dowry? Santina Dowry? Tabu Sana Yes. Santina Is it because of dowry that you make me work hard like this? Sell off the produce and take all the money? Tabu Sana I’m warning you – Santina Well, dowry or no dowry I’m going to demand my money right now. (She bursts into song, a folk song about their marital problems. Enter crowd, with Mother Uganda. They join in the song, a Busoga folk song.) WANKOIRE IMEKA? Akulembera (Muka Kahudu) Wankoire imeka iwe zena eizo neyabira iwe Kahudu wankoire imeka Abairamu Wankoire imeka iwe zena eizo neyabira iwe Kahudu wankoire imeka Akulembera Wankoire imeka iwe zena eizo neyabira iwe Kahudu wankoire imeka Abairamu Wankoire imeka iwe zena eizo neyabira iwe Kahudu wankoire imeka Akulembera Wankoire imeka iwe ewaisu eyo e kisinda Abairamu Iwe Kahudu lero wabaireki Akulembera Wankoire twerira mamba Abairamu Iwe Kahudu lero wabaireki Akulembera Wankoire amattooke twerira gona Abairamu Iwe Kahudu wankoire imeka Akulembera Wankoire imeka iwe ewaisu eyo e kisinda Abairamu Iwe Kahudu lero wabaireki Akulembera Wankoire twerira mamba Abairamu Iwe Kahudu lero wabaireki Akulembera Wankoire amattooke twerira gona Abairamu Iwe Kahudu lero wabaireki Akulembera Ekanzu twalerera baana Abairamu Iwe Kahudu lero wabaireki Akulembera Iwe Kahudu otulisya bwita Abairamu Iwe Kahudu lero wabaireki Akulembera Zena eizo neyabira Abairamu Iwe Kahudu lero wabaireki Akulembera Zena eizo nahuna bwire Abairamu Iwe Kahudu lero wabaireki Akulembera Wankoire imeka Abairamu Zena eizo neyabira Akulembera Nintegana ne byanabyo Abairamu Wankoire Akulembera Okulya emere nolya wenka

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Mother Uganda  23 Abairamu Wankoire Akulembera Tinkufaku nabaanabo? Abairamu Wankoire Akulembera Nomubulya takwiramu Abairamu Wankoire Akulembera Wankoire imeka iwe? Abairamu Zena eizo neyabira iwe Kahudu wankoire imeka Akulembera Wankoire imeka? Abairamu Zena eizo neyabira iwe Kahudu wankoire imeka Akulembera Pwi pwi pwi olwonohuna Abairamu Kahudu Akulembera No bokukyalo ni behunya Abairamu Kahudu Akulembera No bokukyalo ni behunya Abairamu Kahudu Akulembera E nsonzi ndeta nalya Abairamu Inoinoino Akulembera Nalya Abairamu Inoinoino Akulembera Oh! Nalya Abairamu Inoinoino Akulembera Banange nalya Newanyu e kisinda egyewazwire Abairamu Inoinoino Akulembera Noiza e Nabweyo han’ewaisu Abairamu Iiloinoino Akulembera Nze natoire omwandu gwange Abairamu Inoinoino Akulembera Ninkwa Abairamu Inoinoino Akulembera Oh! Ninkwa Abairamu Inoinoino Akulembera Banange ninkwa Abairamu Inoinoino Akulembera Nemali yabaire yembijabija Abairamu Inoinoino Akulembera Banange yabaire yembijabija Abairamu Inoinoino Akulembera Onkoko nontama moiza Abairamu Inoinoino Akulembera Ninkwa Abairamu Inoinoino Akulembera Oh! Ninkwa Abairamu Inoinoino Akulembera Banange ninkwa

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24  Rose Mbowa Abairamu Inoinoino Akulembera Wankoire imekaiwe? Abairamu Zena eizo neyabira iwe Kahudu wankoire imeka Akulembera Wankoire imekaiwe? Abairamu Zena eizo neyabira iwe Kahudu wankoire imeka Akulembera No hungwe ono nuyerira Abairamu Kahudu Akulembera No hungwe ono nuyerira Abairamu Kahudu Akulembera Wankoire imekaiwe? Abairamu Zena eizo neyabira iwe Kahudu wankoire imeka? Akulembera Wankoire imekaiwe? Abairamu Zena eizo neyabira iwe Kahudu wankoire imeka? Abairamu Inoinoino x 18. Abakazi -Ayiyiyiyiyiyiyiyiyiyi English translation Soloist (Kahudu’s Wife) How much did you pay for me? Even me tomorrow I will go away. You Kahudu how much did you pay for me? Chorus How much did you pay for me? Even me tomorrow I will go away. You Kahudu how much did you pay for me? Soloist How much did you pay for me? Even me tomorrow I will go away. You Kahudu how much did you pay for me? Chorus How much did you pay for me? Even me tomorrow I will go away. You Kahudu how much did you pay for me? Soloist How much did you pay for me at our home – Kisinda? Chorus You Kahudu what happened to you? Soloist You married me when we were eating meat. Chorus You Kahudu what happened to you? Soloist You married me; we were also eating Matooke. Chorus You Kahudu what happened to you? Soloist Is the ‘Kanzu’ for babysitting children? Chorus You Kahudu what happened to you? You Kahudu feed us on millet food. Chorus You Kahudu what happened to you? Soloist Even me tomorrow I will wake up very early morning. Chorus You Kahudu what happened to you? Soloist How much did you pay for me? Chorus Even me – tomorrow I – I will go away You Kahudu how much did you pay for me? Soloist I suffer with your children. Chorus You paid for me! Soloist To eat food, you eat alone. Chorus You paid for me! Soloist Don’t I care for you and your children?

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Mother Uganda  25 Chorus You paid for me! Soloist You ask him; he does not answer you! Chorus You paid for me! Soloist How much did you pay for me? Chorus Even me tomorrow I will go away. You Kahudu how much did you pay for me? Soloist How much did you pay for me? Chorus Even me tomorrow I will go away. You Kahudu how much did you pay for me? Soloist Very early you wake up Chorus Kahudu Soloist Even the village-mates wonder! Chorus Kahudu Soloist Even the village-mates wonder! Chorus Kahudu Soloist (Kahudu) Mud fish I bring, she eats. Chorus So much Soloist She eats Chorus So much Soloist Oh! She eats. Chorus So much Soloist Fellows she eats. Chorus So much Soloist Even your home in Kisinda where you came from Chorus So much Soloist To come to Nabweyo here at our home. Chorus So much Soloist I paid my dowry Chorus So much Soloist I married Chorus So much Soloist Oh! I married Chorus So much Soloist Fellows, I married Chorus So much Soloist Even the dowry was from hardships Chorus So much Soloist Even the dowry was from hardships Chorus So much Soloist A hen and one sheep Chorus So much Soloist I married Chorus So much Soloist Oh! I married

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26  Rose Mbowa Chorus So much Soloist Fellows I married Chorus So much Soloist (Kahuda’s wife) How much did you pay for me? Chorus Even me tomorrow I will go away. You Kahudu how much did you pay for me? Soloist The eagle he ate Chorus Kahudu Soloist The eagle he ate Chorus Kahudu Soloist How much did you pay for me? Chorus Even me tomorrow I will go away. You Kahudu how much did you pay for me? Soloist How much did you pay for me? Chorus Even me tomorrow I will go away. You Kahudu how much did you pay for me? Chorus So much x 18. Ululations Ayiyiyiyiyiyi…… (The song ends in dance. Exit dancers. Enter acrobatic dancers. They make and perform numerous formations and stunts. In the middle of their performance, the acrobats make a roof-touching pyramidal monument. Mother Uganda brings in the Uganda flag and gives it to the man on top. He waves the flag. The performance reaches a climax and ends. Exit acrobats. Enter Buganda singers. They perform a folk song from Buganda about fishing and sailing on the troublesome lake.) BUGANDA FOLK SONG ABOUT FISHING Ngolo Ngolo ngolo yaaya-yaaye Ngolo ngolo ngolo yaaya-yaaye (This is a nonsense rhyme to give courage to fishermen as they venture into the waters.) Ye mmwe abavubi yaaye Ennyanja etawaanya yaaye Simba awo, simba awo Amazzi ge ennyanja mayengo gadduka nomwalo ne geeyiwa Bwengakuba bwenti ekirijja gadduka nomwalo ne geeyiwa Muya muya nnyabo, nsuuleyo omuya ggwengwanemesa okwambuka engulu. Kanserengete ennyanja Yira, yira ssebo, ojje owulire ennyanja bweyira Yira, yira nnyabo ojje owulire ennyanja bweyira Egoonya! ebadde etwala munnange nga ndaba, ebadde emuwalawala Abasese, twafuluma nnyanja Busaabala nobwato bwaffe Sserubwatuka Mukasa wansi wali ennyanja, waggulu wali omuliro

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Mother Uganda  27 English translation Call Response You are the fishermen Yaaye The waters are dangerous Yaaye Secure the canoe, secure the canoe Tides on the lake are dangerous Yes so dangerous they roll, roar and splash I row, yes, I row it like this, it Yes so dangerous they roll, roar and enables us to move forward. splash This fish trap, this fish trap, let me drop it deep in the waters then I won’t have to go up stream into deeper waters to catch fish. I am ready to go fishing now, Listen to the sound of the waters, Carefully listen to the rolling sounds of the waters! Listen to the sound of the waters, Carefully listen to the rolling sounds of the waters! Its the crocodile! It attempted to snatch my friend while I watched. Yes, it was dragging him. We the islanders, we arrived ashore in our canoes via Busaabala landing site. Oh thunder, Mukasa, below are vast waters and above it scorching sun. (When they reach home, Tabu Sana convinces a girl to take off her kanzu. She does. Underneath it, she is wearing a Luo outfit. The other singers begin to take of their Buganda kanzus, one by one. They discover that underneath the kanzus they are all wearing different attire from different tribes.) Random girl Where are you from? Other girl I’m from West Nile! Random boy Where are you from? Other boy I’m from Ankole! Girl 1 We’re all from different places! Female singer I’m from Buganda! (More shouting from different people about where they’re from. Chaos ensues. People push each other around. There are fights and tripping and falling. Some run off with other people’s property. Some turn to Mother Uganda and pull at her clothes. During this chaos and fighting, Mother Uganda falls. Nobody notices. They all jump over her body as they rush in different directions. Then suddenly one of the women notices her, lying on the floor. She weeps.) Woman 2 See, my brothers and sisters. See this tragedy. See what we have done to Mother Uganda. (The children gather around, puzzled. Next to Mother Uganda is a bundle of bark cloth.) Woman 2 This is what we always do to her. Whenever we quarrel. When­ ever we fight and kill each other because of our differences. Because of our ambitions and greed. We are destroying her. (The children come closer, sad.)

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28  Rose Mbowa Woman 2 Brothers and sisters, let us discard our differences. Let us discard all our ambitions and greed. And let us all, together, united in brotherly love, raise her up to the glory that she was before. Please! (The children gather and raise Mother Uganda up. They redress her in her flag garments, for she’s now only draped in bark cloth. They take her to her place, up stage centre. Mother Uganda stands before her children, in tears.) Mother Uganda Children, who is bringing these differences that are destroying you and me? All Children Tabu Sana. Mother Uganda Tabu Sana? All Children Yes! Mother Uganda My own son? All Children Yes! Mother Uganda My children, you are all one. And you all belong to me. And I love you all. Why then should you do this to me? My children, I had come with bark cloth, for us to thank Lubale Mukasa (God of the lake.), for bringing you back safely from fishing. And ... this is what I find! My children, this is the worst thing you can ever do to your mother. Please, never repeat it. (She pauses, lets it sink in.) Now, my children. Put on the bark cloth so that we can ask Lubale Mukasa to guide us as we find a solution to this problem. Put it on. (The children get up and go for the bark cloth.) And can someone go and call Emandwa, our medium? (Exit some child, to call Emandwa.) Put it on (Dress up.) my children. And can we have one for our Emandwa. (Someone brings a bark cloth piece for Emandwa. It is stretched on the floor, at the centre. The rest of the children all wrap bark clothes around themselves and sit on the floor.) Random Girl Waduka tuula bulungi. (Waduka sit properly.) Woman Abawala mufukamire (Girls please kneel.) Man Yee. Mufukamire (Yes. Kneel.) (The girls organise themselves and kneel.) Mother Uganda Mutuule bulungi (Sit properly). (She goes around them, guiding and instructing them.) Woman Don’t squat. Kneel. (Enter Emandwa. He’s wrapped in bark cloth. He looks lost in a kind of trance. The crowd parts for him to pass. He takes his place at the centre of them all. The medium’s helper starts a Kiganda Kusamira (appeasing the gods) folk song.) Sserubwatuka Mukasa wansi wali ennyanja Waggulu wali omuliro Agenda nayasa omusana naagwasa nnyo Maama natuweereza enkuba netuweweezaako Sserubwatuka … Nkowoola, Nkowoola nayita ani Nkowoola lubaale wennyanja – eehh... Nkowoola, nkowoola – eeh

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Mother Uganda  29 Nkowoola lubaale wennyanja ali wala. x4 Bwanyeenya bwanyeenya – eeh Bwanyeenya Namala anyeenya nga olulagala Bwanyeenya Mukasa wa abaana – nayita ani Bwanyeenya bwanyeenya eeh… Namala anyeenya nga olulagala. Ojje owulire ennyanja bweyira Ojje owulire ennyanja bweyira Yira, yira ssebo – ojje owulire ennyanja bweyira Yira, yira ... ojje owulire ennyanja bweyira Ba sswiii! English translation Oh thunder, Mukasa …, Below are vast waters and above it is scorching sun When the Mighty Creator senses that it is so hot on earth He decides in His wisdom and sends rain. Let me raise a very loud alarm Calling the gods of the waters from afar I am raising the alarm, calling the gods of the waters Yes, because I am born here too. He shakes gently the god of the waters Yes, he shakes gently like a banana leaf. Come and hear how the mighty sea roars Come and hear for yourself how waters splash. (In the middle of the song, the medium gets possessed and starts talking to the children.) Medium Abazukulu (Dear grandchildren.) All children Wanji Jajja (Yes grandfather.) Medium Mwagalaki? (What do you want?) All children Tabu Sana. Medium Mwagala Tabu Sana? (You want Tabu Sana?) All children Yee (Yes.) Medium Tabu Sana yakolaki? (What did Tabu Sana do?) All children (They all simultaneously mention different things Tabu Sana did to them.) Mother Uganda Jajja (Grandfather.) Medium Yee? (Yes?) Mother Uganda Jajja? (Grandfather. Or god as it also refers to ancestor or god

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30  Rose Mbowa especially in prayer, like in this instance. Also note that Jajja has no gender connota­ tions unless it’s added in the sentence and in this case it is not.) Medium Yee? (Yes?) Mother Uganda He’s dividing my children. All children Yee (Yes.) Medium Kakati abazukulu (Now, my grandchildren.) All children Wanji Jajja (Yes grandfather.) Medium Ani agendokuleta Tabu Sana? (Who’s going to bring Tabu Sana?) (The children point at each other.) Medium Yanguwako! (Please hurry!) (Mother Uganda goes around and picks two boys. She brings them to his side, one on each.) Mother Uganda Babbano Jajja (Here they are grandfather.) (He places a hand on each of their heads and blesses them.) Medium Emikisa jja Lubale Mukasa, ejja Kibuuka, ejja Lubowa, ejja Nabuzana, ejja Muwanga, gyona gibagendeleko. Mugende mirembe. Mudde mu mirembe. Kale bazukulu mugende. Kakati abazukulu, njagala kunyimbiramu. (May the blessings of the god Mukasa, of Kibuuka, of Lubowa, of Nabuzana, of Muwanga, go with you. Go in peace. Return in peace. Go now, my grandchildren. So grandchildren, I’d like for you to sing for me now.) (The children sing and say farewell to their ancestral spirit as it leaves the medium’s body. They sing a Kiganda folk song.) KIGANDA FAREWELL TO EMANDWA SONG Kyandanda omugenyi agenda kyandanda Talidde ku mmere – kyandanda omugenyi agenda kyandanda Jjajja weebale – kyandanda .... Jjaja weeraba ... kyandanda ... Ogenda nga odda. English translation Gently, gradually the visitor leaves He has not had any meal – gently Grandfather, thank you for revealing yourself to us – gently. Grandfather accept our farewell to you – gently We beg you to return another day (Exit medium. The song ends.) Mother Uganda Now my children ... (Missing words.) go and bring Tabu Sana. (They sing a Kinyankole hunting folk song. Instead of an animal, they’re going to hunt for Tabu Sana.)

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Mother Uganda  31 ANKOLE FOLK SONG, OMUHIIGO (THE HUNT) (There’s noise from far off.) Soloist 1 Hurira enduuru yagaamba! Yagamba Obweijo akantwarira ebintu Obundi yantwarira esente Atumareire ebintu byeitu Abeire nakyeera ataaha Mbwenu reeba mwaana wangye Tugyendane aharugamba

Chorus Hurira enduuru yagaamba! Hurira enduuru yagaamba! Hurira! Hurira enduuru yagaamba! Hurira! Hurira enduuru yagaamba! Hurira! Hurira enduuru yagaamba!

Boy l Nkwiine, nkwiine. Nyowe naakwaatwa omubabiro-ooo Emanzi tuze kurwaana-aaa Twaazakugyenda abazeire Eiwe maawe! Kamanzi’s mother Ayi bambe mwanawangye Eeeh.. Hati nenki noonda kundeetera esaasi? Eeeh. Hurira orugamba ndutiinire! Kaneiwe mwaana wangye weilka Eeeh. Ahabwenki noonda kunsiga Eeeh. Hurira·rugamba ndutiinire! nk’encweekye? Yatata akaziikwa orugamba Eeeh. Ayibambe mwaana wangye oyerinde Eeeh. Hurira rugamba ndutiinire! Nyowe ekyanyitsire kyoona Eeh. Ayibambe tingira kanyaanya oba omwe Eeeh. Hurira rugamba ndutiinire! Akutambiire ebintu bingi Eeeh. Mwaana wangye rugaba Kamanzi Eeeh. Hurira rugamba ndutiinire! ogume aha Abakazi twaare emigongo Eeeh. Omugongo gwangye nkagwaara Eeeh. Hurira rugamba ndutiinire! mitooma! Boy 2 (Kamanzi) Nyowe ninza omurugamba Mundekye abazeire Bantumwe eee Mpeereza icumu ryangye Hamwe n’engabo yangye Bantumwe eyia-aah Iwe kahiigi ija tugyende

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Iyee. Iyee. Oyirooko ogyende eyia-aah-eeh Iyee Iyee Oyirooko ogyende eyia-aah-eeh Iyee

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32  Rose Mbowa Tugyende tumureete Bantumwe eyiee-iyaa Iwe kahiigi ija tugyende Tugyende tumureete Bantumwe eyiee-iyaa

Iyee Oyirooko ogyende eyia-aah-eeh Iyee Iyee Oyirooko ogyende eyia-aah-eeh Oruhandagazi rutarimu ente Embuzi nimuzeigurura Enyanda zaareeta abarwaani

Soloist Baagyenda Iyee Baagyenda Iyee Reka bagyende Bagyende omumuhiigo Baagyenda Iyee Mbabo baagyenda kanyanya Iyee Reka bagyende Bagyende omumuhiigo. Bridge: Bari omumuhanda Mweteekateekye bariyo Barenda kwiija Bariyo, Iyee Bariyo nibeija Mweteekateekye bariyo Barenda kwiija Abeishiki Iyee Mwaare obunyantsi Mweteekateekye bariyo Barenda kwiija Batsigazi Iyee Mutahe ago meizi Mweteekateekye bariyo Barenda kwiija Abakazi Iyee Muse oburo bwiingi Mweteekateekye bariyo Barenda kwiija Iyee Bariyo, Bariyo Bari omumuhanda Mweteekateekye bariyo Barenda kwiija Bariyo, Bariyo Iyee Bari omumuhanda Mweteekateekye bariyo Barenda kwiija Boy 2 (Entering, distraught – with spear and net.) Omuhiigooo Gwatwaara emanzi kamanzi (They wail.) Gwatwaara emanzi Kamanzi

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Mother Uganda  33 Kamanzi’s mother Nkabigamba ebya Kamanzi Ngu atagyenda omumuhiigo Naasigara Nkahi bagyenzi? Iwe Kamanzi naasigara omwe Abazeire bareeba ndikeitwa Yagugyendamu omuhiigo English translation Soloist 1 Listen to the sound of the alarm! It roars The other day he robbed my property He’s taken enough of our belongings He’s been escaping to his home Now my child Let’s go together to battle

Okabigamba! Okabigamba! Okabigamba! Okabigamba ebya Kamanzi Okabigamba! Okabigamba!

Chorus Listen to the sound of the alarm! Listen! Listen! Listen to the sound of the alarm! Listen! Listen to the sound of the alarm!

Boy l I am with you I’m on fire Heroes, let’s go fight We’re about to go, parents Dear mother Kamanzi’s mother Oh goodness my child Why do you want to break my heart? You’re my only child Why do you want to leave me destitute? My father was buried in battle Be careful dear child Why I’m so doomed Is because I have no other relative May he protect you from so much The giver, my dear child Kamanzi be brave Let women hold their backs My back broke at Mitooma Boy 2 Kamanzi I’m going to battle! Leave me be, parents

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Eeeh. Eeeh. I’m terrified of this battle Eeeh. I’m terrified of this battle I’m terrified of this battle Eeeh. I’m terrified of this battle I’m terrified of this battle Eeeh. Eeeh. Iyee Iyee

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34  Rose Mbowa My goodness Give me my spear And my shield My goodness Kahiigi, let’s go Let’s go bring him My goodness Kahiigi, let’s go Let’s go bring him My goodness Soloist They are off They are off They are off There they go Let them go To the hunt Bridge: They’re on their way They’re out there They are coming Dear girls… Cover the floor with grass carpets Dear boys … Fetch the water The women … Grind a lot of millet They’ll be here soon They’re out there They’re on their way They’re out there They’re on their way

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Go on your way Iyee Iyee Go on your way Iyee Iyee Go on your way Iyee Go on your way At a path way without cattle You let the goats go The warriors are here Iyee Reka bagyende Let them go To the hunt Iyee Iyee

Prepare for them They’ll be here soon Prepare for them They’ll be here soon Prepare for them They’ll be here soon Prepare for them They’ll be here soon Prepare for them Prepare for them They’ll be here soon Prepare for them They’ll be here soon

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Mother Uganda  35 Boy 2 (Entering, distraught – with spear and net) The hunt… (They wail.) Has taken the brave Kamanzi Kamanzi’s mother I foretold Kamanzi’s fate! I told him not to go to the hunt How will I survive? Kamanzi, you’ve left me alone Parents see things dear me! The hunt has claimed him

You said it You said it You said it You foretold Kamanzi’s fate You said it You said it

(Enter Kamanzi. He has Tabu Sana as his prisoner. Joy returns. He throws Tabu Sana in the centre. The children and Mother Uganda rush and hug him and welcome him back.) Kamanzi (Boastfully.) Huumura, huumura. (Relax, relax!) Mweena ngu eh Say eh Mweena ngu eh! Say eh Boy 1 (Kamanzi) You thought I was dead? Children Yes! Boy 1 You thought I was dead? Children Yes! Boy 1 Those were my tactics to get Tabu Sana! (Tabu Sana sits at the centre, shivering, as excitement surrounds the children. The boy jumps around. He bursts into rhymes, performing Ekyevugo, traditional Kinyankole poetry, about his exploits.) Mweena ngu eh Eh Mweena ngu eh Eh Kabarabara kaata macupa Akatatiina bajungu Kakandeetera ente yangye Kyoozi Mweine kanyomoozi yareeta eireeba Eh Kabarabara kata macupa Akate kangye akatatiina bajungu Kakandeetera ente yangye Kyooz Muka kanyomoozi niwe arigireeba. Eh Bakagira ngu obutwe bwekibingo tibabureega Naabureega banyeta omwana w’omurwaani. Eh Bakagira ngu orwamba rw’enimi Omusheija tarushama Naarushama baanyeta emaanzi! Eeeeeeh! English translation Cracking, breaking glass

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Eh

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36  Rose Mbowa Not scared of foreigners Eh It brought me my cow Kyoozi the black one Kanyomoozi’ s child knows it all Cracking, breaking glass My bold cow that’s not scared of foreigners It brought me my cow Kyoozi the black one Kanyomoozi’s wife will see it all They said you don’t stretch a reed’s buds But I did and they called me a warrior’s child They said, of a bull’s fresh blood That a man can’t juggle it, Eh But I did and they called me a hero. Eeeeh! (In the heat of the moment, some people pick up spears and advance towards Tabu Sana. Mother Uganda stops them and confiscates their weapons.) Mother Uganda My children. My children! Children Yes… Mother Uganda We cannot solve our problems by killing. Children Yeah. Mother Uganda My children. My children let us rejoice. For both our sons have come back safely from hunting. Yes my children. Let us dance Ekitaguliro, from Ankole. We must teach him to dance to the tune of our soil. My son, you must dance with us. You must dance to the tune of our soil. (Exit girls. Some boys also go off with the girls. Enter boys with a pack of clothes.) Mother Uganda My children, put on your clothes. Tabu Sana has to dance with us. She helps him up and takes him to the boys. Mother Uganda Give him. Give him his. A boy throws a wrapper at Tabu Sana. Boy 2 Get this one. Mother Uganda No! Not like that. Not like that. (The boy calms down. He brings the clothes to Tabu Sana. A few other boys join him.) Boy 2 Tabu Sana! Mother Uganda Show him. Show him how it’s done. Boy 2 Okay. You first put on this one. (The boy dresses Tabu Sana up in the top wrapper, across his shoulder.) Mother Uganda Now that’s better. (The boys demonstrate to Tabu Sana how to dress up in the Kinyankole attire.) Boy 2 You do this, and then this. Nogyira oti…(You do it like this.) Boy 1 Noija kubyeega! (You’ll learn this!) Boy 2 And this way … Tie it properly. Otyo! (Exactly!) Mother Uganda You see? That is it my son!

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Mother Uganda  37 Boy 1 Tie it properly. (They all tie their wrappers around their waists.) Mother Uganda He knows, I told you. Boy 2 I see! Mother Uganda My son, that is it. Boy 1 Tabu Sana ohuumure. Reeta amaarwa geitu Mother Uganda tunyweho. (Tabu Sana relax. Bring our alcohol, Mother Uganda so we can drink.) Mother Uganda Eee. (Yes.) Boy 2 Amaarwa garahi? (Where’s the alcohol?) (Mother Uganda brings a pot of alcohol. The boys pick the drinking straws in the pot. One of the boys offers a drinking straw to Tabu Sana. He takes it but hesitates to drink.) Boy 1 Toora onyweho. (Get this and drink.) Boy 2 Tabu Sana… nywaho. (Taste the drink.) Boy 1 Nywaho. (Drink a little bit.) Boy Ohuumure. ( Just relax.) Boys Nywa! (Drink!) Boy Aine obwooba. (He’s scared.) Boys (They laugh.) Boy 1 Ateinire. (He’s terrified.) Boy 2 Ateinire. (He is.) (They begin humming for the ekitaguliro dance from Ankole. The dance begins. Enter drummers.) ANKOLE EKITAGULIRO EKITAAGURIRO (THE DANCE) Dancers Hummmmmm – hummmm (Mother Uganda, seated nearby, smiles. She takes the pot away from the boys as the dance gains momentum. Enter girls, joining in the dance.) Soloist Chorus Tabu Sana ohuumure eego iyaa-yaa-yaa Aaaah – aaaah Boojo murangaaze (yebare!) Aaaah – aaah – aaah Ow’engoma areinkahi? Iyaa-yaa-ya Aaaah – aaah Agiteerere hari haza Aaaah – aaah – aaah Eeego yebare iiyee Aaaah – aaah Eeego mweena nimweimukye Aaaah – aaah – aaah Tabu Sana ohuumure eego Aaaah – aaaah Ohuumure otatiina eego -yaa Aaaah – aaaah – aaah Reeru boojo barinkahi? Aaaah – aaaah Nteerera nzaanire engome (webare) Aaaah – aaaah – aaah (They dance.) Enyamurumi neeruma neeruma Enyamurumi

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38  Rose Mbowa (Enter girls, dancing.) Enyamurumi neeruma neeruma Enyamurumi Yaaruma yaaruma Enyamurumi Yaaruma yaaruma weee Enyamurumi neeruma neeruma Enyamurumi Yaaruma boojo mwe! Enyamurumi Yaaruma yaaruma weee Enyamurumi neeruma neeruma Enyamurumi Yaaruma boojo mwe! Enyamurumi Yaaruma yaaruma weee Enyamurumi neeruma neeruma Enyamurumi Yebareeee! (The boys and girls dance together. The flute player joins begins to play.) Haza mutahunga Haza mutahunga Mutahunga bantu mwe Haza mutahunga Mutahunga nkabashara Haza mutahunga Mutahunga Mureeba Haza mutahunga Mutahuunga boojo mwe Haza mutahunga Mutahunga beishiki mwe Haza mutahunga Mutahunga banywaani Haza mutahunga Mutahunga bantu mwe Haza mutahunga Mutahuunga bikirigye Haza mutahunga Mutahunga tugyende Haza mutahunga Mutahunga bantu mwe Haza mutahunga Mutahunga nkabashara Haza mutahunga Mutahuunga boojo mwe Haza mutahunga Mutahunga beishiki mwe Haza mutahunga Mutahunga banywaani Haza mutahunga Mutahunga bantu mwe Haza mutahunga Mutahuunga ab’enkoni Haza mutahunga Soloist 2 – (Female going round the dancing boys and checking them out.) Bakanyaanya tibabarahura eyiya-eee-eee Bakanyaanya tibabarahuraaaa Oshoome abandi boona Nyowe tinkanyetsire Eizooba rindinyeeta orashooma ohendekye (The girls dance with the boys.) Soloist Eyarushongyera Eeee- eh -eh -eh Eyarushongyera Izugo niryenda eyarishongyera Eyarushongyera Eeee- eh -eh – eh Eyarushongyera lzugo niryenda eyarishongyera Eyarushongyera Eeee- eh -eh – eh Eyarushongyera Izugo niryenda eyarishongyera

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Mother Uganda  39 Eyarushongyera Eeee- eh -eh -eh Eyarushongyera lzugo niryenda eyarishongyera Eyarushongyera Eeee- eh -eh -eh Eyarushongyera Izugo niryenda eyarishongyera Eyarushongyera Eeee- eh -eh -eh Eyarushongyera Izugo niryenda eyarishongyera (This is supposed to mean that the small drum cannot stand alone, it only makes sense when it comes into rhythmically accompany the big drum. There may be better ways to say it in English. But it’s also about the rhythm of life, that one person completes another.) (Exit dancers. Enter a man. He picks up the xylophone and begins to play. Exit drummers.) English translation Soloist Chorus Tabu Sana, relax. Yeah Aaaah – aaaah Boys, see far Aaaah – aaah – aaah Where’s the drummer? Aaaah – aaah Sound the drum from over there Aaaah – aaah – aaah Thank you Aaaah – aaah Can you all get up Aaaah – aaah – aaah Tabu Sana, relax Aaaah – aaaah Relax, don’t be scared Aaaah – aaaah – aaah Where are the boys? Aaaah – aaaah Drum for me, let me play for the drum Aaaah – aaaah – aaah Thank you (They dance.) The miner bites while it digs up The miner (Enter girls, dancing.) The miner bites while it digs up The miner It digs, it digs The miner The miner bites while it digs up The miner It digs up, boys! The·miner It mines and mines The miner bites while it digs up The miner It digs up, boys! The miner It mines and mines The miner bites while it digs up The miner Thank you (The boys and girls dance together. The flute player joins begins to play.) Don’t you run away! Don’t you run away!

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40  Rose Mbowa Don’t run, my people Don’t you run away! Don’t run or I’ll slice you up Don’t you run away! Don’t escape, see Don’t you run away! Don’t run away, boys Don’t you run away! Don’t run away, girls Don’t you run away! Don’t run away, friends Don’t you run away! Don’t run away, my people Don’t you run away! Don’t run away, it’s still well Don’t you run away! Don’t escape, let’s go Don’t you run away! Don’t run, my people Don’t you run away! Don’t run or I’ll slice you up Don’t you run away! Don’t run away, boys Don’t you run away! Don’t run away, girls Don’t you run away! Don’t run away, friends Don’t you run away! Don’t run away, my people Don’t you run away! Don’t run away, cane-people Don’t you run away! Soloist 2 – (Female going round the dancing boys and checking them out.) You don’t bully brothers and sisters You don’t bully brothers and sisters You can dance with everybody else here I am not youthful yet The day I become of age we’ll dance till you break (The girls dance with the boys.) Soloist The rhythm drum Eeee- eh -eh -eh The rhythm drum It accompanies another The rhythm drum Eeee- eh -eh – eh The rhythm drum It accompanies another The rhythm drum It accompanies another The rhythm drum It accompanies another The rhythm drum Eeee- eh -eh -eh It accompanies another The rhythm drum Eeee- eh -eh -eh XYLOPHONE TUNE ‘Tamenhaibuga’ Dance Xylophone tune ‘Atumira inuma waiswa mugude’ (Enter Mother Uganda, moving to the beat of the xylophone. She offers her hand to the player. He ends his performance and stands up to shake her hand.) Mother Uganda Oh! Thank you my son. For that nice melody you’ve just played on your xylophone. (Enter drummer. He takes his position behind the drums.) Musician You’re welcome, Mother Uganda. Mother Uganda Now my son. Musician Yes Madam.

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Mother Uganda  41 Mother Uganda Let us go join them as they go grazing their cattle in Kigezi, south western Uganda. Musician Okay please. (They both lift the xylophone and take it off stage. Enter Kigezi dancers.They perform a Bakiga folk dance about grazing cattle.) KIGEZI FOLK DANCE ABOUT GRAZING CATTLE Drummer Hii, hii hiii hii. Bakanyanya murahe? (Enter boys and girls jumping and dancing.) Soloist Niyo egyo ereeta sente ee – ee Kaberebere Mbyaama ngirrota Kaberebere Ruhamagara Kaberebere Omubikamba Kaberebere Eyaka yonka Kaberebere (One of the boys brings the cow in.) Hoona weija kuriisa Iyee Eshaaha neegyi kuriisa Iwe Kamanzi osiibuze iyee tugyendeee Reka tugyende kuriisa Eshaaha neegyi kuriisa Iwe Kamanzi osiibuze iyee Reka tugyende kuriisa Twaahikayo tuzaane Iwe Kamanzi osiibuze iyee Twaahikayo tuzaane Hoona nabwe turwaane Iwe Kamanzi osiibuze iyee Twaaheza nokurwaana Hoona tweeshomwiitaka Iwe Kamanzi osiibuze iyee Twaaheza nokweesha Hoona twotsye amatehe Iwe Kamanzi osiibuze iyee Mwaana wangye tata ento Hoona ija tugyende Iwe Kamanzi osiibuze iyee Kamanzi oreebe Kamanzi oreebe Kamanzi oreebe Kamanzi oreebe Ente ekarenga Eine amahuuga Eine amayenje Eine orubeere Eyi nyakasingye Nereeta amate! Reeba omugongo Eine omutsindo Ekatuheebwa Basweento abahango English translation Drummer Hii, hii hiii hii

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42  Rose Mbowa Where are you my sisters and brothers? (Enter boys and girls jumping and dancing.) Soloist That’s the money maker I dream about it in my sleep The giver of life Eating bushes It stands out (One of the boys brings the cow in.) You come to graze? This is the time to graze Kamanzi say your goodbyes, let’s go. Let’s go to graze This is the time to graze Let’s go to graze When we reach there, we’ll play But we can also fight After fighting We’ll take the cows to drink After they’ve drunk We’ll roast wild fruit My child, my father’s brother Come, let’s go Kamanzi, watch out A cow is too precious It’s got different colours It’s got patches It has an udder Dear giver of peace! It brings milk Look at its back It has a firm thud It was given to us By our mighty forefathers (Some dancers exit, leaving two boys with their cow.) Boy 1 My friend, do you know what? Boy 2 What? Boy 1 We’ve got a beautiful cow. Boy 2 Yes. Boy 1 It is really beautiful. Boy 2 Yes. Look … Boy 1 The eyes… ha! Boy 2 That’s why we must guard it. Boy 1 Why? Boy 2 Why??

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Mother Uganda  43 Boy 1 Yeah. Boy 2 We must guard it because there are some misguided characters from North East Uganda, Karamoja. Boy 1 You mean they’re … Boy 2 They destroyed the people. They carried away all the herds of cattle. They robbed people of their property. They raped women. You are joking. They’re really terrible.· Boy 1 This is very serious. Boy 2 Yes! Boy 1 Eh! Boy 2 And Tabu Sana is one of them. What? Boy 1 Yes. He organised all this. (Enter Karamojong warriors, including Tabu Sana, with spears. Enter Karamojong female dancers. They all perform Analeyo, a Karomojong folk dance. The two boys join the dance.) NALEYO DANCE Soloist Naleyo ebolya-ah Chorus Ti ti ti x2 Naleyo nakarwonia Ti ti ti – ayaru naleyo Ti ti ti Nalyeyo kerumania Ti ti ti – ayaru naleyo Ti ti ti Naleyo – kolonga-a Ti ti ti – ayaru naleyo Naleyo iwutaya Ti ti ti – ayaru naleyo Ti ti ti

we dance to naleyo Naleyo is risen Naleyo is risen Naleyo the heir/ inheritor Naleyo is risen Naleyo since long a go Naleyo is risen Naleyo disappeared mysteriously Naleyo is risen

EAST AFRICAN COMMUNITY SONG – ANALEYO Soloist Kejoker ananga The sheet is very good Chorus U-u-uh (men) A-a-ah (women) Soloist Kejoker ananga The sheet is very good. Ageluno alokenya It was bought from Kenya Chorus Atikie karengania A surprising brown beauty Oyee – atikie karengania yes a surprising brown beauty

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44  Rose Mbowa Nakwakela Owokori Karengania perialoya

white teethed Owokori (name.) A brown beauty lies

Verse: Soloist Akiding iturokona bragging for nothing Chorus U-u-uh A-a-ah Soloist Akiding iturokona bragging for nothing Nyakachakaran a betrayer/heartless girl Chorus Atikie karengania … a surprising brown beauty Soloist Kajoker asopiria the saucepan is very good Chorus U-u-uh A-a-ah Kejoker asopiria the saucepan is very good Ageluno alokenya… bought from Kenya Soloist Kejoker a wombee The razor-blade is very good Chorus Kejoker awombee The razor-blade is very good U-u-uh A-a-ah Kejoker awombee The razor-blade is very good ageluno a lokenya It was bought from Kenya (Exit Analeyo dancers. As they leave, one of the boys follows them but his friend hurls him back.) Boy 1 What? Boy 2 Don’t be silly. Do you want to follow those warriors? Boy 1 When they have taken our cow? Boy 2 Yes they have taken the cow but do you think you can fight them? Boy 1 Yes! Boy 2 You cannot! They’re warriors! They can fight terribly. Look – Boy 1 Tabu Sana – Boy 2 Tabu Sana! Didn’t you see him with them? Boy 1 B…b…b…but – Boy 2 Now, listen to me carefully. If you want to follow these warriors, these cattle rustlers, you have to learn the tactics of fighting, defending yourself and attacking the enemy. Now I’m going to teach you how to follow the enemy. Boy 1 Yeah.

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Mother Uganda  45 Boy 2 We are going to use an Otole dance from Acholi. Yeah. Boy 1 Yes? Boy 2 Yeah. Boy 2 Now – (His friend begins to sing waving his spear and shield in the air.) Boy 2 No. That’s not the way they sing for the dance. Let us call our people to help us. People. People. People! (Ululating sounds pierce the air. Enter Acholi dancers. They perform a war dance.) ACHOLI WAR DANCE (Then suddenly the girls scatter in different directions, screaming. Enter Tabu Sana. He has a spear. The two friends face him.) Boy 1 Tabu Sana! Boy 2 Attack. Attack! Tabu Sana So you were planning to attack me? Boy 2 (He leaps forward.) Tabu Sana You were planning to attack me? Boy 1 Yeah. Tabu Sana Okay. Boy 2 Yes. Tabu Sana Okay gentlemen. Gentlemen? Boy 2 No! Tabu Sana Listen to me gentlemen. Boy 1 Listen to you? Tabu Sana Yes. Gentlemen. Boy 2 We can’t listen to you. Tabu Sana Now gentlemen – Boy 1 Put down your spear. Tabu Sana Kiganda style. Boy 1 No. Boy 2 Put down your spear! Tabu Sana Yes … Boy 1 Put down your spear Tabu Sana I am trying to put it down. Boy 2 Put down your spear Boy 1 Put down your spear Tabu Sana Yes. (He throws the spear on the ground, between the two boys. One of them goes after it and picks it up.) Tabu Sana Gentlemen … now, we wrestle. Boy 1 Eeeh? (Huh?) Boy 2 We wrestle? Tabu Sana Yes. Boy 1 You want to wrestle? Tabu Sana Yes.

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46  Rose Mbowa Boy 2 You are ready for wrestling? Tabu Sana Yeeees! Boy 1 Okay. Okay. (Enter Baganda singers. They sing a wrestling folk song. Tabu Sana and the boy are the wrestlers in the ring, at the centre of the singing crowd.) KIGANDA WRESTLING SONG (Morale boosting wrestling song.) Wololololo ….. yaaye! The mighty has been possessed I am determined to wrestle with Tabu. His chest is as huge as a tree stump. His eyes are as if they are coming out. (The boy defeats Tabu Sana. Some crowd members lift him on their shoulders. There’s celebration. Enter Mother Uganda. She seizes one of the spears from a crowd member. They all gather around her.) Mother Uganda My children. Once again, we cannot solve our problems by killing. (The crowd goes wild in opposition. She stretches her hand and stops them. She approaches Tabu Sana, who’s lying on the floor from his defeat.) Mother Uganda My son, so at last you have come back to us! (She pulls him up by his hand.) Mother Uganda Up. Up, my son. Let us teach him. And instead – (Somebody pokes him in the back. He’s now seated at the mother’s feet.) Mother Uganda He will change. Let us teach him to work hard like all of us. And instead, discard all the selfish ambitions he has been having. All the greed. And instead, embrace all the unity among us. All children We will try. Mother Uganda You will try? All children Yes. Mother Uganda That’s the spirit my children. (Enter Santina.) Mother Uganda I can see his wife is here. My daughter, sing that song from Buganda that will teach him to work hard like all of us. (They all sing a Kiganda folk song about hard work.) KIGANDA HARD WORK FOLK SONG Tabu Sana … wooo Tabu Sana… Bwotokyuse mpisa Uganda eneekutwala wwa? Bakyala bannange abe emitala eyo – wangi Bakyala bannange abantunuulira Wangi mukazi munnaffe tukuwulira nyumya Tuwulire ekikuleese Ntema ntema amavuunike Ogatema nga eggulo

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Mother Uganda  47 Ntema ntema amavuunike Ogatema nga eggulo Nnima emmere Nfumbira omwami gwennafumbirwa – Ogatema nga eggulo Ntema ntema amavuunike Ntema ntema amavuunike Ogatema nga eggulo Nsimba emmwanyi Nsimba ppamba Nyunja ettooke Ntema ntema amavuunike Ntema ntema amavuunike Nkola nnyo Kweno enjala – eyemitala efuuwa malenge Enjala ejja Enjala ejja Omwami wange – ojja nga nolaba enjala enjala twagitwala bukwakku Bukwakku bukwakku ssebo Ojja nga nolaba enjala Enjala twagitwala bukwakku (Tabu Sana now joins in the song… after he has been convinced by wife and village that the way to go is by working gainfully.) Basajja bannange abe emitala eyo wangi Basajja bannange aberudda eyo Wangi musajja munnaffe tukuwulira Nyumya tuwulire ekikuleese Bakazi ha bandi abe erudda eyo Bakazi bannange abantunuulira Wangi musajja munnaffe tukuwulira Nyumya tuwulire ekikuleese Ntema ntema amavuunike Ogatema nga eggulo Ntema ntema amavuunike Ogatema nga eggulo Ngaenda emugga Ndeeta amazzi Ntema ntema amavuunike ogatema nga eggulo Noga emmwanyi

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48  Rose Mbowa English translation Tabu Sana … wooo If you do not change your ways Uganda will have lost you! Fellow ladies Fellow ladies of my country Yes we are listening Carefully listening Tell us your story With all my determination and energy I will cultivate this land With all my energy I will grow food Our dear fellow woman, we support you With all your strength Grow food I will plant coffee I will plant cotton I will plant bananas And soon I will be harvesting bananas I am determined to work hard With the looming famine I cannot afford to relax With this looming famine As I hear it in the neighbouring villages I cannot afford not to work I will work I will till the land My dear husband This is the only way we shall kick famine away from our village Let us work hard Let us not allow famine to visit our village Man (Tabu Sana) (After listening to the positive advice.) Fellow men over there Fellow country men I have learnt how to work too I am determined to plant food I will fetch water I will cultivate coffee I will reap from the garden I am going to plant cotton From today I have learnt to work No famine will come to our village I will plant food Then I will reap from the garden I planted

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Mother Uganda  49 From today I have learnt to work I am determined to cultivate food So that famine doesn’t visit our home and village (Tabu Sana has learnt the craft in the song, Mother Uganda is very excited.) Mother Uganda That is it my children. That is it. (The song ends with dancing and celebration. The crowd joins the dancers; they all dance together and march together, playing drums and trumpets.) THE END

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The Context & Making of Rose Mbowa’s Mother Uganda & Her Children PATRICK MANGENI & JANE PLASTOW

Introduction Mother Uganda and Her Children was a music-dance-drama production developed by Rose Mbowa in 1987 with a cast drawn from the Music, Dance and Drama Department (MDD) of Makerere University. Until now existing only in the memories of a few and on some partial and poor quality VHS tapes, the script never having been written down, the play has a big place in the mythology of modern Uganda theatre. Mother Uganda was produced at a moment of historical and political challenge and supported by the incoming – and still in power 30 years later – government of Yoweri Museveni. The manner of its production was highly controversial at the time, challenging institutional, academic, political and personal loyalties. In line with a favoured Mbowa play-making methodology Mother Uganda was an improvisational collective production. It was unique in that it drew on some ten indigenous dance and music cultures to advance an agenda of national reconciliation, reconstruction and unity. Rose Mbowa, arguably Uganda’s leading theatrical figure at the time, made a piece that traverses boundaries between popular musical theatre, indigenous dance-drama forms, political theatre, theatre in education and theatre for development as it appealed to unity across ethnic diversity, the possibility of human reformation, and the need for a rapid move towards the embedding of women’s rights.

My relationship with Mother Uganda – Patrick Reflecting on, and writing about, Mother Uganda and Her Children has made me consider my history of working with Rose Mbowa. I was Rose’s student from 1984 to 1988, and then I worked with her as a teacher at Makerere University in MDD from 1991 to 1999, when she sadly and suddenly passed on. I acted in her Nalumansi Mother of Lukabwe in 1985. As a student I

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The Context & Making of Mother Uganda & Her Children   51 observed the development of Mother Uganda and Her Children in 1987, and then performed in Mine by Right in 1989. I was subsequently employed by the rival dance-drama Ndere Troupe as Executive Director but soon lost the job, being told I was ‘too close to Rose Mbowa’. Writing about Mother Uganda and Her Children is therefore informed by my experiences as a participant, a colleague and an observer of Mbowa’s work. To write this piece I have also drawn on related literature, partial video recordings of the play and interviews with actors and administrators of the Ngaali Ensemble, the theatre group that performed Mother Uganda and Her Children. Sadly not only Rose Mbowa, but the assistant director, Joseph Walugembe, the dance director Moses Serwadda and other key players in the development and management of the play have passed on and I could find few records of their experiences of working on the production.

Rose Mbowa Rose Mbowa (1943-1999) was a key Ugandan theatrical figure. At the time she made Mother Uganda she was Associate Professor and head of the Department of Music, Dance and Drama at Makerere University, the preeminent East African university, offering the only formal theatre training in Uganda. She was a hugely energetic and productive teacher, actress, director and play-maker who inspired admiration in many and resentment and jealousy in a few. Born into a Baganda – the largest ethnic group in Uganda – family, the young Rose attended her country’s leading girls’ educational establishment, Gayaza High School. From there she went on in the early 1960s to study Literature at Makerere – there was not a degree course in drama at the time (Collins and Gardner 1999). She took every opportunity, however, to engage with theatre both academically and practically. The main practical vehicle for theatre making at the University at this time was the Makerere Free Travelling Theatre, which every year took a mixture of plays, increasingly written by Ugandan students, in Ugandan languages and using Ugandan performance forms, on extended tours of the country – occasionally venturing over the borders into Kenya and Tanzania (Cook 1999). After a short time working in radio and for Robert Serumaga’s legendary Abafumi theatre company (see Don Rubin’s article in this volume), in 1969 Mbowa travelled to the UK to take her MA in Theatre at the Workshop Theatre of Leeds University, under the professorship of Martin Banham, a leading Africanist theatre scholar who had himself worked for ten years in Nigeria prior to setting up his highly regarded international postgraduate programme. When she returned to Uganda, Mbowa developed a career as a teacher, researcher, actress, playwright and director. Notably, not long before

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52  Patrick Mangeni & Jane Plastow her death in 1998, she gained international fame for her role as Maama Nalukalala (Mother Courage) in a Luganda language production of Brecht’s play that was co-produced with the British Royal Court Theatre and played in Uganda, South Africa and the USA. Mbowa was a notable feminist. In her life, work and theatre she constantly espoused the cause of women’s rights and empowerment. We can see this concern in Mother Uganda and Her Children, but it was also central to her preceding piece, Nalumansi Mother of Lukabwe, which was specifically commissioned for the 3rd World Conference on Women that took place in Nairobi, Kenya in 1985, and her following work, Mine by Right, that shone a spotlight on women’s rights. When considering Mbowa’s work, one can never forget that so much of it took place against the context of civil war and the massive abuses of human rights perpetrated under the governments of Milton Obote (1966-1971 and 1980-1985) and even worse, that of Idi Amin (1971-1979). While these repressive governments meant that playwrights risked their lives to engage in political critique,1 Mbowa could and did support a series of theatrical engagements with social problems. The creation of Mother Uganda took place in the context of the thenrecent, 1986, victory of the forces of Yoweri Museveni’s National Resistance Army (NRA), after the horrors of the five year ‘Bush’ or ‘Luwero’ war that, at a hideous price, restored peace to the majority of the country.2 Museveni came to power proclaiming the need for national reconciliation and the overcoming of ethnic divides that had riven the country since colonial times, and promising that he would promote the empowerment of women. In so doing he won the support of Uganda’s pre-eminent theatrical personality.

The commissioning and making of Mother Uganda Mother Uganda was commissioned by the ruling National Resistance Move­ ment (NRM), not primarily for the Ugandan population but to take to London to convince the international community that Uganda was a radically changing country. Mbowa had already been told she must get a play which was supposed to be taken to London … they said it was from State House and we were supposed to represent Uganda to show how Ugandans are living today and how peaceful they are now because we had come out of the war. (Interview, Jackson Kamuntu, 12 May 2017) In an interview before his death assistant director Joseph Walugembe confirmed the tenor of NRM instructions: They came to us as a Department to work out a dramatic piece that would be taken around – that would be taken to London, to showcase what NRM was keeping as a message – rebuild Uganda; using the perform­

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The Context & Making of Mother Uganda & Her Children  53 ing arts to give a message on the theme, – rebuild Uganda. (Quoted in Mulekwa, 2012: 257) Beyond this general briefing there is no indication that Mbowa was given any specific content or aesthetic requirements for her play. Nor was she given a space or a company with which to work. She would have to draw on the theatrical community at Makerere. The form Mbowa chose was that of a music-dance-drama, embodying the creative energy and diversity of her country through its indigenous performance forms, which would be profiled and linked together through a narrative led by Mother Uganda, as she sought to bring her delinquent son, Tabu Sana (Swahili, ‘Big Trouble’), back into the national/family fold. This focus on Ugandan performance forms and the celebration of indigeneity was of course deliberate, but we can also see possible Brechtian influences, not in only in the naming of the play – Mother Uganda/Mother Courage – but in its juxtaposition of dialogue and song, its epic scope and its political positioning. There is also evidence of the growing influence of theatre for development. This form was being spread across Africa in the mid-1980s and Mbowa had attended key workshops in Tanzania in 1985. According to her then student, Christopher Mureeba, she had become interested in the possibilities of the form for articulating factors that limited the development of Uganda and for rallying people to challenge the evils of ignorance, greed, disease and discrimination. Mbowa would work through her preferred method of collective playmaking arising from an improvisatory process. Her cast predominantly consisted of current and former students of MDD backed up by departmental staff, and most rehearsals were held on Wednesday afternoons because this was when students were free for practical work. Mbowa notably did not audition for actors, she selected – and when things were not working out to her satisfaction at times de-selected – her cast. There were two key groups of students involved. One was mature students, generally music teachers who already had diploma standard qualifications and had come back to the university to upgrade to degree level. This group had extensive experience of working with, and running, school or church choirs. The other group had joined MDD directly from high school. However, nearly all those who took part in Mother Uganda came from schools such as Makerere College School, Lubiri High School, Gayaza and Namasagali, all of which had strong traditions in dance, music and drama. One advantage for Mbowa in working with so many people she knew was that she could create roles with specific people in mind. This was particularly helpful in relation to the central role. Christine Nangalama, who played Mother Uganda, was a mature student in her forties who spoke a variety of Ugandan languages and could perform numerous ethnic cultural dances. Moreover she was well-known as having a motherly disposition, looking after many younger students. Her character and age – which could

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54  Patrick Mangeni & Jane Plastow helpfully produce a deferential attitude in younger cast members – was drawn on by Mbowa in managing cast and rehearsals. Christopher Mureeba remembers her vividly: That woman had commanding presence. If you can think of a woman who had authority, she had a personal exertion of her authority; she would actually discipline us even when we were quarrelling amongst ourselves outside the play [laughs]. You know when you have about 20 to 30 people, disagreements will occur. Sometimes we would quarrel about food; we would quarrel about clothing, we would quarrel about costume. Some people never wanted to carry drums they would only come to perform. But she settled our disputes and we listened to her. And she played her role of Mother Uganda perfectly … her character was a real Mother Uganda … physically, and she was an intelligent woman. She would listen to Mbowa with respect and whenever Mbowa needed to be told something serious she would be the one to tell her and Mbowa would listen to her [laughs] … even Mbowa would listen [laughs]. (Interview, 16 May 2017) In developing Mother Uganda, Mbowa above all sought an integrated mode of performance, able to bring together music, dance, song and story­telling in a manner that she believed reflected Ugandan performance traditions, and indeed the integrated arts philosophy informing the Music, Dance and Drama Department at Makerere. In this she was fortunate in that most of the cast had taken the MDD Diploma that required students to study elements of all three disciplines. A key aspect of the curriculum that was drawn on was the Fieldwork Research Paper that was compulsory for all students. Each student was required to undertake research in regional music and dance forms and submit a project report. This research informed the end-of-year people’s theatre community performance – a mutation from the Makerere Free Travelling Theatre of the 1960s and 1970s – where students prepared for open community performances presenting plays, dances and music for examination. Mbowa, a product and architect of this structure, drew on it to inform the development of Mother Uganda and Her Children. The cast researched and identified performance forms from multiple Ugandan ethnic communities and brought them together into a dynamic, diverse but cohesive whole that could reflect the aspirations of a re-unifying Uganda. This was the most innovative aspect of the production. Plenty of other shows had looked at and included dance, music and storytelling from particular communities. There had been a number of highly successful musical or ‘opera’ productions in Uganda in the years preceding Mother Uganda. Solomon Mbabi Katana had directed his opera The Marriage of Nyakato with students of MDD in the late 1970s and Cosma Byarugaba of the Theatre Africana company then directed Omuhigo, an opera that in the late 1970s and early 1980s made local and international tours (interview, Augustine Bazaale, ‎20 June ‎2017). What no-one else had done

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The Context & Making of Mother Uganda & Her Children  55 was to combine Uganda’s multifarious performance cultures so ambitiously within one show. To support the work, Mbowa sought out cast members who came from relevant communities so that they could lead the various sections and ensure as much authenticity in performances as possible. So Stephen Rwangyezi led the Ankole sections alongside Christopher Mureeba who was an expert Ankole flautist, while Abdu Waduka led the Busoga Likembe dance with Charles Tamale on drums. Mbowa was relaxed about collaboration and in admitting to gaps in her knowledge. So students, having researched specific dance and music forms were then asked to structure the presentation of particular cultural items: As a director, Rose Mbowa … delegated. She knew what she wanted. She says, ‘Mr. Rwangyezi can you train that song?’ Then she listens to it. She sees the way it comes out … ‘Kazana you can train that dance from Busoga’ … As a dramatist, she knew that, actually, she is not a musician. After seeing the whole piece she would say, ‘No, no, I don’t want these parts’, because she knew her plot. She says, ‘connect this part and this part’. So for her, as a producer she knew what she wanted and she delegated the production of items. (Interview, Jackson Kamuntu, 12 May 2017) Mbowa also collaborated with other staff members. Igaga Mutekanga and Mbabi Katana of the music section contributed their expertise, as did Joseph Walugembe and Moses Serwadda from dance. She then shaped and focused the various segments, determining their sequencing and advancing the plotline with dialogue linking the dance and song sections. This participatory approach gave a great sense of camaraderie and joint ownership to the production.

Directing style As a teacher, Rose Mbowa is remembered by her students as patient, kind and dedicated. She was a perfectionist who was revered and loved, and was known for working exceptionally hard, especially when her students needed her support. Jackson Kamuntu offered an example of the extent to which she made herself available to those in need: I was the only one who was doing music. So now that we didn’t have a lot of background in drama, she was patient with us, to make sure that each one of us produces his script. Of course there were those ones who were not as strong, who were in our category, but you could see the way she was handling us it was motherly … If at all you were not doing things the way she wanted, then she would call you and say, ‘What is the problem?’ – discuss with you at a personal level. (Interview, 12 May 2017)

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56  Patrick Mangeni & Jane Plastow However, when it came to productions Mbowa did not show the patience she did in teaching. According to her students, she became another person. She was quick and decisive. She selected casts meticulously, even ruthlessly, discarding actors if they did not come up to standard, or even if they did not physically fit the aesthetic image she sought. She was particular about every detail of the performance, unwilling to make any compromises when it came to making her art. In the experience of one cast member: When it came to training of this play [sic] still that element of size came in. My body was my disadvantage because she was a perfectionist. She wants to see this size, she wants to see … symmetry. Why didn’t I go (to London)? – because of that size. When we were in the mirror room she picked me out. She said, ‘No, no, no. Get out. Get off’. So I missed that trip. (Interview, Jackson Kamuntu, 12 May 2017) A further example of her directing style was given by Christopher Mureeba: Mbowa was a threat and we feared her, [laughs] we feared her so much, she would shout at you and you turn into nothing. You would melt like butter. You would even quiver … she would clap her hands and say papapapap…paap [laughs] … at one time I thought of running away really, you know … Anyway the performance at Kyambogo was successful, with me performing what Mbowa wanted … after the Kyambogo perform­ance Mbowa was so happy and glad about my performance. She invited us at her home to thank us and said, ‘Mureeba you have become a performer’. I nearly cried, you know. (Interview, 16 May 2017)

Performances and how they were received Mother Uganda and Her Children was performed in London in 1987, though sadly no review material has been located to indicate audience reception. The play was then shown at Makerere University Main Hall in front of an audience including the Vice Chancellor, before going on to Kyambogo, Kampala’s other main campus of tertiary education at the time. The produc­ tion was subsequently invited by Libya in 1988 to the Jamahiriya festival in what was dubbed an International Cultural Representation of Nations, and the NRM Secretariat took the (renamed – see the section on politics below) Ngaali Ensemble, with a team of acrobats, to represent Uganda at the festival. There are conflicting accounts of how much of Mother Uganda and Her Children was performed in Libya. The dominant view is that the company did not get to present the full play. What they showed was just excerpts that lasted between 5 and 15 minutes at various points of the festival. A subsequent performance was given at State House for President Museveni, followed by public shows at the National Theatre.

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The Context & Making of Mother Uganda & Her Children  57 With the support of government parastatals and the NRM secretariat, Mother Uganda and Her Children was taken to Kenya in 1989 at a time when there were tensions between Museveni and President Daniel arap Moi of Kenya. The chairman of Ngaali Ensemble viewed their role here as a diplomatic endeavour, through the arts, to ease tensions between the two leaders and foster regional peace. Group members still understand this effort as having been key in thawing relations between the two countries: Actually Museveni should think about giving us a medal. I don’t know why he has ignored Ngaali Ensemble participants. We created a link between Museveni and arap Moi and I am not ashamed to say this. We softened the tensions between the two Heads [of State]. Because the very day we were flying out of Nairobi, I think our plane met with Museveni in space going to Nairobi to visit arap Moi. That should be stressed really. And from Nairobi we came back with successful performance. (Interview, Christopher Mureeba, 16 May 2017) The performances in Kenya were to audiences at Kenyatta and Nairobi Universities and, according to Mureeba, they went exceptionally well: Kenyatta [University] that was a very good performance … we were feel­ ing good because students were yearning to go in. But they broke most of the chairs of the theatre because they wanted to see these Ugandans. When she said place is full they forced themselves in, they sat on top of each other … by now we were proud of Ngaali Ensemble and theatre for development. So we would perform and they would open their mouths like dead fish. [Laughs] And Rose Mbowa loved us now. (Interview, 16 May 2017) Finally the play had a form of afterlife when, for nearly a year in 1991/ 92, Ngaali secured a lucrative commercial contract which meant that every weekend they performed excerpts of the dance and music sections of the play at the Nile Hotel. By this time Mbowa had largely severed her connection with the group which, in its more commercial incarnation, was headed by Mureeba and now included many performers unconnected with the University.

The political problem with the production There was, however, a problem with the original government assignment to make a play to take to London. As a university, Makerere was meant to be politically neutral, and it was always going to be awkward for a university group to appear simultaneously as a government company. As a result, while the company was in the United Kingdom it was given a separate identity and named the Ngaali Ensemble. The decision was extremely controversial

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58  Patrick Mangeni & Jane Plastow and was indeed seen by some troupe members as a betrayal of MDD and the group’s identity. Significantly, ngaali is the Luganda word for the crested crane, and the crested crane is the national bird of Uganda, shown even on the national flag. Such a name made clear to all Ugandans the link between the company and the state, which was to continue until 1989. Throughout this period the NRM not only requested work on particular topics, it mobilized resources and paid the costs of productions and touring. For example, it organized the group’s tour to the United Kingdom in 1987 and paid for them to subsequently attend the Jamahiriya Festival in Libya in 1988. After the group performed Mother Uganda and Her Children at State House, Museveni ordered the NRM secretariat and the Ministry of Culture and Social Development to find a space from which the Ngaali Ensemble could work. As a result the group moved into the government’s Mengo Social Centre. The Commissioner for Culture, Mr Zadock Adolu-Otojoka, was given responsibility for the group, while the NRM secretariat was responsible for organizing international and state appearances. Long-term difficulties could have been anticipated in that neither of these bodies were responsible for core maintenance of the company. The mutation of a group of Makerere Theatre students and staff into a cultural arm of government raised a whole host of issues. For some members there were moral and ethical questions about moving from a position of academic independence to working for the NRM. There were also questions of allegiance. These people were still part of MDD but with which organization should they primarily identify? For some students there was a three-way tug of war. A further complicating fact was that at almost the same time as the Ngaali Ensemble came into being MDD also spawned a group that aspired to be seen as the national troupe for Ugandan indigenous music and dance forms, the Ndere Troupe. Some students performing in Mother Uganda were also members of that group. The tensions inherent in negotiating these multiple identities would eventually tear Ngaali apart. There is ongoing dispute as to whether Ngaali or Ndere was the group formed first, and whether Mother Uganda by Ngaali or Munaku – Ndere’s first production – was created first. The position is complicated by the fact that both groups were patronized by the government, both were popular with audiences, and both sought to be the group commissioned for key national events. It was never entirely clear whether Ngaali was claiming to be the new National Theatre Troupe of Uganda, or indeed whether the government saw them as such. Certainly the fear of such a claim made others jealous and performers uncertain as to their role going forwards. Were they students, teachers, independent artists or state cultural functionaries? Some felt conscripted into identities on which they had neither been consulted nor agreed.3 Even before the group went to London these sources of stress were becoming apparent. Mbowa was having difficulty holding together her roles

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The Context & Making of Mother Uganda & Her Children  59 as head of a university department and international theatre director, and some began to challenge her authority. The dress rehearsal before departure to London nearly didn’t happen. Some performers were simultaneously involved in other projects and when they arrived late because they were working on a rival show Mbowa threatened to call off the production. On returning from London a number of performers had to make a decision. Would they throw their lot in with Ngaali or Ndere? Some key performers such as Stephen Rwangyezi and Emma Turyareeba left to commit to Ndere.4 Ngaali ended up having to recruit young performers at the annual national schools performance festival so that continuing performances of Mother Uganda could go ahead. Moreover, disgruntled staff at MDD, some of whom saw the creation of Ngaali as a form of defection, and who, in the absence of Mbowa, felt the Department was in danger of becoming rudderless, were less willing than before to offer their support, with the Department seeking to reclaim instruments and costume items lent for Mother Uganda. Mbowa certainly struggled with these unexpected outcomes of accepting a government commission. She was upset by the anger and division that consequently arose in the artistic community in and outside the University. It seems that, having created a play about which she was passionate, Mbowa became, for a while at least, somewhat trapped, in that her identity was so linked with the production she had fashioned. It is worth mentioning that, in the middle of all this stress many performers did see themselves as carrying a national responsibility and were honoured to do so. For instance, Mureeba, who later became the chairman of Ngaali Ensemble, saw the role of the troupe as having a responsibility towards fostering the government’s agenda of good neighbourliness. He strongly believed, for instance, that the Kenyan performances, at a time when relationships between Kenya and Uganda were low, helped thaw tensions between Presidents Moi and Museveni, and that the Ensemble and the play were important instruments of soft diplomacy.

Mother Uganda and Her Children Much of the weight of the impact of Mother Uganda and Her Children was carried through the songs and dances from communities ranging from the pastoral Karamojong of the north-eastern scrubland, through to the small ethnic group of the Alur of West Nile District in the far north-west, via major peoples such as the Acholi, the Baganda and the Basoga. Research and drawing on indigenous practitioners meant that while necessarily many performers were not from the group concerned, there was always a local ‘expert’ to teach the words, the steps and the spirit of the performance. In this way the idea of unity in diversity was embodied and celebrated.

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60  Patrick Mangeni & Jane Plastow Moreover Uganda was constructed very much as a family, with constant references by Mother Uganda to, for example, ‘my Bakiga’, or ‘my Banyoro’ children. The problem comes with her son, Tabu Sana, who embodies all the reprehensible attitudes that Mbowa is arguing need national attention and transformation. Tabu Sana is arrogant, argumentative and lazy. He is also a drunkard, he sees men as inherently superior to women, and he is abusive to his wife. All these problems Mbowa sees by implication as afflicting Ugandan society, and particularly its men. She also profiles the discord between different ethnic groups, with their mutual distrust and animosity leading to them at one point in the play apparently killing their mother before, consumed by remorse, they revive her and promise to work together as a family should. Tabu Sana, however, given repeated chances, time and again resorts to fighting, raiding and raping. Despite all his evil, anti-social behaviour, his mother never gives up, and the play ends as all come together promising to work together for a better future. Mother Uganda is not a subtle play, and much of it is highly enjoyable spectacle, but neither does it pull its punches. By creating Tabu Sana as almost unremittingly vile Mbowa acknowledged something of the deep-seatedness of certain Ugandan social problems and how difficult it would be to transform an ethnically divided, patriarchal society, grown used to violence and distrust, to a state of productive co-existence.

Notes 1 In neither case is it confirmed, but some have claimed that Idi Amin was responsible for the death of playwright Byron Kawadwa in 1977, and Milton Obote for that of Robert Serumaga in 1980. Certainly both made plays that satirized and allusively critiqued government abuses of power. 2 When Museveni took power, most of the country returned to peace but hostilities were ongoing, particularly in the north. 3 The tension between the two groups finally boiled over in 1989. Ndere had booked the National Theatre for a show on Independence Day. Ngaali sought to get the booking cancelled, claiming they only had the right to perform as they were the rightful national troupe. The somewhat ridiculous solution, which in effect became an outright competition, was that that the troupes performed one after the other. Since there was considerable overlap in the dances performed the event became a mixture of ridiculous, tiresome and near all-out war. 4 Although Ngaali was short-lived, Ndere has gone from strength to strength as Uganda’s leading, but independent, traditional-dance-based performance group. It is still run by Stephen Rwangyezi in 2017. See http://ndere.com/nderetroupe

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The Context & Making of Mother Uganda & Her Children  61

Works cited Breitinger, E. (ed.) (1999), Uganda: The Cultural Landscape, Bayreuth: Bayreuth African Studies. Cook, David (1999), ‘The Makerere Free Travelling Theatre: An Experimental Model’, in E. Breitinger (ed.) (1999) Uganda: The Cultural Landscape, Bayreuth: Bayreuth African Studies, 37-51. Mulekwa, Charles (2012), Performing the Legacy of War in Uganda, Brown University, unpublished PhD dissertation. Collins, Jane and Gardner, Viv (1999), ‘Mother Uganda’ obituary for Rose Mbowa, The Guardian, 15 March, www.theguardian.com/news/1999/mar/15/guardian obituaries1 (accessed 24 June 2017).

Telephone interviews Augustine Bazaale, 20 June, 2017 Jackson Kamuntu, 12 May, 2017 Christopher Mureeba, 16 May, 2017

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Majangwa A Promise of Rain

ROBERT SERUMAGA

CAST Majangwa a worn-out drummer-entertainer Nakirijja his wife, a former dancer A crowd of villagers Kintu, the leader Nambi, his wife Kayikuuzi, a strong man Death A man, a murderer A girl, a cinema-goer A boy, her companion

Act One The stage is a roadside on the way to Mityana, thirty-nine miles from Kampala. The road runs across the stage so that the audience eavesdrops on the proceedings from a cliff (or is it a ditch?) on the other side of the road, opposite the side where the action takes place. It is nearly dark. The sun is a few minutes gone now, but the moon and stars have not yet lit up the butt end of twilight, a kind of loose and largely unformed night. There are a few moments of calm and solitude. Then enters Majangwa in his traditionally recognisable attire complete with his mugalabi drum. He has obviously been walking for some distance. Equally obviously, he does not want to stop. He appears to have a pressing destination somewhere. Something, however, behind him puts a break on his speed. But he presses on all the way across the stage. He stops, turns back and looks at the distance he has covered. There is a pause. He walks back a few paces. Stops. Then with a patience that has almost run out, he calls:

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Majangwa: A Promise of Rains  63 Majangwa Nakirijja! Nakirijja! Nakiriijja (No reply.) She must be miles behind me. (Pause. In quiet desperation) Nakirijja. (Pause.) This road is too lenient. Too free with itself. It should have rejected her the minute it set eyes upon her, tripped her and cast her into the path of some moving object. (Pause.) What a waste. Such a road – firm of muscle, flat-bellied, long, outstretched, waiting for the ravishing approach of the traveller’s feet. And what does it get? Some old limping goat that can’t keep up the pace. (Pause.) Nakirijja Ono!! (No reply. Majangwa decides to stop – and wait. He takes the drum from his shoulder, contemplates it and then strikes a few, beats with the palm of his hand. It gives a high clear note.) Majangwa Still good. (He runs his hand up and down its trunk, beats it again.) Perfect. It was a good lizard, this. (Touches the skin fondly.) When the skin is stretched, it stays taut, never loses its tone. You can know a good lizard by its skin. (Nakirijja appears. Tired and her feet sore, her will to walk is giving way.) Nakirijja I must stop. I can’t go on. Majangwa That is what the road never expects but gets all the same. Nakirijja I have to stop. (Sits and touches her feet – pain.) My toes. I must rest. Majangwa Get up and walk, you lazy lizard. We’ve only crossed two rivers! Nakirijja It is a long distance between two rivers. Majangwa Two rivers! Two rivers!! Is that too long a distance for you? Two rivers: that is only the space between two births; two bursts of the womb and the eternal flow of the waters. Nakirijja There you go again. I am only talking about my toes, not the mysteries of the womb. Majangwa (Losing himself into himself.) What a woman that was! What a woman. She walked and walked. At the end of the journey she would reach Nkumba, the home of Mukasa and his wife Nagaddya. A touch of bosoms, an embrace and a feast of drums and harps and laughter. But before she arrived, the pains took her, and she sat upon the raised ground, up above. Those who knew placed the birthstone upon her and she brought forth twins – two rivers. First Mayanja Kato, a perfect river. And when the first flow had stopped, she had to walk for days, another birth pending between her thighs, till she reached the other raised ground and gave birth to a second river, Mayanja Wasswa. The twin rivers, crossing counties and growing along the valleys, below the raised ground. The distance between two rivers, eh? Even a woman in childbirth can manage that. You are a toad, you know! Nakirijja You can say what you like; play your flute, I am a goat. Majangwa No, a toad. Nakirijja A goat. Majangwa Toad. (Moves towards her with menace.) A toad. Rivers are long and deep and you can ply your canoe up and down against papyrus plants and pick a water-lily or two. Only toads get frightened.

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64  Robert Serumaga Nakirijja (Busy contemplating her feet, does not listen.) Majangwa Do you know what is wrong with toads? Do you? They must lose their tails before they become frogs. Hey, toad. (Nakirijja has taken off one of her shoes. She shakes it and a small stone falls out of it. She looks at it intently for a while. Silence.) Majangwa What’s the matter? Nakirijja A small stone! Majangwa (Drawing near.) What? Nakirijja It is only a small stone! Inside my shoe, in the small of my foot, it felt like the thrust of a mountain’s head. (She picks up the speck of dust.) Look at it! Just a tiny speck of dust. But if you don’t rout it out of your shoe, it can put you through hell. Majangwa If you make your hunting horn out of a calabash, who are you to blame if it breaks before the meeting ground? You shouldn’t have got stones into your shoes in the first place. Shoes! (Laughs.) Those are not shoes you are wearing. They are gaping holes, with bits of skin in between. (Laughs.) You know what your shoes look like? Fish! They look like fish. (He opens his mouth in mimicry.) With your big toe sticking out like a a sore tongue. (He adds a peeping tongue to his face and sticks his face right in front of Nakirijja. Nakirijja looks at him and at her own toe.) Nakirijja It gave me a blister as big as your nose. (She laughs.) Majangwa Is that so now? Not so big then, is it? Nakirijja Oh, don’t know about that. I’d say if your nose were any bigger, your whole face would be covered in it. Majangwa (Huffs. Pause. He puts his drum on his shoulder and readies to go. Nakirijja does not move. Majangwa looks at her.) Now are you going to walk or am I going to have to leave you behind? Nakirijja (She does not reply immediately.) We will never get anywhere travelling like this – without aim or purpose. Majangwa (Snapping back.) You speak for yourself, woman. I have a purpose, a destination: there, beyond the reaches of small minds. Nakirijja If I don’t share the purpose, why should I share the journey? Majangwa You are getting old, you know. That’s what is bothering you Nakirijja (With derisive laughter.) Who? Me? (Laughs.) Look at you, puffed up frog! If you don’t stop your act, you will burst one of these days. Majangwa You hope. Nakirijja I know. Majangwa You forget, woman, I am Majangwa. Yes, that’s me. No more, no less. Splintered wood, chip off the old block. I burn, Like fire I burn, Dry reeds and flax, I burn.

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Majangwa: A Promise of Rains  65 Feel my grasp. (He grabs her.) Feel that? Think these are fingers? No, woman, they are tendons of buffalo skin. That’s what I carry at the end of my hands. And when I touch the drum, it screams. (He plays the drum, reciting.) No, woman; not fingers, tendons. Buffalo skin. Grab my hand. Eh? Come on! (But Nakirijja does not respond to the outstretched hand. Majangwa’s excitement subsides. Hand falls slowly. Then, quietly.) Yes, we’ll get somewhere yet. Fourteen days away from Kampala. It is good going. Yes, that’s it. We must get away. Eh? What do you say? Kampala is too crowded, too frustrating, constipated. Got old bank notes stuck up its behind and don’t you think I don’t know about that. Nakirijja Don’t forget the frog. Majangwa (Startled out of his introspection.) What? Nakirijja The old frog. One day he puffed himself up beyond his size, and he burst. You should know that. I am tired of this. When the flame tree hangs out to dry, it is past the season of thunder. You should be able to smell the drizzle in the red earth. (Pause. Tender side of Majangwa begins to come out. He attempts to approach her.) Majangwa What has happened to you, woman? There is bitterness in your mouth. I haven’t heard you speak to me like that for some time. Nakirijja (Moving nervously away from him.) No, I can’t take any more of this. Majangwa What’s that? Nakirijja I can’t. I suppose I was under your spell, but now the calabash is broken. Majangwa You can’t say things like that, you know. Nakirijja Can’t I? Look at us! Look at our lives. What have we got? Majangwa We’ve got ourselves. We’ve got time and there are unexplored areas outside the city. Forests whose sap has yet to be tapped. Nakirijja Speaking for myself, I am way past anything you may have in mind. Majangwa You know much less about yourself than you think. Look at me, uh, look at me. Nakirijja I can see you: less than even a shadow of yourself. Majangwa Is that what you are worried about? I am still firm. Nakirijja You misunderstand me. What I feel is not a wanting; it is disgust. Majangwa What? Nakirijja Majangwa and his wife Nakirijja making fools of themselves from one end of the city to the other. Majangwa Now, watch what you are saying. Nakirijja And being paid for it. Majangwa You loved it while it lasted. Nakirijja I was mad, Majangwa. How did I ever let you make such a

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66  Robert Serumaga public exhibition of us? At Nakulabye Market! Do you remember? People coming back from work; children going home from school; and us standing by the side of the market. “Ten cents, Majangwa, ten cents,” they’d call out and you’d snigger. “Twenty cents, Majangwa, twenty cents, Majangwa, twenty cents,” and your greed would be aroused. (Mimicking him.) “Twenty cents, Nakirijja, uh, twenty cents.” Then you would collect the coins. One, two, three. And your big lips would purse. How my flesh quivers when I remember it. You would kiss me in public for the price of ten cents. Majangwa You didn’t mind it then, did you? Nakirijja (Relentless.) Katwe Market, lunch-time. A few strokes of the drum and that depraved crowd forming about us like so many flies around a festering wound, clutching their cocks, mouths open like interlocked dogs, and those eyes, those eyes as you prepared to take me. “Five shillings, Majangwa, five shillings!” I curl up inside me every time I remember that hand stretching out to collect the prize, the same hand that in a minute would come round me for a paid embrace. “Five shillings, Majangwa, five shillings.” Five lousy shillings in your pocket and your trousers would go down. Like a flame tree sprouting flowers you’d stand before me, and I in my silly spell would prepare to receive you. Then down on the pavement, right down on the concrete, before those gaping eyes, to give pleasure to the crowd. Majangwa And to you. Nakirijja Who, me? Majangwa Yes, you. I could feel the muscles of your heart pumping blood all over your body. (Gestures pump as he says this.) Nakirijja I was not sick. Majangwa Sometimes I thought you carried your heart between your legs. Nakirijja Not like you. Majangwa What? Nakirijja I was not sick. Not like you and those crowds paying, braying and hoping for an orgasm. Majangwa Why didn’t you leave me? Nakirijja Yes, you were sick. Can you look back at our life without feeling so much disgust that you’d wish …? Majangwa I wouldn’t wish anything. Nakirijja Where are the crowds now and their five-shillings? Majangwa Audiences are fickle, you know that. Nakirijja Where are they? Majangwa Out there. Nakirijja Oh, no. We are alone. (Pause.) Here, behind us the forest. In front of us, the road. No destiny, and a long way from both the beginning and the end. Majangwa The winds still blow. We are not past a fresh start. Nakirijja (Breaks out into load derisive but nervous laughter.) With you? (Laughs.)

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Majangwa: A Promise of Rains  67 Look at you, coarse skin, flabby flesh, no breath, you couldn’t hump an aging pigmy for all I know. Majangwa If you want it, woman, ask for it. But don’t hide behind insults to provoke me. (She laughs. He approaches her threatening to beat her, grunting with emotion.) Nakirijja Don’t you touch me. Don’t you dare. (He still approaches her. There is a tense moment of silence, which her laughter breaks like a sword.) Nakirijja The police! Majangwa (Looking behind him scared.) What? Nakirijja The police! Majangwa Where? Nakirijja Do you remember the police? Majangwa You scared me. Nakirijja Do you? Majangwa Come to think of it, I’m not sure they didn’t watch without paying. Nakirijja No, that time they surprised us. Majangwa Your mind is a sewer; it retains only the unpleasant details. Nakirijja They arrived suddenly in their screaming car with the red light on top. I could see them; I had my back on the pavement. And you and the crowd were breathing hard. Like cows you were breathing. I felt it. It would be any time now, any time. Even I at first did not notice the ripple of disturbance from the transfixed crowd. Only your motions. Any time now. Five shillings, five more strokes. (As she moves, her voice in crescendo.) One shilling, two shillings, three shillings, and then the police pounced; there were loud screams and whistles and the smell of the disappointed crowds. You jumped and began to run with your trousers still round your ankles, five shillings in your pocket, and the crowd after your blood. And me, still on the pavement, stream of life stopped, shadows swaying, trying to sit up. (Pause.) Can you look back at that life? Now that your powers are gone and your friends have abandoned you, can you look back at your life? Majangwa I can look back at my life all right. Nakirijja I doubt it. Majangwa I can. What I can’t look back at without puking my guts out is the society which paid to watch us. Nakirijja Oh, come off it. Majangwa Oh, come off it what? Uh? What pleasure did they get out of seeing and not doing? Little men with ten-cent coins in their palms and their hands in their pockets watching the sun and hoping for rain Nakirijja (Pensively.) Yes, we were the pus of a very diseased society. Majangwa On the contrary, we were the wound; the opening through which society got rid of its excess pus. The cure for a diseased people which has to hide behind closed doors, drawn curtains and five blankets just to sleep with their wives. No wonder they produced children like

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68  Robert Serumaga you. You are the product of a closed-door, drawn-curtain, five-blanket exercise. I am surprised you didn’t become a thief. Nakirijja I don’t want to talk about them. Majangwa Who, thieves? (Pause.) Nakirijja No, children. (Silence. They look away from each other. Sighs. Slowly.) Majangwa There’ll be thunder tonight. Nakirijja Why? Majangwa The sky is red in the west. Nakirijja That’s not the reason. That’s the sign. I asked for the reason. Majangwa Reason? Who can divine the ways of thunder or plot its path? Only thunder knows. I can only speak of its coming; when the sky is red in the west. (Silence.) Nakirijja What about fish? Majangwa Fish? Do we have some fish? Nakirijja No. Majangwa Oh. (Pause.) Nakirijja What about fish then? Majangwa Fish? Nakirijja Yes, fish. When fishermen pull their nets out of the lake at dawn, they’ll be full of fish. The red sky in the west. (Pause.) Majangwa There are other truths and forebodings. You have to trust the winds not to blow ill. Nakirijja (Silent, then yawns. She begins to look intently at her second shoe. Meanwhile Majangwa contemplates his drum. She takes off her second shoe and peers into it. Majangwa beats a brief rhythm on the drum.) Majangwa What a lizard!! (Beats it again.) Perfect! You know, some lizards are not good. They make no sound; just the silence of dead frogs. (Nakirijja shakes her shoe vigorously and looks into it again. Nothing has come out.) Majangwa Yes, a good drum. Nakirijja Now what do you make of that? Majangwa What? Nakirijja No stones. Majangwa What? Nakirijja No stones. Majangwa So what? Nakirijja So what, he says! You should have had your foot in it a minute ago. It felt like a quarry. Majangwa It’s your feet. Nakirijja What? Majangwa Your feet. They are no better than porcupines. You are walking on a couple of porcupines. Nakirijja Some women have shoes. I guess it’s because they have husbands. Majangwa Do you want to start your quarrels again? Nakirijja If you don’t tell the truth to the hunchback in your bed, you have to do without your share of the blanket.

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Majangwa: A Promise of Rains  69 Majangwa Your tongue is a snake; you shouldn’t open your mouth too often. Nakirijja Talking as one snake to another … . Majangwa (Approaching her with menace.) … Nakirijja Don’t touch me. (He approaches.) Touch me and you’ll see what happens to you. (He still threatens her, then he stops.) Majangwa You burn your tail and then complain that it hurts to sit down. Who refused to work? You! Who wants shoes? You! Nakirijja I never took it as work. Majangwa Shoes and meat and fish and plantains … What did you say? Nakirijja It wasn’t work to me. You were blind to what my heart offered you. Majangwa I don’t understand you. Nakirijja Five shillings. Five shillings. Do you think that ever made anything in me rise up to you? (Pause.) And the words I said to you, my breath, the deep breath before silence, my arms round you and my back on the hard pavement. Do you think they were all for the crowd and their five shillings? Work! Majangwa I was working. Nakirijja It was work to you. To me, the only hope of your embrace. Didn’t it ever occur to you? What happened whenever we got home after Katwe, Bwayise, Nakulabye, all in a day’s work; what happened? The silence of frogskins, a drum without a message, my touch would only give birth to a stifled whisper. Majangwa (Nearly overcome.) There are still fresh winds in the air. Nakirijja Maybe, but my womb doesn’t stir any more. Majangwa You frighten me, woman. We are lonely now, so lonely. Should we ruffle feathers and set upon each other’s crests? (Pause.) No, it’s time to watch broken passion mend, grow, and take to the air; fly and soar and offer sacrifice to the rains. (Silence, Nakirijja sighs.) Nakirijja Do you think we will ever have a child? (Silence.) Majangwa (Very sadly.) I don’t know. Nakirijja My womb has been silent for too long. Majangwa It may not be your fault. Nakirijja (Coming close to him for the first time.) I wanted a child so much. Majangwa Yes. Nakirijja Do you think we still … . Majangwa Yes. Nakirijja When? Majangwa The dry season must pass. Nakirijja But when? Majangwa Oh, I don’t know, woman. I have drunk from the earthen bowl many times, taken to the root and examined the cock’s entrails, but nothing seems to add any edge to my approach. What else can I do but wait?

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70  Robert Serumaga Nakirijja Shadows of ourselves, that’s what we are. A mockery of the past. (Silence. Picking up.) Well, I’m rested; let’s move on. Majangwa What? Nakirijja Let’s go. I’m rested enough. Majangwa Go? Nakirijja Yes, go. Majangwa (A realisation.) Go. Nakirijja To your destination “beyond the reaches of small minds.” (Pause.) Majangwa We have arrived. Nakirijja I beg your pardon? Majangwa We have arrived: Nakirijja Where? Majangwa Here. (Pause.) Nakirijja You don’t mean it. Majangwa Of course I do. Like a flash it came to me. Destinations can be changed. The purpose … it is the purpose that must be retained. Nakirijja You leave me defenceless. The emptiness of a roadside. Darkness and the forests about us. A destination beyond the reaches of small minds. Majangwa The road has its own victims. Stretched out beneath the night, it is an old man with big eyes, but it is only the black spot which sees what is there to be seen. Look about us; we stand in the midst of the clearing. Nakirijja If I must pass the night here, monkeys in my ears and forest fears in my belly, don’t hide behind mysteries. Majangwa Earthen bowl, seasoned root, and cock’s entrails; there was an easier route. But I was too devoted to mysteries to let my passion be awakened by a journey along humbler paths. Nakirijja I don’t understand. Majangwa Five shillings in our pocket and a promise of rains. That’s what we gave them. A promise of rains. I should have thought of that. The minute we stopped here I should have thought of it. This is a good clearing. The road is long and fast and lonely, and for those who search for a place to stop this could be a destination. Nakirijja What about our destination. Majangwa We can share. Nakirijja Share what? Majangwa Share our moments with those that live on borrowed passion. Don’t you remember the crowds at Katwe, Nakulabye and Bwayise? Why, even moments ago you heard echoes of their heavy breathing as they waited and waited, their passion rising with ours, reaching out beyond their bodies to share our moment: a feast of orgasms. (A scene is played illustrating Majangwa’s trade, but in an impressionistic way.) Did you think we were cheap entertainers? No, woman. I see it all now. We were the gods’ go-betweens, putting bones back into broken limbs. Yes, five shillings and they watched us, and waited and hoped that a whiff of

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Majangwa: A Promise of Rains  71 passion would rub off on them and arouse them. The chance of a cure, woman, that’s what we were to them. Nakirijja So? Majangwa So, I have a plan. Nakirijja I’ve heard that from you far too many times. When you first touched my bosom you had a plan. Then we took to the roads – another plan. You lost your strength and your crowds. We are now on a stretch of road coming from nowhere and going nowhere, our future behind us and death too slow with his hands, and you have a plan. A plan. What plan? Majangwa. A master plan: first we shall reverse positions, change roles and reach out to retrieve lost causes. Nakirijja If you think I’m going to turn around for you… Majangwa You misunderstand me girl … Nakirijja Then don’t twist your tongue… Majangwa If we wait long enough, they’ll come. Nakirijja Who will come? Majangwa People. It is a good clearing, this. Nakirijja Don’t make me laugh. You ran out of followers years ago or don’t you know it? There was a time when you stood before me, a flame tree in bloom. Now you are a cockerel. When you rise before me, you droop and everyone knows that. That’s why you don’t see them any more. Majangwa You are just being unkind. Maybe we cured them all. And they went on their way. Nakirijja (Sniggers.) Majangwa What are you sniggering at? Nakirijja Even then, others would have come. Don’t forget that for every cure there is another illness. Majangwa You know what crowds are – cowards and cheats. They never lost their appetite for sin, but they must have been frightened away by the priests and the police and shifted their allegiances. Nakirijja Oh? Where are they now? Majangwa (Finding a solution.) Think hard, woman. Don’t you see it all? The fault was not with us. It was with them. Do you know where that crowd of five shillings and gaping eyes went? Do you? Well, I’ll tell you. They went to the cinemas. That’s where they all are. Hiding in cinema houses. (Pleased with himself.) What they do now is take their wives and boyfriends and girlfriends and all sorts of friends to the cinema, pay at the door and sit in the dark, watching, a big wall, bodies writhing and twisting and tasting the salt of each other’s flesh. It’s a new form of perversion. Then after that, those married ones with big cars and mistresses get into their machines and drive to a clearing, like this one here, and park and get into the – back seat … Nakirijja You are dreaming again.

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72  Robert Serumaga Majangwa No man, er, woman. Nakirijja Have they no beds? Majangwa But there is a wife already in the bed. Nakirijja What about the girl? Majangwa She’s married, too. Nakirijja No Majangwa Yes. Nakirijja No. Majangwa All right. She is sharing a room with her niece and a little sister who goes to the Aga Khan School. See? So they park, the passion from the cinema still running in their veins. So. Tonight when they arrive … Nakirijja What? Majangwa When they arrive … Nakirijja Where? Majangwa Here. Nakirijja Here? Majangwa Yes, here. It is a good clearing. Nakirijja (She huffs.) Majangwa Don’t huff, woman. They’ll come, if we wait long enough. They’ll come. No reason why they shouldn’t choose this place just as soon as any other… Nakirijja I think we better get on our way. Majangwa So. After they’ve stopped and parked and got into the back seat, we shall reverse roles. Nakirijja What, murder them? Majangwa You got it all wrong. Tonight, they’ll be the performers and we the owners of the five shillings. (Belly laugh.) Nakirijja We don’t have five shillings. Majangwa It doesn’t matter. Nakirijja What? Majangwa When they’ve got into the back seat, we shall sneak up from behind, slowly, up to the car, and watch, and watch, five shillings in our palms and our hands in our pockets, breathing hard, hard, a prayer for rain and when the passion has taken me and blood gushes again in my shrunken veins, you’ll come to me, to me, and I’ll grab you and take you and you’ll sing, yes, sing again, my name and the names of a thousand villages. Up the shrine. On the crest of rain clouds, gathering, turning rivulets into streams, streams, streams … Nakirijja, Nakirijja Seldtulege! Mayanja Mukasa (He is hysterical by now and making noises and contorting his body in a kind of orgasm till he subsides. Then he notices his wife who has been looking at him dumbfounded. He starts.) Majangwa Uh? What are you looking at? Nakirijja (Sighs.) Majangwa (Very quietly.) They’ll come. Nakirijja (She tries to busy herself with trinkets.)

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Majangwa: A Promise of Rains  73 Majangwa It’s a good road. It can’t stay empty for too long. I’ve been on it before. Long before I met you, I was on it. Travelling. A young man and his drum playing weddings across the country, at chiefs’ parties. A good drum, and fingers to go with it. (Gets his drum.) Mellowed over the years. Nakirijja Years of nothing. Majangwa It wasn’t always like this. You forget. I wasn’t always like this. Nakirijja Nothing. With a future we can’t see and a past we would sooner forget. Majangwa Forget? How can I forget the road? Majangwa, yes, that’s me. (Pause.) I remember them, admirers; lovers of the drum and the lyre and the fiddle. There was honour at the chief’s court. We gathered to make songs and meanings and connect our souls to the earth. You could hear the dead whisper above the sound of drums and in the voice of the man with the fiddle. Sekinoomu, Temutewo Mukasa, Namale. Honour at the chief’s court. And the weddings – beneath the song, sounds of ecstasy from within. Beyond the song, another song. Those were the times when a man knew if he planted a seed in the ground, it would grow. There at the wedding as I played. Majangwa the great! (Drum.) Later I meant to retreat to my room. Hot water for my limbs, chicken in banana leaves, and a dancer or two dancers carrying echoes of drums into the night, and beyond the coming of the sun. (Pause.) I don’t know why you waited till my drum was silent, as I tried to clear a moment of silence for the lyre and the fiddle; for a few words before the final statement. But you … Nakirijja Grow into what? Majangwa Another seed maybe. Nakirijja Or a snake. Majangwa A plant, and then seeds. Yes, you were, waited out there in the crowd. (Drums begin in the distance.) Nakirijja A past to be forgotten. Majangwa No. Nakirijja Yes. Majangwa But we played. Nakirijja But we don’t play any more. Majangwa But we played, and played. Nakirijja Please don’t. Majangwa We rose and soared and reached out. (To her.) We reached out to a peak, Nakirijja. Our sounds bathed in the sweat of our flesh, as you waited and the crowd sang and called out, till a voice said: “Let it rest, Majangwa, let it rest. Hold back the drum and let the lyre and the fiddle tell us why dogs don’t grow horns.” I struggled and tried to hold back the flow of blood and rhythm, heart pounding, fingers on drumskin; I held back, not easily, but I held back. (Drums stop. Only the lyre and the fiddle play. Spot on Nakirijja. Softly.)

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74  Robert Serumaga Then I saw you, out there in the crowd, in the middle space. You stood there, and I felt the tension in your body arrested, the drum still in my hands. The lyre spoke with the fiddle. Two voices. Something sweet and strong came off you. A promise of rains? I asked, but only to myself. Still the tension would not ease; it grew by the moment till I heard string music grow with it, and before I knew it, my silence was broken, my hands were back on the drum; the sound coming out of me and back to me as if from some other source. You were dancing, like an echo of my soul, you were dancing. Hips and thighs in abandon, you danced head to the side, steadily. And the song: “Let me follow the fluteplayerman, let me follow the fluteplayerman, back to the big forest where I was born.” Then the emotions of the crowd seemed to recede till all I felt was you and me. Dancing only to me, making me understand the many unspoken words. Later, when the last drumbeat had been lost to the winds, you came to me, in my room. It was a night to remember. (Lyre and fiddle rest.) Nakirijja Nights run into nights and the brightness of the beginning is replaced by a darkness which now fills my life. Majangwa Don’t let us remember only the wounds and count nothing but our scars. There were other things too. Nakirijja Much good did they do to us Majangwa, it’s not what you were or what you’ve been, but what you end up as that matters. Majangwa You are mistaken. There is more to life than the last moment. Many moments precede the end; it cannot all be in vain. (Pause.) Nakirijja Let’s go. Majangwa Where? Nakirijja Beyond here. Majangwa I told you; we have arrived – for the moment. (Nakirijja sighs in perplexity.) Majangwa We must wait for the road. When it is ready, it will deliver them. (He goes to her but she rejects him. A car passes. Change of tone.) An act of murder. That’s what this road is. An act of murder. Nakirijja I shouldn’t envy people their cars, they work for them. Majangwa I wasn’t talking about cars. Nakirijja What act of murder is it then? Majangwa The road itself; it is what is left of the murder. Nakirijja I’m glad nobody is listening to this. Majangwa You don’t know what I’m talking about. Nakirijja (Sarcastically.) Now, isn’t that surprising! Majangwa It is the Italians. Nakirijja I beg your pardon? Majangwa The Italians with their yellow machines. (She looks at him quizzically.) We can blame it on them.

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Majangwa: A Promise of Rains  75 Nakirijja I knew it wasn’t too far away. Majangwa What? Nakirijja Madness. Majangwa Is that so now? Nakirijja Please don’t do it here. We are too far away from anywhere and I am only a woman. Majangwa And not half as great a woman… Nakirijja All right; all right. Majangwa I wonder if she ever forgave him. Nakirijja Who? Majangwa Stirling Astaldi, and his yellow machines. (She gestures confusion.) Majangwa You don’t understand. Haven’t you seen the road we’ve been travelling on? Two rivers. It goes across the necks of two rivers. I told you so. They are children: Mayanja Kato and Mayanja Wasswa. Born of a woman as she sat on the raised ground up above. (Nakirijja has been undressing, trying to get ready for bed. She takes off a piece of torn underwear, contemplates it and brings it to Majangwa.) Nakirijja Part of a life-time’s possessions. Majangwa (Continuing undistracted.) Then the Italians came with their big yellow machines. Majangwa (She tears a strip off her underwear.) And it tears so easily. Majangwa They wanted to build a road. Nakirijja Why? (Looking at her clothes.) Majangwa Why does anyone want to build a road? Nakirijja I wasn’t talking about the road. Majangwa That’s what they wanted to build. (Nakirijja busies herself.) So what they did was they drove their machines into the bodies of the rivers, crushing papyrus plants and leaving water-lilies desolate in the clearing. They moved mountains of stones and dust and stuffed them into the rivers, killing eels and mackerel. After a while they thought the rivers were dead, so they raised a headstone of asphalt that stretches all the way from Kampala, across the necks of other rivers, right up to a small house in the middle of the road where a man tells you one country ends and another one starts. Nakirijja (Over her shoulder.) Do countries end? Majangwa The man says so. But roads continue. (Pause.) Murder: that’s what the road is. But I doubt if the rivers are really dead. From time to time, the asphalt peels where the body has moved deeper; and people from the Ministry of Works come and dig it up and renew the headstone. Nakirijja That’s a nice story. Majangwa But I forgot to tell you another thing: the woman was made pregnant by her brother. Nakirijja What woman? Majangwa The one who gave birth to the twin rivers. Nakirijja (Neutrally.) I see.

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76  Robert Serumaga Majangwa I don’t have to keep talking, you know. Not if I bore you. I can sit here and wait in silence until they arrive. Nakirijja Arrive? Who? Majangwa The people in the big Mercedes Benz. Tonight’s performers, don’t you know? Nakirijja Oh, come off it. Majangwa Only I think talking is good; it helps to pass the time. (Silence.) I think there are lots of monkeys in this forest, don’t you? I should hope so anyway. Otherwise it would be such a waste. (Pause.) I hope there are squirrels, too, with sharp teeth; mice and moles and centipedes, you know what I mean? (Pause.) In the daytime you can see flowers. Nakirijja Daytime, night-time, same flute, same song. Majangwa It wasn’t always like that. Nakirijja You’ve said that at least a hundred times already. Majangwa No harm in repeating the truth. Nakirijja Does it make it grow? (Pause.) I knew it would happen. When I think back, I see that I knew. And I told you: don’t give in to the crowds. Don’t pander to their whims. Stick to the drum I said, and I to the dance. But no. You had to start. Plays you called them, funny words and actions. In between the songs, you talked and played with me. It was all right in the beginning, but the crowds taunted us and asked for one more inch. Then your embraces became kisses, in public, till even these could not satisfy the devil in the audiences. Your speech was gone, together with the drum and song. After that it was only a matter of time before I had my back to the pavement. Majangwa It wasn’t as simple as that, was it? You simplify things. Nakirijja What’s the difference? Majangwa Times were hard. What about that, eh? Don’t you remember I was proud, and honest and talented, and I carried my drum? Nakirijja Only as a symbol. That’s all. Only a symbol. Majangwa It’s a cruel world. Nakirijja I told you so. Majangwa A cruel, mean, envious, malicious world. Nakirijja I told you so. Majangwa Oh, stop saying I told you so. Nakirijja (Feeling rising elation as she pins him down.) Old man Hippo. Majangwa What? Nakirijja Old man Hippo with a bat’s ears. You sailed the lake in a mud canoe. So, the crocodiles spoke to you. Majangwa Say what you like. I know we would have succeeded. Nakirijja The crocodiles spoke to you, eh. Majangwa Five shillings, five shillings .. . Majangwa It was a good plan: a song, a dance, and then some play with words and faked actions. Nakirijja Never fake! It was never fake!

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Majangwa: A Promise of Rains  77 Majangwa In the beginning. You don’t understand. We would have succeeded. Nakirijja Then why didn’t we? Majangwa The house. They burnt our house. How can you forget? The flames, the smoke, the ashes. They burnt our house and all our belongings. (Heavily, after a pause.) They burnt our drum too. (Silence.) Why did they burn our drum? (Silence.) Well, after that we had no strength against the audi­ence. We had to beg. Do as asked. What else? Five shillings is a lot of money when all you ever possessed is a heap of ashes and no drum. Only our ingenuity saved us from becoming eternal beggars. How can you forget? Nakirijja I haven’t forgotten. (Sadly.) Perhaps I would rather not remember. (Pause. Cheerfully.) Well, we got a new drum. Majangwa It was too late, we had to continue. We were marked. (Pause. Silence.) It is so quiet here. You’d think something in this forest would stir. Or that the road would hasten another arrival. Nakirijja Don’t be too anxious. (Pause.) Who burnt our house? Majangwa How should I know? Somebody who wished destruction. (Silence. A car passes. They wait till its sound dies in the distance. Silence.) Majangwa And when he reached the village of Tanda he came face to face with an anthill. Nakirijja Who? Majangwa Stirling Astaldi… (They laugh.) In the middle of the projected road stood an anthill. There it was, a termite mountain painfully raised out of the red earth, nurturing in its maze of cavities white ants, big driver ants, small driver ants and the queen ant – sedate, proliferous, fat; a world concealed beneath a piece of rising ground. But the road had to go on. Another act of murder. So they started the big yellow machine. (He starts it.) Big white man and his yellow machine set against an anthill. (Tractor noise made by Majangwa) And the people gathered to witness the adventure of metal against the earth. (He makes tractor noise and assumes the role of Stirling Astaldi.) “Get out of my way you people! Get out! Bloody Africans !” Then a big iron axe rose and fell upon the palace of the queen and the people shouted. Majangwa and Nakirijja Heh!!! Majangwa And in the cloud of dust as the machine wreaked destruction upon the anthill, white ants like petals riding the wind, flew away, away, away from the earth, away from the red cloud, away from the destruction and into the hands of the waiting people who caught them and ate them alive. Nakirijja Carry on Stirling Astaldi! Majangwa Oye! Nakirijja Carry on Mowlem!! Majangwa Oye! Nakirijja Carry on Solel Boneh!! (Silence.)

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78  Robert Serumaga Nakirijja What happened? Majangwa I can’t go on. Nakirijja What? Majangwa I can’t go on! Nakirijja Oh, come on now. It was a good game. We were doing well. We were getting warm. Majangwa Yes. Nakirijja (Very loudly.) Majangwa! Majangwa It got spoiled. (Pause.) But I didn’t mean to do it. Nakirijja What? Majangwa It is not my fault. It was the wheels of the tractor which did it. Nakirijja Which did what? Majangwa (Pointing at the road.) We killed the queen ant. Nakirijja (Shocked.) No! Majangwa We did. We crushed her beneath the heavy wheels. Nakirijja Oh, no! Majangwa Oh, yes. Nakirijja What shall we do then? Majangwa I don’t know. Build a road, I suppose. If you kill an anthill, you must build a road. Nakirijja Build a road? Majangwa Yes. Nakirijja And where will the road go? Majangwa I don’t know. (Pause.) Where do roads go? Nakirijja I don’t know. Majangwa They come off other roads, run their distance and join yet other roads. Nakirijja I see. (Pause.) But this will be our road. Majangwa (With enthusiasm.) Yes! Nakirijja Let’s name it. (Brightens up.) Let’s name it. Majangwa All right. Nakirijja Let me see: Majangwa and Nakirijja Avenue. (Majangwa laughs almost hysterically.) Majangwa Avenues are in town, woman. This is a road in the middle of nowhere. Nakirijja Still, it is our road. Majangwa Yes. Nakirijja I am beginning to get cold. Majangwa We should be ready soon. Nakirijja Yes. (He goes to her tenderly.) Majangwa We should be ready soon. (They lie down.) But shall we hear them when they come? Nakirijja Oh, come off it. Majangwa Oh, come off it what? They will come.

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Majangwa: A Promise of Rains  79 Nakirijja Of course they will come. Majangwa (Getting more and more quiet.) Yes, they will come. This is a good clearing and the road is lenient. We will lie and wait. (Silence.) (Slow fade. Blackout. Interval.)

Act Two The lights are very dim. Both Majangwa and Nakirijja are asleep as we left them before the interval. There are tropical night sounds in the air. Nothing stirs. An owl is heard in the distance: one, two, three times. Majangwa sits up, and looks at Nakirijja, and then around himself. Then he begins to speak in that half-soliloquy in which people talk to those who are half-asleep: Majangwa You’d think that having come all this way, something would happen. (Pause.) Wouldn’t you? (Pause.) I would. (Pause) Something to remind you that in spite of everything, life goes on. Life. Life. That’s a word to make you think. Life. But we don’t say it well enough or think about it; I mean, as a whole. There are too many moments and our noses are fixed to the grindstone. (Pause.) It is enough to put you off, isn’t it? (Pause.) An empty road, a space below a cliff, a man and a woman and nothing happens. Enough to disturb you at any rate. (Pause.) It’s different in the city though. Now there is a place to make you think. Have you ever seen a man come out of a bank, pockets full of money and being suddenly startled by the outstretched hand of a crippled beggar? Have you ever? That look on the face of the bank man as he tries to ignore the outstretched hand, that’s what life is about. (More insistently.) Do you know that? Nakirijja (Wearily, half-asleep.) Well, if you are begging, you ought to stretch out both hands, that’s what you ought to do. Majangwa Sometimes that is the only hand the beggar has. (Silence.) It’s murder, that’s what it is. (Pause.) The forest knows better; it cannot pass judgement upon the monkey. Nakirijja It’s the other way round. Majangwa What? Nakirijja The monkey can’t pass judgement upon the forest. Majangwa That’s where you get it all wrong, isn’t it? That’s where you get all mixed up. Nakirijja You are the one that’s got it all mixed up. It is the monkey. Majangwa That’s what you think. Nakirijja All right, it isn’t the monkey. Majangwa Is that so now? Nakirijja That’s what you want to hear, isn’t it? That’s what you would have me say. All right, I’ll say it: it is the… Majangwa It is the monkey…

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80  Robert Serumaga Nakirijja But that’s what I’ve been telling you… Majangwa And the forest. Nakirijja What? Majangwa It works both ways. A two-way process. Nakirijja It is not a two-way process with you. Majangwa We are talking about monkeys and forests… Nakirijja The only way you ever want… Majangwa A two-way process… Nakirijja … to see, think about or talk about anything is your own way. No room for anybody else. Opinions? Who has other opinions? All the words I’ve said to you – maize flour upon the waters of the lake…That’s what my words have been. Nothing takes root or form. “Majangwa, let’s take care,” I used to say. “Majangwa, don’t trust the crowds, they’ll let us down.” But oh no! Everytime, the same reply: (Mimicking.) “You forget, woman, I am Majangwa. Yes, that’s me. No more, no less. Splintered wood. Chip off the old block. I burn. Like fire I burn. Dry reeds and flax I burn …” (Back to her voice.) Well, you don’t burn anymore. Not even smoulder. You are a damp squib. That’s what you are. A damp squib. And look where you’ve landed us – in a forest. Majangwa You’ve got it all wrong again … Nakirijja (Almost in tears.) I was a good woman (Pause.) for somebody. (Pause.) “Nakirijja, she is a nice girl,” they said. “She ought to make someone a good wife: firm breasts, full-grown, a mother by anyone’s divination,” they said. But you beat the drum and beat the drum, and dumb fool that I was, I danced and danced, and danced, (Breaking down.) danced myself deep into the forest. (Tiny laugh.) The forest. (Mimics Majangwa.) “It is a good clearing this. If we wait long enough, they will come … (Tearful laugh.) It’s a good road; it can’t stay empty for too long.” (Exploding beyond belief.) Well, it has. It has stayed empty for too long. And you, full of self-pity and false hope. (Mimicking.) “When the blood rushes again in my shrunken veins, I’ll grab you, and take you, and …” (Loud almost hysterical laughter.) Well, well, old Majangwa is a shrivelled old root and no sap runs in his veins. And he hopes that one of these days, one of these fine days, it will rain and a warm drop will touch his soul, and his wife Nakirijja. will … (Sudden realisation and surprise.) His wife! … wife? (To the forest.) Majangwa’s wife Nakirijja? Off the pavement. Up the forest. Monkeys! You must remember what the monkey is: the higher up the tree he goes, the more he shows of his behind. (Giggles.) And Nakirijja is to blame. Of course she is to blame, because Majangwa is always right. Right Majangwa? (Playfully.) Up the shrine … On. the crest of rain clouds gathering, gathering till rivulets are streams, streams, streams of nothing. No sir, the game is up, up up.

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Majangwa: A Promise of Rains  81 You can’t see things your way anymore. Majangwa (Losing temper.) See things my way? Of course, I see things my way. Everyone sees things his way. What do you want me to do anyway? See things your way? Nakirijja It is a two-way process, you said. Majangwa A two-way process. Yes. If the other side sees the other side as well. Nakirijja Oh? Majangwa Yes. Nakirijja Well? Majangwa See the other side as well. What do you want me to do? You’ve been asleep half the time. Sleeping. And while you sleep, or drive yourself into hysterics, you want me to see my side and your side and everybody’s side. To be fair and consider all sides, put across my point of view, and your point of view, for you, and for me, is that it? (Pause.) Maybe sometimes there are two sides to an issue, but even then, they should both belong to the same man who puts them forward. You ought to know that. You have looked at life with your back to the pavement, and you ought to know that. (Silence.) Nakirijja Since we have to walk some distance tomorrow, shouldn’t we try some sleep? (Silence.) Majangwa The other side. (To himself.) I try and see it the other man’s way. (Pause.) Well, I wish somebody would see it my way. The only way to make sure that at least somebody, some solitary soul, is seeing it your way, is to see it your way yourself. You ought to know that. Nakirijja (Yawns and busies herself trying to get back to sleep.) Majangwa The night will pass. Don’t worry about that. (Pause.) It is the morning we should dread. In the morning everybody will be awake. (Pause.) You’ll see them pass here at great speed, going to the city, in common search of comfort, prosperity, the lot. (Pause.) Won’t they? (Pause.) I said, won’t they? Nakarijja Won’t they what? Majangwa You never listen, do you? Nakirijja It depends. Majangwa On the side I am looking at? Nakirijja (Does not reply.) Majangwa Well, won’t they? Nakirijja Won’t they what? Majangwa Pass by on their way to witness murders. Nakirijja I don’t know. (Pause.) Which murders? Majangwa Who knows? The city is a nest of little murders. (Pause.) One day, one fated day, they will reach out even to this very spot. Nakirijja Looking for a destination? Beyond the reaches of small minds? Majangwa Well, it doesn’t really concern you, does it? You don’t really mind one way or the other. A common search for happiness. The com-

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82  Robert Serumaga mon human bond made out of a long string of green Bank of Uganda notes that binds us all to one another. You’ve heard the preacher. The end is preceded by thirty pieces of silver. And when you die, you’ve got to pay a death duty. Keep everyone happy. (Silence.) Yes, little murders. (Pause.) Do you know something? Do you? Kampala was once a forest. Like the one behind us. Nakirijja Oh. Majangwa With squirrels, moles, monkeys and lesser beings. Then they arrived and pulled out trees by their roots, broke down anthills and committed other murders. Nakirijja (Yawns.) Majangwa All right, you can sleep. But suppose they arrived here this minute, right here, for one more act of murder, what would you do? (Pause.) All right, you can sleep. Nakirijja How can I sleep when your mouth is open? Majangwa Become a bat. Lose your ears. It might even improve your ­appearance. (Pause.) Nakirijja Eyes. Bats have ears. It is eyes they don’t have. I do, being upside down yourself (Silence.) Still, in the end something is bound to happen. (Pause.) How are your feet? Majangwa What? Nakirijja Eyes. Bats have ears. It is eyes they don’t. Majangwa Is that so now? Nakirijja Yes. Majangwa Well I suppose you know more about… Nakirijja (No reply.) Majangwa I didn’t have to ask, you know. But I thought: as she has a big blister, I might as well ask. You never know. But I won’t ask if I bore you. (Nakirijja is now asleep and Majangwa is showing signs of unease. It helps him to keep talking.) You won’t believe it when I say it, but the road might be better than the city. It is more honest at any rate. (Pause.) I knew a woman in Ntinda who sold her bunch of bananas three times a day to keep going. She lived in a rented house. Had a servant and all. Caught the morning bus to work whenever she didn’t have a headache. She kept one good bunch of bananas. And whenever a boyfriend came, she would make him sit down and feel comfortable, you know. Then, (He sort of tries to act the part.) then the servant would come in with the famous bunch of bananas. Servant The man who sells bananas has come. Lady I have no money. Servant He said you said he was to reserve this one for you. Lady I have no money. Tell him that. I have no money. (Pause.) Anyway, how much is that? Servant Eight shillings. Lady Eight shillings?

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Majangwa: A Promise of Rains  83 Servant Yes. Lady That’s robbery. Majangwa By this time the boyfriend has started to fidget. You know, he has money. All boyfriends have money. They must have money… Anyway… (Interrupts himself.) Lady You heard what I said: tell him I haven’t got eight shillings. Servant All right. Majangwa But before the servant turns his back to go, the boyfriend comes out in true gallant fashion. Boyfriend Bananas are expensive these days. Here, come on, here is eight shillings. Lady Oh, er, thank you, but you know, it is too expensive. Boyfriend Oh no, after all it is only eight shillings. Majangwa And so the banana bunch is bought. But only for the first time. Because when the next boyfriend comes – an hour later – the same old banana bunch is brought out again by the same servant who knows her mistress better than the boyfriends. The same story starts again and the boyfriend buys the same bunch of bananas for another eight shillings. Well, now after four boyfriends, one bunch of bananas at eight shillings each, the lady of the house has made, let me see, (He tries to calculate …) has made, let me see … (On his fingers.) four boyfriends, one bunch, eight shillings each, let me see … well, she has made quite some money. (He tries to count again and gives up. Decides to shake Nakirijja awake.) Nakirijja (Sleepily.) What? Majangwa Four boyfriends, one bunch of bananas at eight shillings a time, how much is that? Nakirijja (More lively, but puzzled.) What’s that? Majangwa Four boyfriends, one bunch, you know, eight shillings … Nakirijja Have you been asleep? Majangwa Who, me? Nakirijja Yes, you. Majangwa Of course not. Nakirijjja How come you are dreaming then? Majangwa I am not dreaming. Nakirijja Go back to sleep then. Majangwa What sleep? Nakirijja Sleep, you know … sleep? (Silence.) Majangwa (Softly in a doubting way.) Do we have any bananas? … (Pause.) To eat. You know… Nakirijja What else does one do with bananas? Majangwa Well! It is a question, isn’t it? (Pause.) You could keep two bunches, one for eating and one for selling. (Laughs a bit. Silence. Nakirijja goes back to sleep.) It’s a way of life. (Pause.) “Eight shillings.” “Five shillings, Majangwa.” (Giggles.) Five (Stops, changes mood.) Nights run, into nights. Like roads. And they all have their victims. (Referring to Nakirijja.)

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84  Robert Serumaga She is a good woman. (Pause.) It’s been a hard life, but she stays firm. Maybe breaks down now and again, but how can you blame her? (Pause; in her voice.) “When the flame tree hangs out to dry, it is past the season of dry thunder, you should be able to smell the drizzle in the red earth.” (Pause.) It’s been a long time. It’ll be a long time tomorrow, too. A long way from both the beginning and the end. (He is fading away into sleep. Yawns. Then decides to go for a pee. He walks to one side of the set. Makes as if he is going to start, but changes his mind and moves to another spot further on. He has a pee, finishes and begins to walk back. He stumbles on some kind of a stone and falls. He goes and gets a match. He lights up the object. It is a milestone.) Majangwa When you walk, don’t knock your foot against a milestone. (He makes as if to walk away but does not. He lights another match, looks at the milestone again.) Majangwa Thirty-five miles to Mityana! (With great awe he examines a bit of the road.) A crack in the crust of the earth. (Frightened, he turns around and rushes to Nakirijja to wake her up. Quietly.) Nakirijja. Nakirijja (Loudly.) Yes? Majangwa Ssh!! Nakirijja What do you mean, ssh? (He puts his hand over her mouth. Silence.) Majangwa (Very quietly.) Let’s get out of here. Nakirijja (Rather loudly.) What? Majangwa Let’s get out of here! Nakirijja Are you crazy? Majangwa It’s dangerous here. Let’s leave. Nakirijja This was our destination a minute ago. Majangwa That was a minute ago. Nakirijja (Loudly.) What is going on? Majangwa Sh!! … (Quietly.) Death! Nakirijja Death? Majangwa Yes. Death! Come and see. (He takes her by the hand and shows her the milestone.) Nakirijja (Blandly.) A milestone. Majangwa Yes. Nakirijja So what? Majangwa Thirty-five miles to Mityana. Nakirijja Yes. Majangwa (Looks at her waiting for comprehension.) Thirty-five miles. (Pause.) To Mityana. Nakirijja I know. I know. I can see it. Right there on the milestone. (He draws her away and takes her to the crack in the road. He lights a match.) Majangwa See that? Nakirijja A crack in the tarmac. Majangwa A crack in the crust of the earth. Nakirijja What’s the difference?

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Majangwa: A Promise of Rains  85 Majangwa Thirty-five miles on the road to Mityana, a crack … Nakirijja … in the tarmac… Majangwa … in the crust of the earth. Nakirijja Oh, for god’s sake I am going back to sleep. Majangwa Sleep? Are you crazy? This is the village of Tanda! Nakirijja (Not really scared.) What? Majangwa Tanda, the village of death. This is where Death went underground. Nakirijja (In ridicule.) And this, I suppose, is the crack through which he went. (Sharply.) Let me go back to sleep. Majangwa Kayikuuzi! (She turns and looks at him.) Nakirijja What did you call me? Majangwa Not you, Kayikuuzi. He chased Death down into the earth, beneath the crust. Right here. We must leave immediately. Nakirijja Majangwa! Eh! Majangwa! Grow up. Be a man. Sink some roots into the earth. We can all choose to make pipes out of clay, all our lives. Wake up in the morning and churn over the dust. But we are human and part of our duty is to grow up. You’ve been a dreamer for too long, don’t you see? Your usefulness has been cast to the ghosts in the winds, and I am tired of repeating myself to you. A man like you frightening himself over some silly legend. Majangwa (With growing indignation.) Silly legend! Silly legend? I suppose you have a better explanation! Life, death and a “silly legend” in between. I suppose you have a better link. Well, let me ask you a question … Nakirijja What? Majangwa Let me ask you a question. How did it all start? Nakirijja How did what start? Majangwa Everything – the road, the murders, the twin rivers, the red sky in the west… Nakirijja It was there from the beginning. Majangwa (Mimicking.) It was there from the beginning. Well, was it? With nothing preceding it and nothing to put a stop to the end? Nakirijja (Uncertainly.) Yes. Majangwa Do I detect a little doubt? Perhaps a fear of commitment to unknown truths. That’s right. You call the beginning a silly legend, yet you have no better explanation. Well; let me tell you. Long before you and me there was a beginning. Long before dry winds blew across the red earth there was a beginning. Long before the twin rivers and the red sky in the west. (A crowd of villagers as described enters and enacts the described sequence.) Majangwa Twenty clans lived in this wilderness. Twenty clans. Twenty clans who knew life, but did not know death. Then from east of the rising sun they arrived. Men and women and children. At their head: Kintu, the first in a long line of centuries. Yes, Kintu and his wife Nambi and their hen. Yes, that hen. For when they first came they had left Death behind, east of the rising sun. But they had also left something else behind: the millet for the hen. So Nambi, Kintu’s wife, went back to

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86  Robert Serumaga fetch the millet for the hen. And when she arrived at the granary, Death was waiting for her. And Death said he would follow her. Now, who can deny Death his wish? So Nambi came back with Death in her wake. (Enter Nambi chased by Death: panic. Then the chase of Death.) Majangwa There was panic among the clans. Then Kintu decided to set his man Kayikuuzi against Death. And Kayikuuzi chased Death. He chased him across the width and breadth of the land. Into the valleys and across the rivers until Death in his cunning decided to go underground. (Exit crowd.) What he did not know, however, was that Kayikuuzi was a man of no mean achievement. And his specialty was to dig holes. Dig holes to recover lost treasures; dig holes to retrieve lost causes; dig holes to unearth even Death himself. So Kayikuuzi went underground with Death, right here in Tanda, and the two of them have been fighting it out, down below, ever since that time. That was the beginning. Nakirijja Was it? Majangwa Yes. Nakirijja Was it? Majangwa Wasn’t it? (Pause.) It was. A beginning. Nakirijja Death came in the wake of a woman carrying millet to her hen; was that the beginning? Majangwa She was a king’s wife. (Pause.) Don’t you believe me? (Pause. Shows her the road.) See that crack? It has been repaired three times. But each time the tarmac peels off again and do you know why? Nakirijja Why? Majangwa Because it is an exit. Death comes out of it in search of a victim or two. He comes out at night, but sometimes in the daytime. And each time the crack is repaired somebody dies. Killed by a passing car or a falling tree. Nakirijja Or Death. Majangwa That’s where you get it all wrong. The passing car and the falling tree are the agents; Death is only a beneficiary. Nakirijja (Cynically.) I see. Majangwa No, you don’t see. (Angry.) Do you believe in anything, do you? Nakirijja There are a lot of things to believe in, and I don’t want you to think that I have no views. Views which you may or may not like. Opinions though, that’s what most views are: false hopes and legends. I am going back to sleep. Majangwa Sleep? We are right in the path of death. And if you place yourself in the path of a hurricane, something is bound to happen. (Silence. She prepares to sleep by one of the stones. He looks at her.) Well, I will let you have the rest of the night to yourself, but in the morning we must rise early and get out of the reach of Death. (He lies down for the night. Silence. Lights change. Death appears above the cliff; looking for a victim. He jumps down and approaches the prostrate body of Majangwa. What follows is a carefully ­choreographed dance of death as Death tries to eat Majangwa and Kayikuuzi wins and Death flees. Lights back to previous position. Majangwa wakes up

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Majangwa: A Promise of Rains  87 ­suddenly, screaming, and writhing and squirming.) Nakirijja Majangwa! Majangwa!! Majangwa They are here. (He is afraid of her, but she keeps calling his name as he searches for them.) They are here. Nakirijja Who? Majangwa Death and Kayikuuzi. They are here. (He gets up to look for them, muttering to himself like a demented person.) Yes, they are here, beneath the rocks. Here, somewhere. I saw them here. Here. (Pause. Search. Looks at Nakiriija.) But they were here a minute ago. Nakirijja (Very loud.) MAJANGWA!!! Majangwa (In tearful confusion.) Yes. Nakirijja Majangwa! Wake up. You had a bad dream. Majangwa A dream? Nakirijja Yes. You are tired. Rest for a while. Majangwa How can I be attacked by a dream? Nakirijja Yes, a bad dream. You will get over it. (Suddenly they stop.) Majangwa Ssh! There is somebody coming. (They hide. A man appears. A murderer looking for a final resting place for his victim. He looks around and ­appears satisfied. He goes off stage and comes back with a dead body. He dumps it down and runs away. Nakirijja rushes to the dead man, crying and mourning him as if he was one of her dead. Majangwa tries to interrupt her.) Majangwa Shut up. What are you crying for? Do you know him? Do you know the other one who brought him here? He is not one of our dead. What has he to do with us? We don’t know him. He doesn’t matter. It is his death; nothing to do with us. Shut up. Shh. Someone else is coming. (They hide. A young couple appears.) Girl’s voice Hang on a minute, I’ll be back. (She goes to have a pee, stumbles on the body and falls. Loud screams and they rush off the stage.) Nakirijja The murderers. Let’s go. Majangwa No. They were not murderers. They are tonight’s entertainers from the cinema. They’ll be back. Nakirijja The police, they will blame it on us. Majangwa The chance of a cure. They will be back. Nakirijja I am leaving. (She is gathering her things to go.) The police. Majangwa The police won’t come. They never come. (He turns to the body and insults it. To dead body.) You see what you have done. Scared them away. Kick you. I’ll beat you. (He attacks the body violently, beating it as he insults it. Then he notices his wife running off stage.) Come back. I will burn the body. I will destroy the evidence. No one will ever know the truth. Come back. (But she goes off into the audience. Spot on to audience as he ­follows her, calling her name. Exit.) CURTAIN

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Notions of Indigeneity Uganda’s Robert Serumaga

DON RUBIN

Ugandan Robert Serumaga, arguably the greatest theatrical director ever produced by Africa, died by poisoning in Kenya at the age of 41 in 1980. No one was ever found guilty of his murder. There are numerous contradictory stories about how he died, most involving reports of a visit to his room by a beautiful woman who supposedly administered a lethal dose of poison. However his death occurred, it brought to a violent end the life of one of Africa’s theatrical giants, one nearly forgotten today by much of the theatre world. Serumaga was, early in his career, a dramatist of power and later a charismatic actor, a visionary artistic guru and finally a theatrical provocateur who combined notions of African indigeneity with a range of European dramatic forms ranging from the psychologically rooted theatre of Stanislavski to the dramatic tropes of the Theatre of the Absurd to the ritually tinged edges of Artaud’s vision of Total Theatre. Serumaga was also a fine economist – trained at Dublin’s prestigious Trinity College (some may wish to note the absurdist Samuel Beckett’s own Trinity connections here) – but one obsessed by politics in both his life and work. That Serumaga survived the reign of the dictator Idi Amin was something of a miracle. That his company, Abafumi (The Storytellers), did not is no surprise. Serumaga was simultaneously taking part in the antiAmin underground while running Abafumi, a career combination that was as theatrically mad as it was politically dangerous. We know now that Serumaga was taking funds from the CIA at this time, funds which were used to support both his causes. When Amin was finally driven into exile, Serumaga, rather than turning to his company full-time, took on a cabinet position with the new government. Only months later came his fatal trip to Kenya. That he had political enemies was obvious. As was the fact that he loved beautiful women. Where Serumaga’s political career might have led had he lived is anyone’s guess. But at his death he had certainly achieved international theatrical fame with his company for his 1970s masterpieces Renga Moi (a name that roughly translates in Uganda’s Acholi language as Valiant Warrior)

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Notions of Indigeneity: Uganda’s Robert Serumaga  89 and Amayirikiti (in Luganda, The Flame Trees). Both those Serumaga-led collective creations had been recognized by critics world-wide in festival performances wherever Abafumi played – across Europe (from the United Kingdom and The Netherlands to Finland and Russia) as well as in South America and the Caribbean. Yet Serumaga’s international reputation (though not his national one) has more or less vanished, perhaps understandably given the fact that like most collectively created works there is no text but only the memory of those who saw his productions to keep his reputation alive. And being works that consciously privileged movement, music, improvisation, sound and ritual over words, theatre people and scholars have had little to hold onto, no primary sources to study. That said, Serumaga did write three scripted plays – A Play (1967), The Elephants (1970) and Majangwa (1971), the last a script that is still produced in Uganda and which is at long last republished here. Though Serumaga’s real theatrical contribution, I would argue, still remains his spectacular stagings with Abafumi – stagings best represented in productions such as Renga Moi (pronounced ‘moy’) – one can at the very least now look more deeply into his one early text, which, along with his biography, his wars, his life and his death, offers insights into this major artist. Hopefully, he will also one day be returned to his rightful place as one of Africa’s leading theatrical warriors. A few facts to begin. Born in 1939 into the Baganda ethnic community from the southern part of the country, Serumaga grew up in Uganda’s third-largest city, Masaka, and was educated at Roman Catholic schools: St. Mary’s College, Kisubi, 18 miles south of Kampala and St. Henry’s College, Kitovu, near to Masaka. Serumaga, it can also be said (with apologies to Oscar Wilde), rose from the ranks of the aristocracy. His family had land in both Uganda and Kenya and great wealth deriving mostly from his father’s management abilities in harvesting tea and coffee from the various family estates. In 1962 Serumaga went off to Europe to read Economics and earn his bachelor’s degree at Trinity College, Dublin. He then did two years of graduate study there in the same field. While at Trinity he also dabbled in theatre and filmmaking and for two years contributed a programme to the BBC called Africa Abroad. As a graduate student in the mid-1960s, he wrote a novel called Return to the Shadows that was published by Heinemann (London) in 1969 and subsequently republished in its African Writers Series (a series edited by Chinua Achebe). Published in the United States by Atheneum a year later, the novel dealt with the life of a young African intellectual who has studied in Europe and who has returned home to witness a series of coups in his country. Should he continue to absent himself from the real action at such chaotic times or should he strap on a gun and become part of the battle? That is the question. When gratuitous violence strikes his own family, it becomes obvious to him where his future is to be. Serumaga’s first work for the theatre was written shortly after Return to

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90  Don Rubin the Shadows. Called simply A Play and dating from 1966, this short drama is rooted in gratuitous violence. A husband and wife are to celebrate their anniversary. During the celebration, a stray bullet from the social chaos going on in the outside world flies into their room and kills the wife. The reality of this pointless death wreaks havoc with the mind of her husband who, a year later, is having trouble separating reality from fantasy. Serumaga, with connections at BBC, managed to sell this fascinating piece to its radio drama department, which produced it later that year. It was about this time (after six years in Europe) that Serumaga decided it was time for him to go home to take up his responsibilities in running the family businesses, to ultimately take on a well-paid job as Managing Director of Kampala’s venerable Ford Motor Company and, in his spare time, start a theatre company which he named, in proper business style, Theatre Ltd. Like everything else he did, he intended to pay everyone involved, and he intended to run it on a business-like basis as much as possible. A Play was, not surprisingly, the company’s first show. He played the husband. Rose Mbowa, the doyenne of theatre at the University of Makerere, played the wife and it was directed by Elizabeth Keeble. The show was performed at the National Theatre in Kampala as a rental in October 1967 and the script published later that year by the Uganda Publishing House. With a European education, a published novel and a produced play already to his credit, Serumaga basked in his new hometown celebrity. His next play was entitled The Elephants. Still quite the European wellmade play, the new script looked into the lives of a group of intellectuals studying in Africa as political pressures and particularly refugee issues are swirling around them. Should they become involved? The protagonist here is David, a Research Fellow in African Literature and Musicology, whose energy has lately been devoted, we are told, to creative writing. As this rather traditional realistic play develops, a strange figure appears, an old man – the old Africa? tradition? the not-so-bright future? – whose very presence causes crisis in the group. Uganda’s past and its future are now debated. David says that he has used real-life situations to create the situation of the refugees ‘through the written word’. Serumaga, mocking the unengaged artist in his introduction to the play, says that other people were creating life ‘through the muzzle of a gun’. The Elephants was staged in 1971 by Theatre Ltd. and was subsequently published by Oxford University Press through its Kenya office. Serumaga’s breakthrough play and his best-written one – the play pub­ lished here – came later that same year, 1971. Entitled Majangwa: A Promise of Rains, it is not so much a debate as a social indictment. The story is of two entertainers, a husband and a wife, so down on their luck in the capital that their art has slowly evolved into sexual displays in which the husband attracts a gathering of men while his wife dances seductively for them. Over time the public dance turns into something of a public striptease and eventually, as more and more coins are dropped around them, the two have public sex.

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Notions of Indigeneity: Uganda’s Robert Serumaga  91 Now chased out of the city, they wander down the dark road of life trying to find their Godot. As they fall asleep, the play breaks free of the mimetic as nameless fears and mythical figures from the past roar by them in what becomes a surrealistic dance of death. It is not such a great step to go from Majangwa to Serumaga’s later movement-based collectives. It was certainly with Majangwa – Serumaga played the husband – that he at last found his truest dramatic voice. Serumaga the director also emerged full-blown here and the production was an instant success. Text now merged with dance, mimetic drama with mystery, present with past, myth with dream, and all these elements writhed with a dominant and, for many no doubt, a shocking sexuality. Majangwa attracted wide attention and it was shown over the next eighteen months not only in Kampala but in Kenya, at the World Theatre Festival in Manila and even at a small theatre in Chicago. In 1974 A Play and Majangwa: A Promise of Rains were published together by the East African Publishing House in Nairobi as volume five in their African Theatre series. By early 1972 Serumaga had committed himself almost entirely to Theatre Ltd. He was now determined to expand its mandate to include musicians and dancers as well as actors and to offer them classes in everything from Stanislavski-inspired western acting approaches to exercises in collective creation, traditional storytelling techniques and experiments in music and dance. He began visiting high schools in Kampala at this time looking for skilled dancers, drummers and other musicians. Some of those he recruited had just completed school. Others were in their final year. This new core he renamed Abafumi Theatre Ltd. (on its many tours, the group would also be called the Abafumi Company, the Abafumi Company Ltd. and even Theatre Ltd. of Kampala). A true sixties collective – everyone lived together and studied together – Abafumi brought in scholars and writers to speak to its young artists about theatrical and African history, about what Serumaga insisted was a genuine manifestation of Total Theatre, about politics and storytelling. (One visiting teacher to the company early on was the already renowned Chinua Achebe.) Serumaga also accepted a position at this time as Fellow in Creative Writing at Makerere University in Kampala. All this obviously added respectability to the company since artists, as one member of them told me later, ‘were seen as little better than prostitutes’.1 Renga Moi was Abafumi’s first production with a cast of fourteen. First seen in Kampala, the production was later taken on tour several times between 1972 and 1976. Serumaga described it as ‘the story of a brave African warrior who finds himself faced with the universal problem of having to choose between social commitment and the realisation of personal interests’.2 The play is set in the mythical Village of the Seven Hills3 where ‘prosperity and peace have aroused the jealousy of neighbouring villages’. Renga Moi, the warrior of the title, and his wife are to have a child and this child turns out to be twins. Strictly following tradition when it comes to the ‘danger’ of twins, Renga Moi prepares to undergo a purification rite, a rite

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92  Don Rubin in which he agrees not to shed blood. But before the purification period expires, war breaks out and Renga Moi must choose between saving his village or saving himself and his family. Renga Moi chooses the social good and goes off to war. When it is learned that he has shed blood, however, the village’s ruler, the Priest/ Diviner, insists on an immediate blood sacrifice, specifically the deaths of his newborn twins. The villagers are shocked but accept the Priest/Diviner’s edict. In a ritual dance, the twins are skewered on spears, a segment of the play done in horrific slow motion. When Renga Moi returns home he is stunned by the deaths of his children but, believing it was the necessary will of the community, he agrees to go through his own purification ritual (crawling through a massive termite hill). When he learns that it was not the community that demanded his children’s deaths but rather the Priest/ Diviner, he turns and assassinates him. As Serumaga says in the programme notes, Renga Moi at that point ‘rather like the modern politician [then] assumes the Diviner’s unenviable position’. Suddenly it is the soldier who is the holder of power. Of interest here, Serumaga cast himself in the show not as Renga Moi but as the Priest/Diviner. Trying to visualize and recreate that spectacular non-scripted production is difficult at this great distance in time. One can say here only that the production had a sound score of drums and incantations interspersed with extended periods of almost total silence. Scenes were created in dance and mime, the children’s ritual murder done with company members moving through the audience uncontrollably sobbing and wailing, almost, as one reviewer put it, ‘to the point of terror’.4 The same reviewer said that Serumaga seemed to be ‘putting his actors at physical and psychological risk’ with the production moving at an almost hysterically slow pace through the ‘fantasies and improbabilities of the story’. Similarly strong responses were engendered everywhere the company played, 26 countries over the next six years.5 Serumaga was in virtually all of these performances and he was interviewed regularly. His statements were consistent regarding his ultimate theatrical desire: ‘I am seeking a black aesthetic. I want to create a theatre that is African in both form and content but one that is at the same time … human and universal.’6 A Canadian newspaper reviewer left us one of the more evocative descriptions of what the production was like. Liz Nicholls in the Edmonton Journal wrote: I could tell you that a baby is born, people die and others grieve, corpses are eaten. I could tell you about prayers and incantations and manic joyous dances. But I’d be telling you nothing crucial about the organic rhythm of an absolutely hypnotic amalgam of movement and frozen postures, sound and silence, that begins and ends in an extremity of agony that would constitute a chilling political manifesto in a more literary play.7 And there it is again – the interface of politics and art, communal versus

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Notions of Indigeneity: Uganda’s Robert Serumaga  93 personal responsibility. To understand the importance of this interface for Serumaga, one has to simply note Ugandan and African history. Uganda had only left its colonial past in 1962, just a half-dozen years before Serumaga began writing. The year 1962 also saw the first full production of a play by an East African playwright in Uganda – Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s The Black Hermit performed by the Dramatic Society at Makerere University. It was in 1971, only three years after Serumaga created his Theatre Ltd. that Idi Amin came to power telling the Ugandan people how they must live, who they will live with in Uganda and who will have power. Amin, of course, would ultimately set himself up as all-powerful, the one who, like the Diviner/Priest in Renga Moi, will interpret the rules and decide who lives and who dies. It was also during the Amin period, a time when Uganda began ‘closing’ to the outside world, that Serumaga was apparently approached by the CIA, which saw in this educated and articulate freedom fighter someone who could be useful to them, someone who was able to travel both within Uganda and internationally. According to several members of the company with whom I have subsequently spoken, Serumaga must have been recruited about 1975 and he apparently continued working with the Americans until his death in 1980. Why would Serumaga risk his artistic reputation as well as his life by work­ing with the CIA? I asked this over and over again to everyone who knew him. The response by company members – again in retrospect – was that he was absolutely determined to help overthrow Idi Amin (a man Serumaga also met on several occasions) by any means possible. All those around the company also now believe that Serumaga – whose own money was going into Abafumi – must have been channelling some (though not all) the CIA funds into the Ugandan underground, apparently purchasing guns to be shipped into Uganda while he travelled abroad. One can also speculate that Serumaga was using some of the CIA funding to keep his company travelling well. Abafumi, as one company member put it to me, stayed at top hotels and travelled at this difficult time ‘surprisingly well’. Abafumi also had no significant problems making inter­ national contacts and getting international bookings, and seemed to have constant access to upscale receptions hosted by top government officials. ‘We never understood why we were treated so well at the time or why so many non-theatre people would mysteriously show up to meet with him at airports around the world, men in suits and sunglasses’, said company member Charles Tumwesigye, ‘but we later came to understand that the CIA connection had many benefits’.8 Another member of the company, Jane Majoro, was also Serumaga’s mistress for much of this period. She confirmed his involvement with the CIA to Charles and others in the group. She told them that when he disappeared for periods of time, he was travelling on underground army business to the UK, the USA (he was the first Ugandan to fly the supersonic Concorde) and to Brazil, the last apparently to buy arms.9

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94  Don Rubin With this as background then, try to imagine the spectacular drama of the Abafumi company’s final performance in Uganda before Amin himself in April 1977. Scheduled to take place at the International Conference Centre in Kampala, Amin had gathered a bevy of fellow dictators for a trade conference and he asked each of them to bring along some entertainment for their joint amusement. Among the leaders present – dictators may be a better term – were Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, Jean-Bedel Bokassa of the Central African Republic, Omar Bongo of Gabon and William Tolbert Jr. of Liberia. That evening, more than 1,500 people jammed the Conference Centre Auditorium in Kampala for the live spectacular. Not a seat was empty. Abafumi was to perform as the fourth company on a bill of five mostly traditional national dance and music companies. The Abafumi artists were impressed to be in such distinguished artistic and political company. All in their early twenties, most of these young actors had not yet cut their political teeth. Few even suspected anything of Serumaga’s political involvements. Amin, however, had his suspicions. Where was Abafumi’s funding coming from? Who were they connected to outside Uganda? The question here, of course, is if Amin really suspected Abafumi why did he give them such a public political platform? What must Serumaga have felt that evening playing the dictator, the Diviner, in front of such a group? What must have Amin felt when he saw a violent struggle for power and control on the stage? Near the end of the play, when the Priest/Diviner condemns the innocent infants to death and demands that the community follow his order without question or suffer the consequences, a chill of recognition must have moved through the audience. Like the Mousetrap scene in Hamlet, the guilty must have felt less than comfortable at that moment. But only Mobutu played the Claudius card. Clearly angry at what he took to be a personal insult to him, Mobutu stood, glared at Serumaga and stormed out of the theatre followed by several dozen staff and security people and then by others in his delegation. After a few minutes of awkward silence, Amin gestured for the play to continue. Actor-dancer Charles Tumwesigye: I kept staring at Amin, waiting for some kind of signal. All of us were looking at him. We couldn’t have played the remaining scenes with any real power. But when the play was over, the audience applauded and Amin, after a standing ovation for us, climbed onto the stage and shook all our hands. It was apparently a great success and he seemed happy. One of his aides then told us to join the leaders at a reception in another part of the city. We all showered. We dressed. We looked forward to meeting these important people. We were told a bus would come for us after the final group had performed. A few minutes later, however, Serumaga came backstage. He was visibly upset. Someone had told him that the bus which was to pick us up would not make it to the reception. That

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Notions of Indigeneity: Uganda’s Robert Serumaga  95 it would have an accident and that everyone on it would be killed. Serumaga told us to get out of the theatre immediately and out of the country as soon as possible. He said we should each take our own routes and that we would meet a few days later in Nairobi.10 We were to use the Ford Foundation’s office there as our meeting point. He then gave each of us a thousand US dollars and told us to use the money for bribes should it be necessary. I couldn’t believe he was carrying that much money. Fresh hundred-dollar bills. We were baffled, but we did what we were told. We got out immediately. We were, as I look back, innocents caught in a political drama, one that was not of our making. But we trusted Robert. He was a father to all of us. But how would we get to Nairobi? Some of the company went back to their home villages and arranged to travel that way. We found out later that our families had been threatened when it was learned we had escaped. Many family members also went into hiding. Charles was one of those who went to his home village and he crossed from there into Rwanda. Others took buses right to the Kenya border and simply walked across. Serumaga himself chartered a private plane. Only nine of the twelve actors made it. Three were captured by the police, tortured and killed. Charles and another member of the group with whom he travelled11 were arrested in Rwanda on suspicion of being spies. Jailed there and kept under horrific conditions, Charles begged his captors to call the Ford Foundation in Nairobi. One guard – he was promised money – made that call. When Ford was notified, everything moved quickly. A Ford official soon arrived in Rwanda on a chartered plane, bailed or bribed the two actors out of the prison and within hours they found themselves at Nairobi Airport. Waiting for them in Kenya was Serumaga and those members of the company who had managed to make it out. Serumaga continued to work with the company off and on for another year or so, first in Nairobi and then in Rome where he managed to get them all settled again thanks to support from, no surprise, the Ford Foundation. But while the company was performing in Rome, as Charles tells it, Serumaga, ‘the custodian of the Abafumi vision, left Italy without our knowledge. Not even his family saw or heard from him for the next seven months. Rumour had it that he had decided to go and continue to wage armed war against Amin. Indeed, it did turn out to be true. When Kampala fell in 1979, Robert emerged as one of the field commanders. His soldiers were among several exile groups which fought alongside the Tanzanian army to liberate his beloved country.’12 Now a political hero, this trained economist was quickly invited to work in the new government as Minister of Trade and Commerce. But 68 days later that government fell and the artist and visionary Serumaga ‘put his combat uniform on again … He would never see his country again.’12

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96  Don Rubin Arrested in Tanzania but freed after two days because of political pressure by the cultural community in the UK, he was shortly thereafter poisoned in Nairobi by a woman he allegedly picked up in a bar, apparently a spy who was paid to do the job. He died in hospital telling those around him as he lapsed in and out of a coma that ‘they poisoned me, they killed me’. His wife and his children were with him at the end. He told them that they would all be OK and ultimately they were. Money was never an issue. It was early 1980. Robert Serumaga was 41 years old. Several of Serumaga’s children later went to private schools and some of them also studied in Europe and North America. His son, Robert Jr., became a well-known broadcaster and later the Managing Director of the National Theatre in Kampala. In the 2006 national election it was Serumaga Jr. who chaired the television debates between the presidential candidates. The young Serumaga’s first production as director at the National Theatre was, interestingly and perhaps fittingly, his father’s breakthrough play, Majangwa, staged in the autumn of 1998. __________ For the record, members of the original Abafumi company included Alice Bitamba, Charles Buyondo, Willam Ddumba, Friday Kibombo, Marie Kirindi, Jones Kiwanuka, Jane Kobusingye, Stephen Lwanga, Rwandanborn Janme and Dede Majoro, Frank Mbaziira, Paul Mukasa, Victoria Nakazaana, Sarah Ntambi, Geoffrey and Margaret Oryema, Agnes Sabune, Deborah Sentongo, Richard Sseruwagi and Charles Tumwesigye. Sara Kibirige served as company secretary. Some company alumnae host a Face­ book page under the name Abafumi Theatre and Music Academy. It should be noted as well here that sections of this introduction were first presented as a paper at the University of Toronto’s October 2001 conference on ‘Pre-Post- and Neo-Colonialisms: Wole Soyinka and the Contemporary Theatre’. In revised form, that paper was later published under the title ‘Directing Politics: Soyinkan Parallels in the Works of Uganda’s Robert Serumaga’ in a festschrift for Esiaba Irobi in Syncretic Arenas: Essays on Post-Colonial African Drama and Theatre as part of the series Cross/Cultures (volume 177, Rodopi, 2014). This version was commissioned specifically for African Theatre and appears here in significantly revised form. Additional insights into the work of Serumaga and the Abafumi company can be found in the novel One Man Dancing by Patricia Keeney (Toronto: Inanna, 2016).

Notes 1 Company member Charles Tumwesigye in interview, Toronto, October 2001. 2 This quote is from a copy of the Renga Moi programme (photocopy in my possession).

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Notions of Indigeneity: Uganda’s Robert Serumaga  97 3 Although the Acholi people are from much further north in Uganda, the reference to ‘Seven Hills’ here clearly alludes to the capital city, Kampala, originally built on seven hills. 4 Bill White in the Sunday Nation of 23 July 1972 after the performance in Belgrade. 5 Renga Moi and Amayirikiti played in the UK (at Peter Daubeny’s World Theatre Season), Poland (in Gdansk as part of the Theatre des Nations Festival), the USSR, Brazil, Venezuela (at the Caracas Festival), Jamaica, Italy, Finland, and Colombia. In 1985, five members of the company played excerpts from the shows under the title Namanve at the Edmonton Fringe Festival in Canada using the group name Makonde Total Theatre Company. 6 From an undated Kampala newspaper interview done with David Rubadiri (copy in my possession). 7 Liz Nicholls reviewing the Fringe Festival in Edmonton in the Edmonton Journal, 1986. n.p. 8 Interview with Charles Tumwesigye in Toronto, October 2001. 9 Ibid. 10 From Kampala, Nairobi is a one-hour plane ride; a twelve-hour drive; a ten- to twelve-day walk. 11 Friday Kibombo. 12 Interview with Charles Tumwesigye, Toronto, October 2001.

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The Guest (Engida)1 A One Act Play

MANYAZEWAL ENDESHAW

(As the audience enters the hall, soft nostalgic music is playing. On the backdrop there is an atmospheric sunset glow. In the middle of a garden there is a raised platform on which a table and chairs are set. To the right is a raised veranda and the front door of an old house, and to the left the way to the offstage gate. Lights go out and in the dark a cigarette is lit stage left. After a while a woman’s voice is heard singing a lullaby. Oh my baby, I have you on my back as I perform my household chores, The skin on my back is injured, Please come down. The light on stage is switched on and a woman (the wife) wearing a short skirt that shows her shapely legs crosses the stage from left to right. With a double take she notices a man (the husband) lying on a reclining chair wearing sunglasses and smoking a cigarette.) Wife What’s wrong? Husband (Without turning.) What’s wrong? Wife Why were you sitting in the dark? Husband There is nothing new to be seen in this compound. I know every plant and its location like the back of my hand. So what do I need the light for? Wife Shall I turn it off then? Husband But now you are here! (He places the cigarette on the ashtray.) Wife Do you mean to say that you don’t know me? (She places the fruit she was carrying and a newspaper on the platform.) Husband (Moving close to her.) If the first man does not know the first woman … (He embraces her from behind.) Wife Adam knew his wife Eve! Husband She took of the fruit and gave unto her husband; and he did eat. Engida in Amharic, the official language in Ethiopia, means both ‘guest’ and ‘stranger’. It can also be a name.

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The Guest (Engida): A One Act Play  99 And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked.2 (He kisses her on the neck and she laughs. After fooling around, she takes a grape and stretches her hand toward his mouth, but when he is about to eat, she eats it herself. When she does this once more, he grabs her hand and eats the grape.) Husband (Pause.) I’ve been sitting here thinking. Wife What about? Husband About you. Wife What is there about me to think? Husband (Extinguishing his cigarette on the ashtray.) I was trying to imagine what you could have done after you left. Wife (Teasing, speaking in a slow drawn out fashion.) OK, what was I doing? Husband But now you are here, so you should tell me. Wife Why don’t you tell me first? (Silence. While suspenseful music plays, he looks at her intensely. He moves closer and leaning forward looks into her eyes. He then steps back and studies her figure and curves towards her back; moves closer to her neck and smells it. During this process, the wife obviously feels uncomfortable. Standing right behind her, he slowly raises her hands to shoulder level, and probes her body; when he touches her breasts she shudders. He then continues feeling her body downwards; after reaching her ankle, he holds one of her legs and his hands move upwards; when he reaches into her dress he stops.) Wife Why did you stop? Husband Shall I go on? Wife Go on! (He hesitates for a moment, and releases her leg. She pushes him to the floor.) Don’t start something that you can’t finish! (Leaving the bag and newspaper, she takes the grapes and crosses into the house.) Husband (Walking around the garden.) When you went out earlier, did you immediately get a taxi? Wife Yes. Husband You went into the City Hall Theatre and bought a ticket…. Now tell me the location of your seat so that I can see you with my mind’s eye. Wife (From within the house.) I was on the balcony, on the left. (Coordinating his moves with the rhythmic music playing, he closes his eyes and taps his forehead.) Husband Balcony … balcony … the left balcony … yes on the left … OK … the hall is full, therefore you are standing, and on your left I see … I see someone standing and it’s a man! You didn’t notice him at first … it was later that you saw him; … he looks … he looks masculine! … Creating some pretext he started to talk to you; because you liked his approach and his voice, you responded with enthusiasm; I think you were even trying to seduce him. Genesis, Chapter 4.

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100  Manyazewal Endeshaw (The wife is on the balcony of the theatre; at first we only hear her voice.) Wife (Whispers.) If you have already seen the play, why do you want to see it again? Guest (We only hear his voice.) You have seen the actress playing the role of the wife, right? I find her acting very impressive! Wife (A spot light finds them.) Is it only her acting that impressed you? Guest Do you think I’m impressed by her looks? Wife Her beauty is flawless. Guest If it were just looks, I’d prefer you. (Flirtatiously laughing, she leans on the man’s chest. But suddenly breaking her laughter she looks towards the husband on stage.) Wife Haven’t you gone too far? How could I throw myself on a man I’d just met? (The guest leaves unnoticed.) Husband Why not? Don’t you people say that love is blind?! …Or maybe you lost your self-control. Wife It’s you who’s lost control! This is beyond jealousy! Husband Why would I be jealous? I am not Othello, nor are you Desdemona. Perhaps it wouldn’t be difficult for me to smother you with a pillow; but if you think that I would kill myself afterwards, you are a fool! That, my dear, was in days gone by! Love, honour, and the like are so outdated! (Pause.) Anyway, when the play was over, you invited your man to come here in the evening and have a nice time with you. Wife And what did he say? Husband (Playing the guest with exaggerated gesture.) I would really have enjoyed your company, my pretty lady, but with sincere apologies, I have to decline, for I have a previous engagement! Wife Wrong! (Husband freezes as he was bowing with outstretched hands.) Husband (Slowly coming out of his position.) But how come he immediately accepted your offer? Wife I brought you a newspaper, can you read me the article about getting divorced before getting married? (He stares at her questioningly.) I have seen the title, but didn’t have time to read it. Husband You didn’t have time? Maybe you were too busy seducing your new friend! Wife (Slightly angry.) Forget it! (He makes a threatening gesture, and she moves back in fright as if he were close by. He picks the newspaper, clears his throat and starts to read while moving around the garden. She leaves the balcony without attracting attention.) Husband I saw this incident while visiting a friend at the marriage license office. The bride with family and friends was waiting for the groom. After a while the groom arrived clad in tuxedo and accompanied by his best men. The bride stared at him with unbelieving eyes and started to laugh so hard that she could not stop. When the groom realized that she was in

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The Guest (Engida): A One Act Play  101 hysterics and running out of breath, he slapped her and saved her life. As everyone was waiting in silence to learn the reason for her laughter, the bride said, “What a pity! … It’s a pity to realize at this critical moment, that I loved you when I saw you wearing that old uniform in the garage, and when you kissed me, it was the smell of oil, grease and lubricant mixed with your sweat that made me lose control. But now I really don’t know you!” Saying this she left the dazed groom and started running. When her shocked maids of honour tried to catch her, she took off her shoes and threw them at her friends and escaped. Is the story of the old uniform a true motive, or did she actually change her mind for another reason? Has he gone to her in his old uniform and made peace, or are they separated for good? I would be grateful if anyone could tell me the outcome of this story. Zebdewos. Wife (Entering.) Had it been you, what would you have done? Husband Well, I wouldn’t have fallen at her feet and begged her. Wife Are you sure? Husband Why are you asking me this? Wife No reason. Husband You certainly have a reason. What are you thinking about? Wife I think I know the man I met in the theatre, but I couldn’t place him. And when I asked him whether he knew me, he denied it! Husband You must have been mistaken. Wife But when I saw him, my heart missed a beat. Husband Is he handsome? Wife You know I don’t care for looks. Husband What do you care for then? Wife (Stretching her hands and crossing towards him.) You. You and (She embraces him.) only you! Husband Are you serious? Wife Don’t I look it? Husband (Getting out of her embrace.) In that case, let’s beg his pardon and turn today’s guest away. Wife (Slightly angry.) And why would that be? Husband I had a premonition today. On the way to my friends, a woman carrying an empty pot crossed my path.3 I felt that it was just accidental, but then a black cat ran on my foot from the same direction. That was why I came back. Wife Since when did you start believing so irrationally? You used to call such superstition “the belief of the stupid.” Husband That’s exactly what I’m saying! Why am I frightened by something that I have never believed in? That’s why it disturbed me! Wife Don’t you think it’s rude to send someone back after inviting him? 3

Traditionally it is taken as a bad omen when a woman carrying an empty pot crosses one’s way.

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102  Manyazewal Endeshaw (Disappointed, he mumbles and moves away. But then crosses towards her as if to knock her down. She stands her ground.) Husband But if he gets on my nerves, I’ll give him a punch on the nose! Wife We’ll see who will punch who when the time comes. (Playfully she touches his nose. When he threatens to punch her, she stretches her fingers towards his face, and makes the sound of an angry cat. He backs away.) Husband (Pause.) Why is it that you don’t like to stay at home? Wife And why do you hate going out? Husband What do I need to go out for? I have a wife like you! Wife And when I’m not in? Husband I just wait for you. (Mumbles to himself.) Yes, wait for you. I don’t get bored while I wait for you … (After trying to get the right tone, he starts to sing an old love song.) I don’t get bored while waiting for you, I don’t feel tired while waiting for you, Oh my love,when shall I see you? Oh my beauty, when shall I meet you? Shall I wait for you on Monday? Promise me not to stay away, And on Sunday, my dearest dream, The whole day I’ll stay home! (After the first couple of lines, she joins in the singing and they dance. Holding hands they spin around like children. They laugh out loud, and separate and still laughing, take seats apart from each other. Their laughter slowly subsides and his face becomes serious.) Husband Sometimes I think that you go out to stay away from me. So I ask myself, “Can there be anything that I didn’t fulfill, that she flies away all the time?” Wife (Picks up a fan and with a flourish.) I like to take fresh air. The sunlight, the evening wind, the full moon … as a human being, the company of fellow humans gives me pleasure. Husband Don’t I give you pleasure? (She gives him a sarcastic smile.) Why are we living together? Wife Why are you asking this now? Husband When was I supposed to ask you? Wife At the beginning. Husband It hadn’t occurred to me then. Wife And now it’s too late! (Pause.) What made you think of it now? Husband (Pause.) Would you have told me the truth, had I asked you then? Wife If I told you, what would you have done? Husband Depends on your answer. Wife What if I told you that I don’t love you? Husband I could have stopped it there and then! Wife And if I lied? Husband What for?

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The Guest (Engida): A One Act Play  103 Wife Not to lose you. Husband Without loving me? Wife You think all these people live together because they love each other? Not at all. It’s habit, custom, rules, tradition. Husband But if they don’t love each other, they will certainly separate. Wife That wouldn’t change anything. Husband (Intensely looks at her, and shakes his head.) You wouldn’t feel any­ thing if we parted company. Wife I didn’t say that. Husband You live to be appreciated by others. Wife Everyone does it. Husband I live for myself ! Wife If that was true, you would have asked me straight, at the beginning, why we should live together. Husband (Irritated.) I told you that it didn’t occur to me! (Pause.) Besides, it was my belief that …that you loved me, so … Wife And now, do you doubt my love? Husband I didn’t say that. Wife Shall I tell you the real reason why you didn’t ask me? You were afraid! Husband What would I be afraid of? Wife If I told you that I would be willing to live with you even without love, you would have found it difficult to decide. So you chose not to know. Husband If that was true, I wouldn’t have asked you now. Wife O … k. What would you do if I told you now? Husband (Pause.) I don’t know … what can I do? … after all this time … Wife In that case, it’s useless to know the truth. (Pause.) I’ve met only one man who lived for himself. Husband Why didn’t you marry him then? Wife I admire such a strong person, but I hate his selfishness. What is the meaning of life, unless one lives for the sake of others too? Humans are like fire … Husband (He finishes it for her.) They warm us, they burn us! Wife He who doesn’t know hate, cannot understand love! Husband We love as much as we hate! (Long pause.) How is the guest to find our house? Wife He is the one who gave me a ride. Oh, you remind me that I should buy some more beer. We have only a few in the fridge. (Looks at her watch.) Wow, it’s almost time! (She picks up a bag and goes out.) Husband (After watching her leaving, he recites a poem.) What went between us, Is difficult to express. The death of our love, Is hidden from all eyes. Though I wanted to cry and shout,

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104  Manyazewal Endeshaw

To show my grief in public, I couldn’t. Forced to bury it in my heart, Our love just withered away! (Wearing sunglasses, he exercises karate moves. He then picks his glass of beer and raises it.) Husband Give wine unto him that be of heavy heart. Let him drink, and remember his misery no more. (He sips and walks about thinking. He then looks at one of the chairs and talks to it.) We can’t sit here and stare at each other until my wife comes and intro­ duces us. Therefore, we are obliged to make the introduction ourselves. Or do you have a better idea? What? A better idea? Hmmm … Before the introduction, (He swings like a boxer.) what about a boxing match? Hmmm? Would you like that? Just to seal our friendship. (As he is laughing uproariously, knocking is heard from the gate, and he suddenly stops his laughter. Frightened, he looks toward the gate, runs around the garden and finally hides behind one of the chairs; as he slowly peeps towards the gate, knocking is heard for the second time. He takes out a spray for asthma from his pocket and inhales, and does a few pushups. On the third knock, he puts on his sunglasses, picks up the beer bottle and glass and heads towards the front door of the house. On the fourth knock he freezes.) Husband (In a woman’s voice.) Who is it? Guest (From outside.) Good evening! Husband (In a woman’s voice.) Yes? Guest (From outside.) Excuse me, but …does this house belong to Miss … Husband Mrs.! Guest (From outside.) Mrs… Husband Miss! (Silence.) Come in. (Sound of the gate opening and closing is heard, the guest enters slowly. He is wearing glasses, and holding a bunch of roses in his right hand. The husband stretches his right hand to shake hands and when he realizes that he is holding a glass, he stretches his left hand holding the bottle. The guest, a bit confused, shifts the flowers to his left hand and takes the bottle. Then the husband shifts the glass to his left hand and stretches out his empty right hand for a shake. This time the guest gives him the flowers which the husband takes, places on the raised platform, and comes back with an outstretched hand. The guest shifts the bottle to his left hand and at last they manage a handshake.) Husband (While shaking the guest’s hand vigorously.) I welcome you … (Pauses.) Shall we be formal or friendly? Guest Friendly will be just fine. Husband I welcome you to my humble abode! (As he shakes the guest’s hand vigorously again, the guest smiles in amazement. The husband stops.) Oh, sorry! (He releases the guest’s hand, and makes way to let him pass. As the guest moves to the flowers to pick them up, the husband overtakes him, takes the flowers and gestures

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The Guest (Engida): A One Act Play  105 towards a seat. While the guest climbs up the few steps on to the raised platform, the husband places the flowers on a small table next to the reclining chair. The guest puts the bottle on the table and when he is about to sit on the chair, centre, which looks bigger and more comfortable than the others, the husband whistles. The guest turns to see what’s wrong and the husband gestures with his head towards the chair on the right. The guest points to the chair to make sure, and the husband nods in agreement. The guest crosses towards the chair and as he is about to sit ….) Husband Would you like to join me? Guest (He straightens.) Join you? Husband I mean, shall I offer you beer? Or do you prefer something else? Guest Beer is fine with me, especially if it’s Saint George. Husband (Shaking his head with appreciation.) Our taste is one and the same! (Getting closer to the guest, and raising his glass.) Cheers! Guest (Confused.) With what? Husband Oh sorry! (Leaving his glass on the table, crosses to the front door. When the guest is about to sit, the husband turns and with a loud voice ….) Husband Please take your seat, Sir! (The guest is bewildered and straitens, but when he realizes that it was only an invitation, he calmly starts to sit. But again the husband turns ….) Husband Feel at home! (The guest reacts as before, and the husband goes in to the house. While the guest looks around the garden, the husband comes back with a bottle of beer and a glass on a tray, and pours the beer in such a way that the glass is filled with foam. He gives it to the guest. When the guest is about to take a sip ….) Husband (In a loud voice.) Give wine unto him that be of heavy heart. Let him drink, and remember his misery no more. (They clink glasses and the husband takes a sip, while the guest finds it difficult to take a sip as his glass is full of foam. But because it’s only polite to take a sip, he manages one. The husband points at his own lips, the guest mimes to say “what?”, the husband points at the guest who mimes again to mean “what about me?” The husband then points at and wipes his lips. This time the guest understands, and after wiping his lips, shows his appreciation with a gesture. For a while they look at each other with a smile … Silence.) Husband We can’t sit here and stare at each other until my wife comes and introduces us. Therefore, we are obliged to make the introduction ourselves. (He takes off the sunglasses, and stretches his hand for a hand shake.) Husband! (The guest, who was about to shake hands, gets confused and freezes. After a while he takes the husband’s hand.) Guest Guest! (The husband makes a vigorous handshake, suddenly stops and gestures to say “sorry”.) Husband (Crosses to stage left, and in an aside.) I manage the introductory

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106  Manyazewal Endeshaw part well, how am I going to cope with the rest of the operation? Guest Operation? … What operation? … Are you talking to me? Husband Do you know your life’s calling? Guest What? Husband Without reason, nobody comes here. Guest But I’m invited here. Husband Invited? To this world? Guest (After a moment of confusion.) Oh you mean that. You are right. Nobody is born without a reason. Getting born is a miracle! Husband It would have been so if we had not overdone it! Guest (Pause.) And what’s your life’s calling, if I may ask? Husband I was an actor. (Pause.) When I had enough of their lying and nagging, I quit. Guest Who are they? Husband The so-called artists. Guest But if the truth was on your side, you should have stayed and fought. Husband That’s what you think, my friend! They wouldn’t let you go before they drove you crazy. Guest Haven’t you heard the saying that “the truth sets you free”? Husband And don’t you know that telling the truth gets you hanged? Guest But I thought artists talk more openly than the rest of us. Husband Openly? You don’t know them, my friend. Everything they say in their interviews is invented, pure fiction. Guest How do you mean? Husband What they tell is not the truth, but what people want to hear! For instance, if you ask a writer why he is writing, he says, “To change society!” But probably he writes for money, or fame. Let me tell you what I read about a fantastic writer. This author wrote all his great novels to pay for debts incurred by gambling. Guest Dostoyevsky? (The husband shows his thumb in appreciation.) Guest What I feel is, the relationship between artists and their fans is like that of new lovers. For instance, you don’t tell everything about yourself to a girl you just started dating. There may be a few things you hide, and a few things you lie about. Husband (Laughs.) This is really a new angle of looking at it! Ride on brother! (The guest smiles with embarrassment at the enthusiasm of the husband.) Guest Well … if you show your weaknesses to the pretty girl who has not yet given you her heart, the image she has been building about you, will suddenly crumble! In a similar manner, fans put their idols above the clouds, and if artists reveal that they have weaknesses like common folk, they’ll come crashing down from the clouds! Husband (Applauding.) Bravo, bravo, bravo! (Stretching his hand.) Let’s shake hands! (The guest is embarrassed.) Come on! … Please, do it for me.

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The Guest (Engida): A One Act Play  107 (Because the guest is on the raised platform, the husband briskly pulls him down as they make a handshake. But then he holds the guest’s shoulders in a friendly manner and they walk about the stage.) Because you impressed me, I’m going to compose a deep and complex poem for you. (He moves across the stage pretending to create the poem then and there. He then stops and with deep absorption recites.) 4

(With anticipation of admiration, he turns towards the guest.) Guest Sorry, but I’m not versed in such poetry. (The husband gestures to mean “Wait a minute” and takes a few moments to make a translation.) Husband Come, come the cat of poetry, Milk of the students’ heart is flowing for thee! (The guest still shows that he has no idea.) Do you understand? Guest Not at all. Husband When I translate from an old language, how come you fail to relate the lines to our circumstance? (The guest gestures “What can you do?”) Husband Can’t you try a bit? Guest I don’t have a clue. Husband Not even a guess? Guest I give up! Husband Actually, it was very easy if you only asked the right qustions. (Crossing to the raised platform.) Who is represented by the cat? (Pouring beer into the guest’s glass.) What is represented by the milk? (Handing the glass of beer to the guest.) Whose heart are we talking about? (Pause.) Do you believe in coincidence? Guest Very much. Husband Give me an example. Guest (Pause.) Whenever coincidence is mentioned, I remember what my friend’s son once said. He is a cunning boy. “Where were you born,” he asks his father, “Harar’’ comes the answer. “And mother?” “Dessie” answers the father. “What about me?” “You were born in Addis Ababa.” The boy ponders for a moment and says, “Is it not amazing that the three of us should meet?” Husband (Laughing.) He is truly a cunning boy! Guest (Pause.) What made me laugh at first when my friend told me, started to feel mysterious. Let’s say, if my mother and father never met, I wouldn’t have been born. Separately, both can have other children, but This is written in the ancient Ethiopian language called Geez, which is now used only in Ethiopian Orthodox Christian Church.

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108  Manyazewal Endeshaw never me! (The husband shakes his head in agreement.) For instance, let’s look at the birth of Emperor Menelik. When she was a girl, Menelik’s mother had a dream and said to her friends; “The Sun came out of my womb.” Menelik’s grandmother sent this girl to her favourite son Seifu. But because he had an engagement with another girl, he gave the girl to his elder brother Hailemelekot, and she became pregnant with Menelik. If the girl had slept with Seifu, she may have got pregnant with another child, but never with Menelik, and the history of Ethiopia would have been different. Husband (Truly impressed.) That’s a wonderful thought! If Menelik had not raised the shield against Italians, The Abyssinians would still have been slaves! It’s amazing that the history of a nation is determined by such coincidences! (Pause.) By the way, what’s your profession? Guest I’m a psychiatrist. Husband Why did you chose that profession? Guest Because I’m interested. Husband How about competence, do you think you have it? Guest (Smiles.) Well …until now I’m doing fine. Husband Let’s say, instead of psychiatry, what if you could do better at … (Making a swing at him.) boxing? How would you know unless you tried it? Guest (Smiles.) Well …you can’t try every profession. Husband (Pause.) Sometimes I think people live while cheating themselves. A person who could make a good priest, turns out to be a soldier, and strives all his life to do a courageous act and become a hero, but is destined to fail. He will be the object of ridicule for his friends the rest of his life. For instance, while you could have made a good boxer or aviator, you spend your life as a psychiatrist whom nobody knows. (Pause.) You know what I sometimes say to myself? “You shouldn’t have married; you could never make a good husband; you are created to be a lover; and because you didn’t know this fact, you lead a miserable life!” That’s what I say to myself. On the other hand, being a lover is not an easy occupation. The secret meetings, the gossip, the harassment if you are caught red handed, the blows that the husband would rain on you, the thrashing by the guard, the punches from passersby, and finally the handcuffs of the police! It’s when I consider this that I say, “Oh! I’m really lucky to be a husband!” (Pause.) And you? Guest I’ve never thought like that. Husband (Teasing.) Do you think you could make a good lover? Guest (Smiling.) I’ve never tried it. (Playfully the husband places a hand on the guest’s shoulders, and laughing.) Husband Let’s assume that you got a chance … would you be good at it? Guest Do you think I haven’t had a chance? (The husband suddenly becomes serious and moves his head in agreement, and

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The Guest (Engida): A One Act Play  109 moving away, turns his back to the guest, who looks around the garden. Pause.) Guest Your house looks pleasant. Husband It belongs to my parents. Pause.) From all the members of my family, I’m the only one who … Guest Oh, I’m sorry … is it by accident? Husband No, by choice… everyone is living abroad. Guest Ah, I see … then how come you alone stayed behind? Husband What’s an actor without his stage?5 (Pause.) Looking at me from outside, one would think that I’m lucky, but I’m not. The one I wanted to marry is not the woman who invited you here. But what can you do? (Pause.) I had a fiancée. (Pause.) And suddenly this one falls in love with me; for no apparent reason. Even before I laid eyes on her, her friends told me that she said she’d kill herself unless she made me hers. (Pause.) Her friends begged me … they pursued me everywhere! Believing that she would calm down if I met her for a few days, I agreed to meet her. Guest (Pause.) What about your fiancée? Husband I didn’t tell her. I agreed to meet the girl secretly. But she was getting worse. She even became jealous of my fiancée. Is that not absurd? Well, I started to avoid her. When she realized this, you know what she did? She hanged herself? Guest (In shock.) What?! Husband (Smiles.) H’m, if it were not for neighbours who arrived on time, she was gone for good! Finally, I asked her, “What do want?” You know what she said? “To marry you!” was her answer. I thought about it, and considered it from different angles. At last I said, “What is the difference between one woman and another? Marrying this one or that one does not make a difference.” So I married her. Guest (Pause.) How about your fiancée? Husband (Tearfully.) Well, I gave her the ring back, and with tears we separated. (Takes out a handkerchief and wipes his eyes.) Sometimes I ask myself whether I did that in sound mind, or if she used black magic. (Pause.) Do you believe in black magic? (The guest shakes his head “no”.) And you know, my former fiancée, before a year elapsed … Guest She hanged herself? Husband She got married. Guest Ah, I see. Husband But now I don’t regret my decision. The man she married (Laughs out loud.) died after a year. Therefore, I feel as if I escaped from death! Guest What did he die of? Husband Who knows? He died suddenly. Guest Well, that could be just a coincidence. Husband Coincidence! 5

Since our official language, Amharic, is only used in Ethiopia, there is no chance for our theatre people to survive abroad.

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110  Manyazewal Endeshaw “Who knows? If the bird of spring and the Adey flower,6 Have made a rendezvous, in the month of September?” said one of our poets. (Pause.) But now I feel pity for her. Guest Perhaps she may meet somebody. Husband What about me? Guest But you left her, didn’t you? Husband When? Guest You said you left her for this one. Husband Are you talking about the other one? Guest Is it not for the other one that you feel pity? Husband (Shakes his head.) She is not happy, you know. And for her sake I abstained from everything that might disappoint her. My sole aim now is to make her happy in every way possible. She can do anything, as long as it makes her happy, anything; and I wouldn’t be offended. Guest (Ponders intensely.) You are kind! I really mean it. You are a very kind person! I don’t think there is such a husband who is as anxious for his wife as you! Husband How about a wife, who is anxious for her husband? Guest You might find such a one, but … Husband (Moving his head up and down.) Such people are not lucky enough to meet each other. Treated like a princess by one, can be played upon like a doll by another! Knowing this, I tolerate everything with patience. (Pause.) But sometimes I’m embittered! (Suddenly moves toward the guest, almost pushing him physically.) I just want to fly away and leave her! (The husband crosses to the entrance, and looks at the offstage gate.) Husband And where is she now? (Turns his head to the guest, and whispers.) If I tell you a secret, would you keep it to yourself? Guest If it is a secret, of course I would. Husband (Hesitates for a moment.) The true reason why I stopped acting … (He senses someone coming, and as he tries to make sure, the guest starts coughing; the husband anxiously gestures to make him stop, but the guest coughs again ….) You see, I had no life outside of theatre! When I go onto the stage, I get a kind of ecstasy that … that I don’t feel even when I sleep with a woman! What can I say? … If I don’t act for a month, I nearly explode! That was why I got involved in 4 or 5 plays a week. If one of the plays was not performing, I wouldn’t worry, because I still would perform in the other plays. But my friends think that I did it for money. What they don’t know is, as long as I don’t go hungry, I’m willing to work for free. (Pause.) But the problem is … I have a condition that nobody knows … so I decided to quit all together. The Adey flower has yellow petals, is found only in Ethiopia, and grows at the beginning of the spring season.

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The Guest (Engida): A One Act Play  111 Guest (After a while.) But you didn’t tell me your condition. Husband … I’m on stage … and I forget my lines … I try to remember but I can’t … the other actors try to prompt me…but I just can’t hear what they say … the audience applauds for the play to continue … I feel my back drenched with sweat … my hand visibly shakes … those who run out of patience shout and whistle … the angry ones come onto the stage, and menacingly approach me shouting “Give our money back!” … I want to run away … but my legs won’t budge … “Give us our money”, shouting, they get closer … the other actors, instead of protecting me, rather shout at me to give their money back … finally the men grab me by the neck … I fight to get myself free … but it is useless … they throw me down on the stage floor and one of them, wearing an army shoe, kicks my genitals … short of breath and gasping for air … I wake up screaming. (Pause. Wipes his face with a handkerchief.) I wake up soaked in sweat. (Pause.) Every time I have a performance, on the previous morning, I have this same nightmare. (Pause.) What do you have to say about this? (Pause.) Didn’t you say that you are a psychiatrist? Guest (Ponders.) Perhaps, before you go to bed … (The wife comes in. The husband quickly gets up and picking up the flowers, hides them behind his back.) Wife I’m very sorry, have you been here long? Guest Not that long. Actually I was chatting with your husband that … Husband Darling, “Is it not amazing that the three of us should meet?” Wife How do you mean? (The husband takes the flowers from behind his back and presents them to her.) Wife Wow! (Showing them to the guest.) Are these not beautiful flowers? Guest The flowers are … (The husband hides behind the wife, and makes threatening gestures to the guest to keep quiet.) Wife You were saying? (The guest gestures “I can’t say.” The wife is confused and turns to the husband.) Wife What? Husband What? (Pause.) Oh, we were about to play cards. You can join us if you like. Wife I would love to! (Carrying the flowers and the articles she bought, she goes into the house.) Husband (Deals out the cards, and without being seen, drops a card to the floor, which he later picks up and uses to win.) What shall we play? Seka or Conquer?7 Guest Let it be Seka. Husband What shall we play with? Wife With money, of course. 7

Two card games commonly played in Ethiopia.

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112  Manyazewal Endeshaw Husband No, the loser will perform whatever the winner commands. Guest Like what? (The wife comes with a single rose and places it in the guest’s chest pocket, husband makes a mocking sound.) Husband While we are watching, he or (Gesturing toward the wife.) she will take off all his or her clothes. (The wife and the guest look at each other, and then they both look at the husband. The wife laughs out loud, while the guest smiles nervously. The wife touches his hand to console him. The husband drops a card and dances around, at the same time trying to look at the wife’s cards. But she becomes conscious of his intention and covers her cards … The husband wins and the guest is second. The wife is a bit frightened, but tries to control it.) Husband Mrs. Wife, get up! (The wife does everything as she is told. The guest observes everything with curiosity and foreboding.) … Husband Go down and stand there … Can you loosen your hair, my beauty? Turn your face towards me, my darling … One step forward … take off your shoes my elegant girl … and now your dress … (She holds the hem of her dress.) your dress must be … (He ponders and then turns to the guest.) Shall we make the punishment tough or easy? Guest Will you follow my suggestion? Husband Maybe, tell me what it is. Wife (Waving her hands and talking as if to very distant people.) Am I visible? Can you hear me? (The men look at her, and then return to their discussion.) Guest Maybe to listen to what I say, but then stick to your own decision? Husband But whether I follow your advice, or stick to my decision how can you find out unless you try it? (While the husband and the guest glare at each other, the wife puts her shoes on and returns to her place.) Husband What about the punishment? Wife I gave you the chance, but you failed to use it. Husband You’re a sore loser. But from now on, the loser must perform the punishment. I’m serious! (During the second round of the game, the husband takes two cards and the wife sees his attempt to cheat.) Wife You took two cards, put one back. Husband No, I took only one; you can count if you like. Wife (When she counts it’s as he said.) But I saw you taking two cards. Husband You just play the card! Wife (Throwing her cards down on the table.) I’m not playing! (The husband strikes her on the face with his cards. She feels more ashamed than hurt, and leaves the table with bowed head, and goes into the house. The husband collects the cards.) Guest Why did you hit her?

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The Guest (Engida): A One Act Play  113 Husband (Slowly crosses to the guest, takes the rose out of his pocket and suddenly bowing with an exaggerated gesture.) Oh, my Lord! Will you give me permission to hit Mrs. Wife just once? (Pause. The husband snatches the petals of the rose and throws them at the guest.) You think I’m cruel? Forget it! There are a lot of things that you don’t understand. (Pause.) Do you know fortune telling with cards? (The guest does not answer.) Wait, I’ll show you. (Singing a traditional song associated with witchcraft, he wears artificial hair and beard. He sits on the raised platform covered with grass, and starts the fortune telling.) Husband (After arranging the cards, takes out one card and looks at it.) I see a long winding road in the dark. (Takes another card.) You’ll get a fortune from an unexpected source. (Another card.) There is a woman you are smitten with; she is also looking at you with besotted eyes. (Another card.) I see a journey … and you are not alone. (Another card.) A man is concealed behind you … he is armed; he has a gun … he is looking at you with terrifying eyes … we’ll find a remedy for that. (Pause.) Why is your face getting pale? Do you find what I’m saying to be true? … It’s only for amusement. (Disappointed, collects the cards.) Guest I don’t like things related to witchcraft. Husband Are you scared? Guest It’s not that, but I don’t want to fool around with things I don’t know much about. (Pause.) How much do you know about witchcraft? Husband Hey hey, take it easy my friend! We can drop it. (Silence. The husband seems to spot a spider in the air; grabbing its web, drops it on the ground, and while raising his foot to squash it, the guest makes a sound of disgust and looks away. The husband smiles mischievously and gives the spider directions like a traffic policeman.) Husband Do you know the story of Othello? Guest I saw the play when I was in England. Husband Great! It’s a blessing to talk to a learned one! (Pause.) I am Othello! As you know the story well, you know what I mean! Guest (Pause.) Would you agree, if I made a suggestion? Husband What kind of suggestion? Guest You have to accept it before you know what it is. Husband (Suspects a trick and accepts with hesitation.) OK. Guest Let’s change places. Husband (Wondering.) Meaning? Guest You take my place, and I’ll take yours. Husband And then? Guest We’ll see. Husband For how long? Guest That, my friend, you can decide. (The husband agrees with hesitation. While changing places with formality, one creates the mirror image of the other. The guest takes off his coat and in a relaxed

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114  Manyazewal Endeshaw mood gulps his beer, and looks at the husband.) Guest Hey cheer up, why are you quiet? (The husband is confused.) Oh, your beer is finished; shall I get you another one? Husband (Getting up.) I’ll get it myself. Guest (Loudly.) What? … “I’ll get it myself ”? … Have you been here before? Husband What? Guest In that case, you must have visited my bedroom too! Husband (Understands the game.) I … no, today is my first time. OK, get me a beer. (The guest shows his appreciation and while crossing to the front door, he repeats the tricks the husband played on him earlier. When the husband is about to sit, the guest turns and with a loud voice ….) Guest Please take your seat, Sir! (The husband is bewildered and straitens, but when he realizes that it is his own trick played upon him, he calmly starts to sit. But again the guest turns ….) Guest Feel at home! (The guest goes into the house. The husband is confused, and tries to understand the situation. Suddenly the coquettish laughter of the wife is heard from inside the house. Unable to hold out any more, he approaches the door and peers through a crack … Sensing the return of the guest, he runs back and sits at his former seat, picks up a bottle and when he is about to take a swig, realizes his mistake and moves to his present seat. The guest comes back with a bottle of beer and a glass on a tray, and pours the beer in such a way that the glass is filled with foam. He gives it to the husband, and when he is about to take a sip ….) Guest (In a loud voice.) Wine maketh glad the heart of man! (They then go through a shorter version of the wiping lips routine. Whispers.) Guest You love my wife, right? Husband (In a loud voice.) Which wife? Guest (Anxiously looks towards the house.) Shush … take it easy, and tell me the truth. I swear I’m not going to be cross with you. But don’t lie to me. Husband Well … it’s not in the way you just … Guest In whatever way it is, I wouldn’t be cross with you. But don’t think that you can get away with lying! Husband (Stressed and fidgeting.) H’m … Guest (Encouraging.) That’s good, come on! However upsetting it might be, you just give me the truth! Husband Well it’s not easy to talk frankly about how one feels … (Their exchange gets faster and faster.) Guest Prizes and trophies, ready to be given. Husband What I really want to say is … Guest No prizes, no trophies. Husband Since our feeling is complex … Guest (Cuts in with a loud voice.) You shut up! Husband What?

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The Guest (Engida): A One Act Play  115 (Husband is first stunned, and then gets angry and energetically moves forward, which is met by the same reaction from the guest. For a moment they stand face to face ready for a fight.) Guest If I had known that you are such a malicious coward, I wouldn’t have asked you! (Finally the husband realizes that he has to keep on playing the game and backs down. The guest takes off his glasses, and puts on the husband’s sunglasses, crosses to the reclining chair and gets comfortable. Pause.The husband crosses to the back of platform, takes out a piece of costume for Othello and in a loud voice recites from Act 5, Scene 2, but not in the right sequence.) Husband Let me not name it to you, you chaste stars! Guest What? Husband That handkerchief I so loved and gave thee Thou gavest to Cassio. I saw my handkerchief in’s hand. o perjured woman! thou dost stone my heart, And makest me call what I intend to do A murder, which I thought a sacrifice: I saw the handkerchief. Guest Time is up! Husband Had all his hairs been lives, my great revenge Had stomach for them all. Guest I said, time is up! Husband … confess thee freely of thy sin; For to deny each article with oath Cannot remove nor choke the strong conception That I do groan withal. Thou art to die. Guest Hey you, time is up I said! Husband I must weep, But they are cruel tears: this sorrow’s heavenly; It strikes where it doth love. (The husband strangles the guest, who fights for his life; finally, the husband throws the guest down from the reclining chair; the guest coughs and tries to get air.) Husband “There is no magic cure, for those bewitched by Art” said one of our great poets. And I’m created for the stage! (The husband takes his sunglasses from the guest and on his way out, groans with pain.) Husband Ah! I’ve got a head ache! (He exits, then coming back, unseen by the guest.) Do you have a wife? (He goes out laughing. The guest is shocked, and crosses himself. After a while the wife enters wearing a simple nightdress that shows her attractive legs. She looks crushed and carries a candleholder with burning candles. She places the candles on the table and sits.) Wife Is he gone? Guest Yes.

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116  Manyazewal Endeshaw Wife I understand that you find his behaviour strange. Please forgive him. (Pause.) I don’t know how to put it, but his head … Guest Yes, he told me. Wife (Surprised.) He told you? Guest I think he went out to buy tablets. Wife (Pause.) I feel sorry for him. He was a good person before being committed to a mental hospital. Guest Was he committed? Wife He was sick for a long time. Guest That means what he has told me is not true. Wife What has he told you? Guest That he had another fiancée and you .… Wife Would hang myself unless he is mine? … That’s a story he tells every­ body. Guest Then how come you married? Wife We’re not married. (Pause.) We are just living together. (Pause.) We even sleep in separate beds. (Pause.) But he believes that we are husband and wife. He even talks about our wedding. (Pause.) Once I tried to explain to him that we are not married, and the wedding is an illusion he created in his mind. He went berserk! I was afraid that he was going mad, and left the matter at that. Guest How did you come to live together then? Wife It’s a long story. Guest (Looks at his watch.) I would like you to tell me. Wife (Pause.) My father died before I was born. My mother remarried not long after I was born. When I grew up, I had to do all the household chores. Why my mother wanted me to work, while they could afford to employ a maid, made me wonder even at that time. What is more amazing is that my mother did not want my younger sister to help me. Our age difference is not much. If I asked her to pass me something, it’s my mother who jumped up to do it. When I said, “But it’s my sister I asked, not you,” my mother would say, “You want the thing, right? You just take it!” I used to feel that she was my stepmother. (Pause.) If I brought my friends home, the whole day she would be angry. But for my sister’s friends, she would be extra sweet. I don’t understand it even now. In my own house, I felt like a stranger . Guest How long were your parents married? Wife They were not married. I was born out of wedlock. (The guest makes a gesture of understanding. Pause.) I started spending most of my time reading novels. And I borrowed most of the books from him. Guest You knew him even then? Wife We were living in the same neighbourhood. He was then a university student, and could easily get books. But there was nothing between us other than the books. I’m not sure, but maybe the kind of man I want is like the ones in stories, because I have never felt anything for any man.

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The Guest (Engida): A One Act Play  117 I used to live in a dream world. But I prefer dreaming in the daytime; nights I enjoy reading! If my mother saw light in my bed room at night, thinking that I’m wasting money, she would be angry. So I bought candles whenever I got money, and read by candlelight. Guest That must be the time when you fell in love with candles. Wife It must have been. Finally, I quarreled with my sister, and I slapped her. Then my mother beat me with a stick. I got sick. He was the one who took me to hospital. He had graduated and was employed at the time. It was only him and my step father who visited me in the hospital. Guest How come that you haven’t fallen in love with him after all he has done for you? Wife You think you love someone because of favours? That’s not the way. You can fall in love even with someone whose behaviour you don’t like. I don’t know, but I regard him as my brother. When I was about to leave the hospital, he offered to take me in as a sister, until I sorted things out. At first, I refused. Since I couldn’t bear the thought of seeing my mother again, I accepted his offer and came to this house. Keeping his word, he took me in as his sister. (Her smiling face changes to a serious expression.) But slowly he started to consider me his wife. I couldn’t take it. He forced me to sleep with him! But I always feel as if I’m sleeping with my brother; it’s repulsive. But he won’t understand. It’s so horrible! Guest (Remains sad for a while.) Why don’t you leave him? Wife Where can I go? To my mother, who is more like a stepmother? (Pause.) Sometimes I feel like going to my father. Guest But …you told me that he is dead. Wife Wouldn’t my dead father be better than my living mother? At times death is better than life! When I sometimes get confused, do you know what I ask myself? “Am I really born? What if I’m still in my mother’s womb dreaming?” (Pause.) Who knows? Maybe we get born when we finish this dream. What if the so called death is just the end of the dream? You know why I think like this? I feel that there is another world which is so beautiful, where life is perfect and people live without problems, disease and pain, without crying and agony. I don’t mean heaven where virtuous people are supposed to go. If you believe in heaven, you must also believe in hell. But what kind of God would create such a horrible place? On the other hand, to consider life as a mere passage from the mother’s womb to the womb of the earth would be a bitter joke! That’s why I take this world as a laboratory where people are tested and pass through. Just like when we wake up from a terrible nightmare, and feel joy because it didn’t really happen, we feel the same when we are born in the perfect world. All the blunders we committed, and the agony and pain we experienced here would be forgotten. We’ll become perfect! There will only be happiness, peace and love. So I’m eager to be born, to wake up from my dream! Guest You don’t have to think like that. You can’t know what’s in the

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118  Manyazewal Endeshaw future. Wife My problem is also not being able to know what’s in the future. (Pause.) But I realized a long time ago that I couldn’t go on like this. Guest (Pause.) Is there any way that I can help you? Wife I don’t think you can help me. I have nowhere to go! Unless one of us dies … (Pause.) Guest If you are so bitter, you can come with me. Wife Where? Guest To my house. Wife Are you living alone? Guest Actually I’m not alone. Wife You are married then. Guest No, I’m living with my two sisters. Wife Then what would they say if you suddenly brought a woman along? Guest Well, I’ll explain the situation. Wife How would you do that? (Pause.) Are you going to say, “I’ve known this woman for less than a week, but because she told me how dreadfully life treated her, I brought her with me.” Guest No, I would tell them that I’ve known you for a long time. Wife Are you going to lie? Guest So what? Wife (Pause.) How come you are not married? Guest (Pause.) I’ve tried, but it failed. Wife How do you mean? Guest I had a fiancée. (Pause.) The surprising thing is, when I saw you in the theatre, I was overwhelmed. Wife I don’t understand. Guest You look exactly like my former fiancée. (Pause.) Anyhow we were finally separated. Wife What happened? Guest She was … she was dating someone else. Wife Did she love you? Guest I used to think she did, but that makes no difference! Wife Why not? Guest What do you mean? Wife Even if she was dating, she didn’t dump you, right? Guest And? Wife How can you abandon a woman you love, only because she was dating someone else? Guest I don’t understand what you are saying! Wife You should have given her more time. She may have come back after evaluating the other guy. (Emotionally.) Had you loved her truly … Guest (Equally emotional.) I loved her more than myself ! Do you know whom she was dating? My best friend, who was more like a brother to me! … Let’s drop it, you can’t understand it.

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The Guest (Engida): A One Act Play  119 Wife (Softly.) I understand. (She sits at the left edge of the platform.) Guest You see, in love, my devotion is absolute, just like in religion. What would you feel if someone suddenly picks up the idol you worship, and saying, “This is just a figure created by human mind, constructed by human hands!” breaks it and shows you its emptiness? Would you worship it again? Wouldn’t you get angry and ashamed for being cheated for so long? And would you not hate yourself, the idol, and the religion? (Pause.) That’s what happened to me. (Pause.) I believed in this girl; love became my religion, and she my guardian angel! I spread my honour under her feet so that she could walk on it; I surrendered my pride for her beauty; her village became a place of worship, and her home my shrine! Like a torch I burned my childhood dream for her! Her wish became my command! My daily prayer was to recite her tenderness and to sing her hymn of glory! (Silence.) And suddenly this holy idol of mine has fallen from grace and became a human being; an ordinary being. The aura of glory darkened, the sacred spirituality was replaced by a mortal body. I discovered her perfection to be false, her innocence fallacious. She turned out to be like any other woman, any other human. (Pause.) I hated myself, I gave up on love! (She slowly gets up and crosses to the right edge of the platform where he is sitting, and kneels at his feet.) Wife (Looking up at his face.) Forgive me please! Guest (Looks at her in confusion.) What for? Wife For your broken heart … for the sleepless long nights … for the poisoning of your passion with hatred … for suffering endlessly. Guest But you haven’t done anything to me. Wife In her name give me your forgiveness! (Holding her shoulders he raises her, kisses her brow, and she embraces him. They stay in this position for a while.) Wife Are you willing to take me with you? Guest Yes. Wife Then let’s go right now. Guest Aren’t you taking anything? Wife I want nothing! (They cross to the gate, but before exiting they freeze. The husband, smoking a cigarette, enters slowly, and getting closer to the guest, blows smoke in his face. The wife unhurriedly turns and heads toward the reclining chair, and later sits.) Husband Are you leaving? Sorry for my long absence. Stay for a while, please! I promise to see you out. (He gently pushes him towards a seat.) You haven’t even finished your beer. (Turns to the wife.) Couldn’t you persuade him to stay, honey? Can’t you entertain your own guest? (The husband takes the empty bottles and the burning candles into the house. The wife and the guest look at each other, and she gestures him to go out. He points in the direction of the house, but she encourages him to go. When they reach the exit, the husband returns with beer. The wife pretends that she is showing the compound

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120  Manyazewal Endeshaw to the guest, and they slowly cross back to the chairs. The husband pours the beer for the guest.) Husband Why do you think I stayed out for so long? An idea flashed in to my mind, and I wanted to give it a shape. “This gentleman is my wife’s guest, and that means he is also my guest. So what shall I do for him?” I asked myself. (Pause.) And finally I found a gift that would change your life. (Pause.) Guess. Wife Let me try, let me try . .. Husband Don’t you respect our guest? (Pause.) I bet you can’t work it out. In our land the profession of psychiatry is not rewarding. So, I’ll tell you a story, and changing it into a play, you call it “A true story”. It would be one hell of a success! What do you think? Guest But … I’m not a man of literature. Husband Sometimes we discover our talent quite accidentally. And you don’t have to be a literature graduate. Don’t you know Bewk’etu? He studied psychology like you, but haven’t you read what he writes? (Pause.) Leave it, if you don’t like the idea. Guest Actually it’s getting late … maybe some other time … Husband Some other time? Do you have an intention of coming here again? Guest If you want to tell me… Husband I do want to tell you, but you refuse to listen. Guest Well … if it’s short … Husband It’s short, very short. (Pause.) There are three people in the story. Guest Two of them are husband and wife, and they are bored with life. Husband One day, discussing how to pass the time, they found an idea. Wife To do a real play! Husband The plays in all the theatres are fakes. They make the audience that comes to watch them a distant observer. Wife And a paying audience at that. Husband But in the play of this husband and wife, the invited does not pay, and he also participates in the play. Hence it’s not possible to invite many people. Wife For one night, one guest! Husband At the beginning they don’t tell him that it’s a play. Do you know why? Wife If they tell him, the play would be spoiled. Husband So at the end … Wife We are glad of your participation. But now we are tired, and begging your pardon, we want to rest. Good night, Sir! (They introduce each other with outstretched hands and bow to the guest. They then run around the platform and repeat the routine.The guest is extremely confused.) Husband Is there no applause? Wife We are sorry that you don’t like our play. (During the following dialogue, the husband and the wife clear the table and carry it above the guest’s head to the backdrop. They then move the two side chairs down from

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The Guest (Engida): A One Act Play  121 the raised platform and sit. The guest remains alone on the platform, his isolation emphasized.) Husband The problem with a true play is that there is no repeat performance. It’s like childhood; once it’s over, you can’t have it again! Guest (Finds speaking difficult.) All … all that you did … all that you said was prearranged? Both (Together.) For your pleasure! Guest I just … I don’t understand. Wife But you were fabulous, and you should feel proud! At times we come across suspicious ones who spoil the play from the outset. But you are marvellous! It would have been great to play with you all the time! Husband But it should always be a new guest. Otherwise it’ll be boring. Wife Just as in life. Guest This is madness! (Pause.) How come you are so cruel to each other? Husband Cruel, you say? Guest It’s hatred that made you behave like this, boundless hatred! Wife What do you mean? Guest You can’t face each other. So you need someone else as a target for your hatred. That’s why you invite and torture a guest. (Pause.) You may not realize it, but you are the ones who are really suffering. The guest may suffer for an hour, but you have to live with the pain. How long do you think you can stand it? Why don’t you discuss and try to solve the real problem? Do you think you can hide from reality? (Pause.) I would rather commit suicide than live in such misery! How can you stand it? (Pause.) I really feel sorry for you! I’ve never seen such cruelty between couples! Even murder wouldn’t be as disgusting! Instead of wounding each other, why don’t you get a divorce? Husband Hold your horses, Mister! Is this the kind of advice one expects from a psychiatrist? (The wife starts crying, and both look at her in silence.) What is it, my love? Wife I can’t take it any more! I tolerated your game only because I don’t have the courage to commit suicide. But now I have had enough! Husband What do you mean? Wife I’m disgusted! Husband You mean you didn’t like the game? Wife Never! (Continues crying.) Husband OK, stop crying, darling. (Moves closer to comfort her.) Wife Don’t you come near me! (He stops.) You can’t imagine how much I hate you! You made me cruel like yourself ! You turned me into a monster, like yourself ! I don’t have an excuse for all the crime I committed! Husband Fine. If you hate it so much,we don’t have to play it any more. (Pause.) We will design a better game than this one. Wife I don’t want any kind of game! I want to live, you understand? Live like other people, take pleasure in life, experience true laughter …

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122  Manyazewal Endeshaw Husband Alright my beauty, we will do everything as you wish. Wife You and I? Do you think I can live with you after this? I’ve had enough, I said. I can’t bear the sight of you, let alone live with you! I’ll begin life from scratch; alone! Husband How about me? Wife You can do whatever you like, it’s your business. I’m going out now. Husband Where? Wife It doesn’t matter. I’m not going to face anything worse than what I’ve suffered here. And even if I do, I’ll accept it as a blessing; I’ll pay my dues for the crime I committed. Husband This is impossible. You can’t leave me so suddenly. Wife Why not? Are you going to stop me by force? Husband I don’t mean it like that, my darling! How can you leave so suddenly after all those years we spent together? Do you accept what this stupid man said? It’s not true. We love each other; I have never hated you, sweetheart. And I know that you don’t hate me. Wife How do you know? (Pause.) No, what he said is right. What we have is not love, but hate. Every time you say “I love you”, what I read in your eyes is boredom. Your embrace felt like a strangle, and your kiss like a bite! There was no love between us. We must have misunderstood the meaning of love. What kept us together, perhaps, has been our need to wound each other. Now I give up; so leave me alone! Husband Do you really want to go? Wife Yes. Husband Are you sure? Wife I’ve never been as sure as this before. Husband Let me beg you; don’t leave me now. Just give me time until I get used to the idea. Wife What idea? Husband The idea of living without you. Wife How about me? If I stay here any more … I’ll explode! I’ve suffered enough. The slightest slip now would certainly drive me crazy. (Pause.) So, for you too, separation is better than living with a crazy woman. Husband What if I go crazy too? Wife (Pause.) I may return then, if our malady is our sanity. Husband Let’s forget the past, and let me ask you like it’s our first time. (Goes down on his knee.) I’ll do anything you want, any wish you have, let’s get married!. Be my wife! Wife (Crossing toward him, with sadness.) What difference would that make? I’ve my character, and you have yours; we can’t change. (Lifts him up.) We’d better separate. (Tenderly touching his cheek.) I’m sorry, but there is no other way. (Moving away.) I’m not taking anything now; we’ll divide up the property calmly tomorrow. Husband (Grabs her hand.) But it’s too late now, my love. You can go tomorrow.

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The Guest (Engida): A One Act Play  123 Wife (Snatches her hand.) In this house of nightmare, I can’t even stay five more minutes, let alone the whole night. (To the guest softly.) Can you accompany me to a hotel? Guest If you want … Husband You prefer a stranger to me to accompany you? Wife I would prefer even the devil! (To the guest, again softly.) I’m indebted to you for opening my eyes to the nightmare I live in. I wouldn’t dare to ask your forgiveness for the crime I committed on you. Guest It’s alright …(Looks at his watch.) But if you decide to go… before it’s getting late … Husband Hey you, this is none of your business! Whether she goes or not, it’s between her and me. If you want to go just get out. Nobody is stopping you. But if you are not going … (Picks up a beer bottle and advances toward the guest threateningly. The wife jumps in between them and shields the guest.) Wife You can’t touch him! Husband What? (Pause.) What are you going to do? Wife If you harm him, I’ll kill you! Husband (Shocked.) You’ll kill me to protect a stranger? Wife He’s not a stranger to me. Husband You mean you knew him before? (Pause.) So you brought him today in order to leave with him? (Pause.) Aha, everything was planned in advance. This is what I call a game! It’s better by far than all the games we have been playing! I have no choice but appreciate your talent! I used to think that I was better than you, but now I should bow to your genius! You are perfect! (Pause. Crossing to the house.) Goodbye! (She also crosses toward gate, holding the guest’s hand. Before entering the house, the husband stops and turns.) Husband Just give me the chance to say one more thing. (She stops.) The time we spent together was marvellous! I have no regrets no matter what! You are an amazing woman! I wish you all the best! (He goes in and they go out. For a little while the stage is bare. Then a gunshot is heard. After a few seconds the wife comes back and runs into the house. The guest stands at the entrance. Then a terrifying scream is heard …The wife, devastated, comes out slowly and sits.) Wife Oh, how horrible! Guest What has he done? Wife As I suspected, he blew his head off! Guest Is he dead? Wife Go inside and see him. Guest I don’t like… seeing corpses. (Pause.) Is there anything I can do for you? Wife There is nothing you can do.You’d better leave. Guest How about you? Wife I have no choice but to stay.

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124  Manyazewal Endeshaw Guest No, it’s better that we go together. There is nothing you can do. Those who heard the gunshot will call the police and you’ll be accused of murder. Wife (Starts crying.) But I didn’t do anything wrong. Guest I know that, but the police wouldn’t, so they’ll send you to prison until the situation is sorted out. Wife I wouldn’t care if they sent me to hell! Wherever I go, I won’t forget his bloodstained face! Guest But staying in prison would aggravate the situation. If you are outside, at least you would be active and be able to forget. Wife But where can I go? Guest You can come with me. Wife What then? What would I do tomorrow and the day after? Guest You can stay with me if you want. Wife You’d allow me to stay with you after all the things I did to you? Knowing what kind of woman I am, would you let me live in your house? Guest You are a good woman. I think it’s your husband’s behaviour that influenced you. Wife If I live with you, what would I be to you? Your maid? Guest Why? That’s not at all my intention. Wife What’s your intention then? Guest You can live with us just like a sister. Wife Aha, that means I don’t qualify to be your wife! You are right; who needs such a bad woman like me for a wife? Guest I don’t mean it like that. Besides, you wouldn’t believe me if I suddenly asked you to be my wife. Wife You bear me a grudge. That’s why you don’t trust yourself. Guest OK, I’ll do anything you want. Wife Why? Why are you kind to me? Guest Because I feel sorry for you, and besides you have nowhere to go now. Wife Aha, I understand. To burden me with favours, and then to do any­ thing you like with me, as a way of settling scores. Thank you Sir, I don’t need your sympathy. Guest How can I make you understand? OK, let’s go now and if you want you can stay in my house, or in a hotel. Tomorrow we will discuss everything calmly. If the police come, it wouldn’t look good for me either. Wife So, all along you were afraid for yourself? Guest For you too! Wife Don’t you worry about me. I would rather stay with my dead husband! Guest But why? Wife Because he chose death, rather than living without me. Guest What can you do for him? Wife Nothing. But I wouldn’t feel guilty, because I didn’t abandon him

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The Guest (Engida): A One Act Play  125 when he is dead. Besides he is not going to hurt me in any way now. Guest But I wouldn’t hurt you either. Wife Are you sure? Guest Why would I hurt you? Wife How would I know? But I’m scared of you. Deep down you must be cruel. Guest Why do you say that? Have you seen me doing anything wrong? Wife You think of marrying me, while my husband’s body is still warm. (When he tries to speak, she stops him with a gesture.) You haven’t said it, but that’s what you are thinking. What can be more horrible for a wife than this? Guest But a few minutes back you were ready to leave him. Wife A few minutes back? But that seems to have happened a long time ago! How can I bear him a grudge after he died? Guest I can’t understand you! Wife No, you can’t. My husband was right; you are stupid! Guest Alright madam. (Starts going out.) Wife Yes, get going; nobody is begging you to stay! You were pretending to be kind when you said we could go together. (He goes out.) You were not sincere! Guest (Comes back angry.) But what can I do? I asked you to come with me, but you refused. And then you started to insult me. What is it that you want from me? Wife (Starts crying.) I don’t know what I’m doing myself. Forgive me, it’s because I’m shocked that I behave like this. OK, take me with you. Guest OK. (She leans on his shoulder and they cross to the gate.) Wife Oh, it’s very cold. Can you get me my overcoat from the bedroom? Guest (Starts to move to the house and midway he stops.) I’m sorry, but I don’t want to go in there. Why don’t you wear my jacket? Wife But what about you? Guest (Putting his jacket on her shoulders.) It’s alright, but let’s hurry. (They start to move to the gate, but then she stops.) Wife Would you promise me one thing? Guest What? Wife Tonight … we are not going to sleep together. Guest What are you saying? You think I’m an animal! Wife How do you mean? Guest How can I do such a thing after taking you home in these circum­ stances? Wife What if we met in a different circumstance? Guest (Lost for words.) Even in a different circumstance … in one day … Wife Are you telling me that you’ve never slept with a woman in one day? Guest Perhaps … if I was drunk … Wife How can I be sure that you wouldn’t force me once I’m in your house?

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126  Manyazewal Endeshaw Guest I’ll give you my word. Wife What if you disregard your word? Guest OK, I’ll leave you at my place and I’ll go to a hotel. Wife OK, let’s go. (Midway she stops again.) One last question. What if we quarrel afterwards and you inform the police as if I killed my husband? Guest I could never do such a thing, trust me please. Wife Trust? How can I trust anyone at my age? When people quarrel, they use any means to hurt each other. Even model lovers become mortal enemies when they quarrel. I think their hatred is proportional to the intensity of their love. So when we quarrel, you will forget your promise. And I will live in perpetual fear lest I annoy you. And you’ll have the right to do anything to me. What kind of life would that be? Why should I condemn my life to everlasting anxiety for fear of a few months’ imprisonment? No Sir, I’m not going with you. (She goes into the house wearing his jacket. The guest is confused. He then drinks the beer he left, and calms down.) Guest OK, give me my jacket and I’ll go. Wife (From within.) Come and take it. Guest I don’t want to go in to your house! Wife And I’m not going to leave my husband, ever! Guest OK, goodnight! (Crosses to gate.) Wife Wait a minute. (He slowly moves back …Suddenly he screams and tries to run away but falls. The husband, wearing a three-piece suit, comes in walking like a ghost holding the guest’s jacket. The guest slowly approaches to take his jacket, but the husband points a gun at him. The guest falls again trying to run away. The husband then throws jacket toward the guest who approaches slowly and takes it. When the husband shouts, “a thief, a thief, a lover a lover!” the guest runs out. Tango music plays, and the wife comes out wearing a long formal dress, holding a glass of wine. She sips from the glass and they tango. After the dance they sit at opposite corners of the raised platform.) Husband What kind of a guest will we get next week? Wife It’s your turn to invite the next one. Husband Time and again I insisted on inviting Sebhat the novelist.8 Because of your negligence we missed him. Wife Had we invited him, what could he have said? Husband He would have called me rude. Wife “Keep on playing as if I’m not around”, he would have said. (Pause.) You know, during the game I sometimes feel that you seriously mean what you say. Husband Why do you feel like that? Wife Maybe it’s the intensity I hear in your voice. Husband Or maybe you truly feel what you say. Wife And you? 8

A famous and controversial Ethiopian novelist who introduced Zola’s naturalism to Ethiopia. He passed away a few years before this play was staged.

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The Guest (Engida): A One Act Play  127 Wife Do you hate me? Husband What do you mean? Wife Answer me. Husband Why do you ask? Wife I want to know. Husband Let me be, I’m tired. Wife Meaning? Husband I can’t stand you when you start nagging! Wife Aha, so you can’t stand me; that means you hate me. Husband I didn’t say that. Wife But you feel it. Husband What are you driving at? Wife We quit this game. Husband And then what? Wife And then … I don’t know. What do other couples do when they are alone? Not much. Maybe the wife tells him rumours. Wife And the husband tells her bitterly that his company survives on his hard work, but when promotion comes he is passed over. Husband The rest is about shopping stuff. Spices: ginger, cardamom, fenugreek, star anise … (Pause.) Or maybe they just nag each other. Wife Why would they do that? Husband Perhaps the husband comes in drunk. Wife By the way, why do married men like to drink in bars? Husband I think it’s to forget their wives. Wife How about single men: to forget their loneliness? Husband Because they don’t have wives nagging them to come home. (Long pause.) Wife Why are you quiet? Husband Can I ask you something? (Pause.) During the game, after I say good bye, what would you do if I truly killed myself? Wife What do you think I would do? Husband Probably you would leave with the guest. (Pause.) Wouldn’t you? Wife Why don’t you try it and see what happens? Husband I would if it were possible to see. Wife You know what? I always feel that our souls would float around for a few months and watch everything. Husband Really? Why don’t you try it then? Wife Why should I? I know that if I died, you would immediately get married. Husband Not at all! I wouldn’t even let them bury you! Wife (With a slight disgust.) What are you going to do with me? Husband I’ll get you mummified and put you next to my bed. Wife To make me jealous when you bring in other women? Husband To be together! Wife But if you truly loved me, you would have committed suicide rather

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128  Manyazewal Endeshaw than live with my lifeless body. Husband (Stands, and taking out his gun points it at his temple.) Is that what you want me to do? Wife I was only curious to know what you would have done. Husband Let me show you a new game. (The wife approaches him curiously. He shows her how to play Russian roulette.) Now there is only one bullet in the magazine.The game is to pull the trigger after rolling the magazine. Wife Why don’t you show me first so that I can understand it properly? Husband Are you afraid? Wife Let’s bet. Husband With what? Wife The winner can do anything to the loser. If the winner survives. (She takes the gun, rolls the magazine and holds it to her temple. He slowly backs away. She pulls the trigger and survives, but is shocked and is about to fall. He grabs and takes her to the platform and she sits. When she starts shaking, he takes off his jacket and puts it around her shoulders. By embracing her he tries to give her warmth. After a while she recovers, smiles at him and formally gives him the gun. He goes to centre stage, stands with legs apart and puts the gun to his temple with bravado. But slowly his fear overwhelms him and cannot do it.) Husband It’s so horrible! Wife (Approaches and taking the gun.) Yes, it’s horrible! (She slowly moves backward and aims the gun at him. He is frightened.) Husband Please don’t kill me …don’t do it … (She shoots, he is shocked, but is still alive. He kneels at the side of the platform, and she moves sideways. When she points the gun at him.) Husband Please forgive me … I didn’t know how much I hurt you … (She shoots; he survives again but starts crying. She gets closer and aims the gun at his head. He grabs her legs, and crying, he begs her to spare his life. Finally, she changes her mind and hesitantly holds his head with her left hand. She then sings a lullaby.) Wife The baby’s father, Please come hither. Carrying his milk on your head, And on a donkey his bread. (Light slowly fades out.)

The End

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An Absurdist in Addis Ababa Manyazewal Endeshaw’s Engida

ZERIHUN BIREHANU & JANE PLASTOW

At the time of writing Engida is the most popular play in production among some fourteen shows on offer each week in the state theatres of Addis Ababa.1 It is also one of two plays written and directed by Manyazewal Endeshaw2 (from here on in, Manyazewal in keeping with Ethiopian usage where the first name is the given name and the second is the father’s first name) currently being performed in the Ethiopian capital, which is, with the possible exceptions of Cape Town or Johannesburg, the most consistently prolific location for the production of professional live theatre on the African continent. As with all plays put on in these theatres it was written and performed in Amharic, the language of the Amhara people who make up just over a quarter of the Ethiopian population, who ruled the Ethiopian Empire for hundreds of years before it was overthrown in 1974, and whose tongue has become the language of commerce, state and culture.3 Manyazewal was born into urban poverty in 1960 in Addis Ababa. His father was uneducated and his mother disabled, and Manyazewal rose through the hugely over-crowded public school system to gain a place at Addis Ababa University as one of the first students of Theatre Studies in 1977. He also grew up during a hugely politically traumatic time period. In 1974 the ancient Ethiopian Empire and its ancient monarch, Haile Selassie, were overthrown by a military junta, the Derg that, in the process of establishing its dictatorial authority, imposed a reign of terror over the people, particularly in the capital.4 Like many of his contemporaries the young Manyazewal was involved in opposition socialist politics. As he recalled: ‘Most of us were members of different opposition political parties. There were many types of brutality. You could lose your life or be imprisoned because of a small incident, and you could be forgotten in a prison. It was a dark atmosphere, and the hope of survival was meagre.’5 Manyazewal himself sees his attraction to absurdism as originating in the world of what came to be known as The Red Terror6:

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130  Zerihun Birehanu & Jane Plastow After passing through such experiences, I never thought that people would start to live properly and plan the future. When you go out of your house, it’s with fear and foreboding. You may get shot at or imprisoned for no apparent reason. When we were having a walk, if we heard the motor sound of a Land Rover, we were overwhelmed with such terror that we could not even turn our heads to check whether we heard right; because it is mostly with this car that the soldiers or armed members of government affiliated political organizations snatch you from the street and throw you into one of the many prisons established for this purpose. Due to such a terrifying political and social atmosphere, the traditional values of Ethiopian honesty, brotherhood, truthfulness and other moral values were challenged. I think it was due to such frustrations that I was pushed towards enjoying and immersing myself in absurd plays. An outstanding student, on graduation Manyazewal was employed as a junior lecturer, and in 1985 he was given a scholarship to the then East Germany to study for his MA. The racism he encountered in Germany was again traumatic, as was the revelation that many Europeans pitied and despised the nation he had grown up seeing as an historic centre of high civilization. Again the playwright sees this experience as feeding into his perception of disillusion and the absurdity of life that he has so often reflected in his theatre making. Back in Ethiopia in 1988, Manyazewal resumed his job at the University but also continued translating and directing the absurdist plays that attracted him from the West. He worked with like-minded fellow graduates, producing plays such as Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author (1984), Harold Pinter’s The Lover (1990) and Edward Albee’s Zoo Story (1993), often to tiny audiences and critical incomprehension from a public entirely unused to this previously unknown dramatic tradition. The poor audience response only further alienated Manyazewal who remembers that: At the time I really didn’t care whether the audience understood my play or not. I even believed that if the audience didn’t understand the play then it was good. In a way, I was revenging myself on the audience. In 1992 after the fall of the dictator, Mengistu Haile Mariam, the play­ wright was offered the general managership of the huge 1,400 seater National Theatre where he had a vision of introducing a regime of creativity and vision. He had not reckoned with the bureaucratic inertia of the organization: It was the worst time of my life. I was wrong. I thought I would create a fertile ground for talented actors to perform, and encourage young writers and directors. But I was mistaken. Honesty and good will alone doesn’t help. There were lots of bureaucratic entanglements of which I had no experience. If I had a chance to live again, I would have canceled that part. The only things I did in four years were directing Hamlet7 and Bale Kaba ena Bale Daba.8

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An Absurdist in Addis Ababa  131 Manyazewal then returned to the University until 2000, since when he has worked as a freelance playwright, director, film-maker and translator, with periods of intense activity interspersed with fallow years. He has won a range of national and international awards for his film and theatre work. Only recently has his public persona shifted: from being seen as the strange, avant-garde, often incomprehensible intellectual of the Ethiopian arts world, he is now viewed by many as Ethiopia’s leading contemporary playwright and director.

Engida (The Guest) The seed for Engida was planted when Manyazewal was reading about several modern Greek plays and came across this synopsis of The City, a 1965 play by Loula Anagnostaki: One act play. Kimon and Elisavet, who constantly move from town to town in an effort to escape their dark past, are searching for ways to co-exist and get along with one another in the present. In each city, the couple is looking for a victim, a person who will help them and their procedure. As soon as the victim is chosen, the game begins; a tiring, psychological game that will inevitably result in despair. Their newest victim is a strange photographer, who takes pictures of people pretending to be dead. The photographer, who uses this reconstruction as a means to overcome death, will fall victim to his own device. The playwright never got to see a script of the complete play, but he took the three characters and the main theme from the synopsis and developed his own story in an Ethiopian context: I don’t do my work with a detailed plan, I work emotionally. I don’t focus on the message or meaning of the play. I concentrate on my personal feeling and instinct. If I like something from a play, that would be enough reason for me to translate or adapt it, and finally direct the play. That is how I chose the synopsis of The City at first. Anagnostaki’s story was simply a catalyst for a play that developed as deeply rooted in Ethiopian culture, and Manyazewal explains just what it was that engaged his imagination: First, the idea of a game is interesting. In Loula’s The City, they (the characters) bring guests to their house and play a game. In life, sometimes we don’t understand which part is a game and which part is not. This is interesting to me. On the other hand, when we think of the position of a guest in our society, who is a highly respected figure, I was interested in a reversal of this as it is in The City. Third, the synopsis gave me the idea of breaking the conventional way of writing and directing the play, and inspired me to write Engida in this form.

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132  Zerihun Birehanu & Jane Plastow A first version of the play was staged in 1990 in the Addis Ababa University theatre. The elite university audience liked the piece and in 1991 the management of the City Hall Theatre invited a production in their venue. It was not a popular success and ran for only some twenty performances. This earlier version was considerably more antagonistic to its audience than the play we publish here. As Manyazewal explains, in that first iteration: ‘At the end of the play, the Guest comes to the audience and says; “That is all. Now you can go home and lead a life not much different from our play.”’ These lines, which the playwright admits he poached in paraphrased form from Jean Genet’s The Balcony, caused considerable offence. In the first version also, the Husband had no profession, and Manyazewal says that he thinks making him a retired actor made him more understandable and accessible to the audience. He was also much more brutal to the Guest, who was in turn more passive in his attitude. Moreover, Manyazewal argues that contemporary audiences have become more sophisticated and accepting of experimental theatre and that all these factors have played into the contemporary interest in the production. Whatever the reasons, the 2015 version, still running at the time of writing, got a vastly different reception from the first outing of Engida. The theatres in Addis Ababa run a repertory system, putting on different shows, six days a week. Engida opened in the coveted Sunday afternoon slot that draws the largest audiences, and then moved up to showing twice a week. The dominant audience for theatre in Addis Ababa tends to be young working men and couples, but the fame of Engida has brought a far more diverse audience, with many older visitors and even numerous family groups. Engida has been reviewed in newspapers and been the subject of discussion programmes on radio and television. A number of commentators have interpreted the play as reflecting and questioning the basis of life in middle-class households in Addis Ababa, and many have said that it accurately depicts many elements of local society. Surafel Wondemu on Radio FM.97 argued: ‘The play questions our different social structures and the bases that these structures are piled on. It also tries to mock our daily existence.’ While on Radio Sheger Professor Nebiyou Baye said that Engida questions the existence of human being and how our life is a repetition. When this repetition would end? If the goal of living is death, why do we do such repetitions again and again? These were the major questions raised in the play.

Staging Engida Most theatre in Ethiopia is broadly realistic, and an interest in the metatheatrical is one way in which Manyazewal differs from his peers. His

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An Absurdist in Addis Ababa  133 most obvious device is the utilization of a stage within the stage. A dais is required centre-stage, with a table and chairs. Here the Husband and Wife have created a set for the games they will play with – or on – their Guest: pantomimes about which chair to select; the minor sadism of forcing the Guest to make a fool of himself by drinking beer from an over-frothy glass; and the performance of the card game and the abortive striptease. The audience is being asked a series of questions about the ‘performance’ of marriage and hospitality that, like peeling an onion, strip away layer after layer, leaving no apparent heart or core to either institution. Engida also incorporates the auditorium into the performance. At the City Hall Theatre, the scene where the Husband is fantasizing – or experiencing – the meeting of his Wife with the Guest, takes place on an upstairs balcony, above and to the left of the audience. She is in the theatre, watching a performance of the show of her ‘story’ while simultaneously participating in that same play. What is reality, what fantasy and what theatre? By implication the audience are drawn into the story and are forced to ask themselves if they are ‘just’ an audience or something much more sinisterly voyeuristic; a part of this absurd, sadistic and potentially deadly ritual is performed week after week in the lives of the couple and in the theatre. Finally, there is the self-conscious performing of the Husband and Wife, into which even the Guest is drawn when he temporarily takes on the role of the Husband. The Wife makes conventional costume changes off-stage when she changes from street clothes into night attire and then into her final vampire-red evening dress; but the Husband has to hand the artificial hair and beard he puts on for his witchcraft moment and the cloak he dons as Othello. While these moments are played in a matter-of-fact manner, as though it is perfectly normal to have a series of costume items just lying around, we are quite obviously in an overtly theatrical world. The Wife even provides theatrical lighting; for her Husband is discovered in the dark and she turns on the lights, before in a later scene relieving the darkness by bringing on candles. By the end of the play the audience is rendered profoundly uncomfortable precisely because they can no longer have any surety about what is play and what a searing indictment – or a tragic revelation – of the impossibility of achieving meaningful relationships or mutual understanding.

Intertextuality Manyazewal Endeshaw has a small obsession with Othello. The play has a long history in Ethiopia. The country’s most internationally renowned playwright, Tsegaye Gebre-Medhin,9 translated and staged it in the 1960s at the National Theatre, and it was revived in a production by leading director Abate Mekuria that ran for three years in the 1980s and which

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134  Zerihun Birehanu & Jane Plastow Manyazewal went to see several times. Then more recently, in 2008, he made a well-regarded film, Desdemona, which is a re-working of the play set in contemporary Ethiopia. So, it is possibly unsurprising that in a play about theatre and marital relationships Othello might rear its head. The playwright explains why he thought Othello would make such a strong intertextual point of reference in Engida: The first thing, Othello is a very sensational and simple story. I like that. Second, I had the chance to attend the rehearsal process when it was directed by Abate Mekuria. Third, I used to read plays that are written with inspiration from another play. For example, Jean Cocteau wrote a play called The Infernal Machine based on the ancient Greek play of Oedipus the King. Every time, I dream of watching such type of plays in our theatre. But the audience should know the earlier play or story that you want to base your writing on. Othello is more intimate to Ethiopian audiences. That is the reason I chose Othello. Repeated references to the play by the actor-Husband are of course a further aspect of meta-theatricality, especially when he not only quotes lines but temporarily assumes the role of his hero. But the character Othello is like an itch he cannot properly scratch. When his Wife first accuses him of jealousy he replies: Husband I am not Othello, nor are you Desdemona. Perhaps it wouldn’t be difficult for me to smother you with a pillow; but if you think that I would kill myself afterwards, you are a fool! That, my dear, was in days gone by! Love, honour, and the like are so outdated! The appositeness of this quote shows something of the carefully layered construction of Engida. Here, near the very beginning of the play, we see a foreshadowing of the very end where Husband, in stark contrast to the Moor, is unable to risk his own death. We also see a central elegiac theme in the play; the idea that somehow people were possibly more true, more loving and more honourable in the past, not just in Shakespeare’s play but in Ethiopia; whereas the contemporary world, at least of the urban middle classes, is corrupted in ways reminiscent of other plays that appeal to Manyazewal such as Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf? This couple may act at times as though they inhabit a tragedy, but they cannot attain such heights: ‘I am not Othello, nor are you Desdemona’. Later, Husband does try to claim that he is Othello and casts Guest as Cassio, nearly strangling him in an apparent fit of jealousy. His knowledge of the script certainly implies that he has played the role in the past for he quotes chunks of Othello’s lines with ease, and this is obviously the persona he aspires to – but quite simply neither he nor his society have the stature for tragedy – they can only, absurdly, caricature the greatness and meaning for which they long.

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An Absurdist in Addis Ababa  135 So far we have mentioned the many European and American playwrights who have influenced Manyazewal’s theatrical tastes, but this is not to see him as a man divorced from his own culture. On the contrary he is a man deeply embedded, not so much in the vast diversities that are Ethiopia, but in the urban aesthetic life of the capital city and of Amharic culture. Woven through Engida are a range of intertextual quotes, both popular and ‘high’ art, from Amharic song, poetry and theatre. The play opens with a traditional lullaby, and is soon followed by what we are told is ‘an old love song’. A great range of poetry, popular, literary and even the ancient Ge’ez language, is given in snippets; and Manyazewal’s great friend Sebhat Gebre-Egziabher, a famous novelist who died in 2012, is invoked. Contrary to the sometime perception in Ethiopia that Manyazewal was in thrall to Western decadent art, Engida shows a man drawing on a deep love and understanding of Amharic orature and literature. This sense is only reinforced when we consider the frequent references to high points in Ethiopian history. So Husband and Guest discuss the great Emperor Menelik and his victory against the Italians at the Battle of Adwa; a unique event that ensured Ethiopian independence and is known to every Ethiopian citizen.10 However, Engida is not afraid to ask questions about even this most heroic of national stories. Guest begins by looking at the mere chance that led to the birth of the conquering Emperor: Guest […] let’s look at the birth of Emperor Menelik. When she was a girl, Menelik’s mother had a dream and said to her friends; “The Sun came out of my womb.” Menelik’s grandmother sent this girl to her favourite son Seifu. But because he had an engagement with another girl, he gave the girl to his elder brother Hailemelekot, and she became pregnant with Menelik. If the girl had slept with Seifu, she may have got pregnant with another child, but never with Menelik, and the history of Ethiopia would have been different. Husband (Truly impressed.) That’s a wonderful thought! If Menelik had not raised the shield against Italians, the Abyssinians would still have been slaves! It’s amazing that the history of a nation is determined by such coincidences! Suddenly, the surest foundations of the Ethiopian Empire and Ethiopian self-esteem are being rocked by the idea that the birth of the national hero was dependent on the smallest turn of events. The playwright loves his culture, and at times seems almost sentimentally attached to a notion of a purer past where love, honour and hospitality could be relied on, but as this unpicking of history shows, any essentialist notion of a triumphant Ethio­pian character or destiny, as sometimes pedalled in crude nationalist discourse, is rapidly debunked. The final text with which Engida engages is that of the Bible. Ethiopia was converted to Christianity in the fourth century ad, and the Ethiopian

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136  Zerihun Birehanu & Jane Plastow Orthodox Church, to which the vast majority of the Amhara belong, is a venerable institution whose teachings permeate the culture. It is surely pertinent that almost the first exchange between Husband and Wife invokes not only the Bible, but its foundational tale, the union of Adam and Eve: Wife Do you mean to say that you don’t know me? Husband (Moving close to her.) If the first man does not know the first woman … (He embraces her from behind.) Wife Adam knew his wife Eve! Husband She took of the fruit and gave unto her husband; and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked.11 The selection of this particular quote opens up a whole host of issues that will reverberate throughout Engida. Husband may ‘know’ his Wife in the Biblical, sexual sense, but how well do either of these two really know/ understand each other, and how ‘naked’/transparent are they to each other or to us? What poisoned fruit of knowledge is Engida offering to its audiences – disturbing as it does comfortable beliefs in marriage and con­jugal happiness? Ethiopian Christianity lays much stress on marriage, an often quoted precept being from Ephesians 5:25: ‘For husbands, this means love your wives, just as Christ loved the Church. He gave up his life for her.’ Against this, Wife argues: ‘You think all these people live together because they love each other? Not at all. It’s habit, custom, rules, tradition.’ The shifting ambiguities of the play means we remain eternally unsure as to what emotional connection this couple may have, but certainly their need for constant game playing argues that a confrontation with the empty truth behind their lives is something both fear so much that it must be elaborately and perpetually concealed from themselves, each other and the outside world.

The world of the theatre A final trope that ties in ideas of meta-theatricality is the discussion of the life of the actor – in that the performers comment on stage on the life of the actor – and the exploration of reality, performance and pretence; we cannot know if these actors are speaking the truth of their acting experience. Husband, who adored acting, has been forced to give up the profession because every night before he performed he had terrible nightmares about making a fool of himself on stage – so now he gives private performances at home to which we are all invited. However, he goes on to say that he also gave up because he was fed up because he had ‘had enough of their lying and nagging’. Guest is amazed. He had some dream that creative people were different, even possibly more honest in their dealings than the average citizen. Husband will disabuse him of this fantasy:

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An Absurdist in Addis Ababa  137 Guest But I thought artists talk more openly than the rest of us. Husband Openly? You don’t know them, my friend. Everything they say in their interviews is invented, pure fiction. Guest How do you mean? Husband What they tell is not the truth, but what people want to hear! For instance, if you ask a writer why he is writing, he says, “To change society!” But probably he writes for money, or fame. The small world of the Addis Ababa theatre is undoubtedly a space where jockeying for status, fame and wealth is a source of stress for many. Manya­ zewal, a quite private man, is open about his dislike of the backbiting and power plays that exist in any theatre or film town, as evidenced by his comments on his time as director of the National Theatre. He is also dubious about the worth or honesty of arts that say they are advocating social change. All this he brings to his play. But above all he relishes bringing in the life of the performer to add yet another level of ambiguity, to deny the audience any chance of proclaiming that they have got to the truth of the play, and to enjoy playing with the many layered onion that is Engida.

Notes 1 The (currently) four state theatres in Addis Ababa work on a repertory system. Generally, six plays are in performance at any one time, each showing on a different day of the week, with sometimes two shows on a Sunday. Plays usually run for as long as they sustain a reasonable audience, which may be a matter of weeks or occasionally several years. Very popular plays may be offered multiple slots in the week and weekend slots are the most coveted as these tend to attract the largest audiences. Playwrights and directors are given a percentage of the box office takings, so audience attendance is an important concern financially as well as artistically. 2 The other play Manyazewal has showing is an adaptation of Jean Anouilh’s first play, The Ermine. This has been being performed in repertory at the National Theatre since February 2015 and at the time of writing (April 2017) had had around 110 performances. 3 Amharic is one of a group of languages descended from Ge’ez, an ancient tongue that is now exclusively used in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. Since as far back as the thirteenth century Amharic was accepted as the lesana negus (the language of the king) and, since that time, anyone with any pretensions to influence in the Empire has had to speak it. Both Ge’ez and Amharic have written forms dating back many hundreds of years. 4 For information on the overthrow of Emperor Haile Selassie and the rule of the Derg see Christopher Clapham, 1988, Transformation and Continuity in Revolutionary Ethiopia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Ryszard Kapuscinski, 1978, The Emperor, London: Quartet; or J. Markarkis & Ayele Nega, 1978, Class and Revolution in Ethiopia, Nottingham: Spokesman.

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138  Zerihun Birehanu & Jane Plastow 5 The quotes given by Manyazewal Endeshaw are all drawn from two interviews with Zerihun Birehanu on 11 February and 28 March 2017 at the City Hall Theatre in Addis Ababa. 6 The Red Terror was the name given to the most appalling period of early Derg rule, which lasted from 1974 to 1991. At its height in 1977, the capital Addis Ababa was the scene of mass carnage. People were picked up indiscriminately and bodies were often left lying in the streets. It is estimated that over half a ­million Ethiopians were killed in the violence. 7 Hamlet, like several other Shakespeare plays, had been translated into Amharic by Ethiopia’s most famous playwright, Tsegaye Gebre-Medhin. 8 Bale Kaba ena Bale Daba (The Mighty and the Lowly) was a satiric play about corruption by another leading Ethiopian playwright, Mengistu Lemma. 9 For more on Tsegaye Gebre-Medhin and the history of Ethiopian theatre see Jane Plastow, 1996, African Theatre and Politics: the evolution of theatre in Ethiopia, Tanzania and Zimbabwe, Amsterdam: Rodopi. 10 The Battle of Adwa took place in 1889 between an invading Italian army and the forces of the Emperor Menelik II (1844-1913). It is so important because it marks the only occasion when an African army was able to repel an invading European colonizing force so effectively that the victors were able to ensure their continued independence. 11 Genesis, Chapter 4.

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Three Plays from West Africa

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If A Tragedy of the Ruled

OLA ROTIMI

A NOTE ON THE DYNAMICS OF THIS PRODUCTION From the view point of directing, this, purposefully, is a drama of juxtaposed, variegated actions: a further exploration of theatrical ‘naturalness’ in the evocation of African atmosphere and rhythms through time, space, sound and matter. Technically here, no action need stop so that another can begin. Sometimes, the actions of one moment crash one upon another; other times they follow one after the other with innate civility, yet ‘trippingly’ – driven in their ‘natural’ modes by the tensions of threatened wills. Overall, a convoluting concourse of happenings is the particular stage picture to be evoked. CAST Papa Mama Dr Hamidu Gidada, alias Ernesto Che Guevara Chinwe Ejindu Onyema Ejindu Banji Falegan, alias Di Law Akpan Ntuk Akpan, alias Ten Trouble, One God Adiagha/Woman 1/Mama Ukot Ukot Prof Tekena Dokubo Betty Oviamwen Garuba Kazaure Mama Rosa/Woman 2 Landlord Bible/Choral group leader Elkenah Igwe or Friend

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142  Ola Rotimi Policeman 1 Policeman 2 Kalada Amanye Fisherman Mrs Dokubo 2 thugs Neighbourhood children Bible choral group members

TIME SEQUENCE Friday evening Happenings I, II, III, IV Saturday evening Happenings V Sunday evening Happenings VI

HAPPENINGS I They are happening in the very backyard of this multi-tenanted building which still radiates an aura of genial strength on its foundations. Frankly, though, the building is cheerless. Cheerless and sapped of strength by man’s unrelieved dependence on its sheltering niches. A slightly raised verandah runs along the building which is structured in a mundane rectangular form with the foreground side missing. Doors to rooms open onto this verandah. It is thus possible for tenant “A” to emerge from his room and rendezvous with tenant “Z” by simply walking on the verandah. Cutting across the bare grounds of the yard is another option, however. The choice depends on whim. Round the corner Down-Left, or thereabout, is the approach to the kitchen, bathroom and latrine – unseen to the audience. The articles tenants take with them to that part of the building will disclose the precise destination of the individual – if the audience must know. A tap stands perkily somewhere in the foreground – more to the left. Farther right is a clothes-line diligently linking two posts despite a sagging resolve.

HAPPENINGS BEGIN

(Lights fading to complete darkness, synchronizing with the last measure of a musical recording, as an ANNOUNCER’S VOICE comes on, cool, self-assured…) Voice This is Radio Rivers, Port Harcourt. We’ll wind up this programme of contemporary African Music, with a piece by the Ugandan composer Anthony Okelo. It is entitled, “Kyrie Eleison Lord, Have Mercy upon us.” (Music floats in. Lights: paralleling music – first a gentle, unassuming shaft of warm amber, soon wide-angling with lavish assertiveness, embracing all within its reach, and exposing them brazenly to full view by the end of music. Lighting sequence: First it picks up the tap – isolated, arid. Holds its focus on this. Presently, a figure, hardly recognizable at first, appears under this initial glare. The figure is completely covered in cement powder. We look closely and we

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If: A Tragedy of the Ruled  143 see now that the figure is human. This two-legged material has a name also. He is GARUBA KAZAURE. Closer still, and we notice that the man is wearing only a pair of underpants commensurately becrusted with cement powder. A grotesque handiwork from a cement bag adorns his head, serving as both a hat and a head-pan. GARUBA now moves a little, toward the tap, bends over, extending an arm hesitatingly, turns the handle. Well, no water. He straightens up with a deep breath, lost, looking out into the world in front of him, forlorn, but owing no one a grudge. Light widens farther on the yard; picks up two WOMEN; the one standing, is plaiting the hair of the other sitting. Music should end about this point. Almost simultaneously, the door of one of the rooms whines open and a man emerges, closely followed by a lady. The man is in his late forties, substantially bodied, opulently garbed. The lady in his company is BETTY. Beautiful but … raw. BETTY appears in a wrapper from under which the lace trimmings of her underskirt peep out gossipingly. At the sight of the WOMEN, BETTY stops briefly in her tracks, becoming defensive, then braces up and continues her exit with man who happens to be the LANDLORD of the building. The hair-plaiting women now break into a wordless dialogue with each other all in a hum – characteristically Nigerian, and poignantly provocative in its very word­ lessness.) Woman 1 Mhh … mhh …mhh … mhh! (Meaning: Wait a minute – what’s this, what’s this, what’s this, what’s this, I see?) Woman 2 Mmhm. Mmhm … Mmhm! (Meaning: What did I say, what did I say; what did I tell you?) Woman 1 Mm, hm, hm, hm, hm! (Meaning: What, what, what, I just can’t believe this!) Woman 2 Mmm … Mmm … Mmm… (Meaning: What can’t you believe? Just you wait, you’ll be surprised!) Woman 1 Hhhhhmmm! (Meaning: M-y goodness!) Woman 2 Mhhmm! (Meaning: O-h-o, this is only the beginning just you wait, I say!) Woman 1 Hmmmh! (Meaning: Really, how on earth!) Woman 2 Mmm … (Followed by a chuckle and a breathy clearing of the throat; meaning: You’ll soon wise up!) Woman 1 Hmm-Mhhhhhh! (Meaning: Oh well, poor helpless ones like us, what can we do or say?) Woman 2 Mmm … (Followed by a hiss. Meaning: Is anything even worth saying in this sort of situation? You’re just wasting your time getting worried about it.) (Meanwhile, at the opening of the door by LANDLORD and BETTY, the fellow at the tap – GARUBA KAZAURE – turns slowly round, meaning to go in search of water elsewhere. He sees the LANDLORD and BETTY, and stops to gaze at

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144  Ola Rotimi them. LANDLORD advances jovially towards GARUBA and hails him…) Landlord Kid Lion Arizona! How’s the champ to-day, man? Ehm? (He feigns a boxing tattoo at GARUBA from a distance, and departs with a breezy wave of the hand. GARUBA returns the salutation, vaguely, raising a hand in a slow, dreamy gesture.) (LANDLORD and BETTY exit hand in hand. One of the women notices GARUBA’S discomfiture and addresses him.) Woman 1 Garuba want watah? (Gestures overtly to GARUBA as she speaks.) Wait small … watah come … hear? (Calling.) Ukot … Ukot! Ukot (A little boy pops out of a room.) Ma! Woman 1 (Addresses boy roughly in Ibibio.) Afo anam nso ke ndo? Sob idem ben mon uye idem oro sok Garuba. Na ‘sime ntu’uso! (English: What are you doing in there! Come on, fetch some water for Garuba! Useless like your father!) (UKOT flies out with a bucket of water from the room; approaches GARUBA who receives it in one hand, raising the other hand up in grateful respect to WOMAN 1. Next, he holds out a hand upright at UKOT. UKOT gets the hint, excitedly clenches his fists and starts rapping away at the hand. Suddenly GARUBA withdraws the hand and sends three light mock jabs deftly to UKOT’s cheek, belly and head in swift succession. UKOT hops out of reach with startled glee, coming back later to assist GARUBA in cleaning up his body. GARUBA removes his crude headgear, pulls out a folded cloth from inside it, and flaps this open. It turns out to be an old towel. UKOT helps him tilt the bucket, letting the water sluice over onto the towel which GARUBA is holding against its brim. That done, GARUBA uses the wet towel to dab his body clean, starting from the face, and working down to the feet. Sometime in the course of all this, BETTY re-enters. She is visibly bristling with anger. In her hand is a small stack of envelopes. She blurts out in Pidgin English at the women, as she goes from door to door handing out the letters.) Betty I hear wetin una talk of Mama Ukot and yousef, Mama Rosa. I hear wetin una talk. Ehn. Fowl talk cru-cru-cru-cru-cru-cru for belle, dey tink say hawk wey dey fly pass no hear am. Rubbish! Hawk hear am weli-well, only say him no get time for the yeye fowl. Woman 1 Na who be fowl? Betty Di ting way una take belle talk, way una tink say I no hear. Woman 1 If you hear nko? Betty Na una body e dey, Abi? Fowl wey shit, e no piss, na wush man trouble? Woman 2 (Sarcastically.) Na ‘im trouble sister! (WOMEN laugh jeeringly, which irks BETTY the more.) Betty Ehn, na wetin eye never see before? Ehnn, Landlord and me dey walk-a. Abi? Landlord dey inside my room; den door open; me and Landlord come out, hold hand make an’ Co, walk-a commot. E no finish? Kongosa people! (Flings a letter at WOMAN 1.) Dis na for your man, O. My boyfriend, Landlord, na him write am. You like, give your

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If: A Tragedy of the Ruled  145 man; you no like, tear am troway! Jealousy people! (She turns to go.) Woman 1 You dey craze true-true! Betty Na you dey craze. You and your friend, Mama Rosa, na una dey – Woman 2 Wush one he my yon now? Betty Ehn, you wey leave your house, take cunny-cunny come here come find plaba say you dey plant head you and Mama Ukot, ehn, na una head pafuka! Una hear? Na me Betty Oviamwen talk so. Una head … una head – jealousy, jealousy don brooskata dem troway finish! (The WOMEN laugh derisively.) Woman 2 E say we dey jealous am! Betty (Hooting at them.) Woo! One-day, one-day una go quench! Woman 1 Bo, my sister, I wonder, o. Bamboat say we dey jealous am! Betty (Confronting them more ferociously.) Ehnn, I gree. Bamboat! Call me bamboat, call me prostitute. Call me anything una like. You, Mama Ukot, wey get husband, nko? You better pass me? Answer na. To get husband nahim be wetin? Ehn? Marriage-sweet, Marriage-sweet, why you dey gader your propoti wan run go your village? You foolish – (She stops abruptly, mortified, as PAPA – a respectable man in his seventies – comes out of a room accompanied by Professor TEKENA DOKUBO, a medical practitioner in his thirties. The women greet PAPA deferently, BETTY in fact curtseying, her manner changing instantly from fevered belligerency to child-like coyness.) Betty Good evening, sah. Papa Hello, Betty. Fighting again, are you? Betty No sah. How Mama, sah? Papa Well, not bad. Betty (Withdraws tamely and goes to the front of a room, knocking on the door to deliver a letter. Meanwhile, PAPA is addressing the other women.) Papa Mama Ukot – how are you? Woman 1 I dey, sah. Papa Mama Rosa. Woman 2 Sah. Papa Mr. Akpan isn’t back from work yet? Woman 1 Yes, sah, he never come, sah. (The WOMEN soon disperse, after completing their hair-plaiting. By this time, GARUBA has finished cleaning up; has brought out a make-shift table from his room; put a half loaf of bread and a bottle of coca-cola on this ‘table’ and has begun to eat it in the following manner: First, grabbing the bread in both hands, breaks it open in the middle with the thumbs; pours some coca-cola into this crevice, proceeds to munch mouthfuls of the coca-cola sandwich. As PAPA and Professor DOKUBO pass by, another tenant emerges from his room, apparently having just had a siesta. He is Dr HAMIDU NJALA GIDADO a young man in his mid-twenties.) Hamidu Good evening, sir.

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146  Ola Rotimi Papa Hm, and how is Che Guevara today? Hamidu Not bad, sir. Papa Or is it Fanon? Hamidu Guevara, sir. Well, Fanon comes once in a while into my political dialectics. But the spirit is unswervingly Che Guevara. Papa (Teasingly.) That’s right! Hamidu At least, in the realm of social praxis. Papa Ernesto Che Guevara! Hamidu Nigeria will survive. (PAPA and Professor DOKUBO laugh warmly.) Papa Come, come I want you to meet a colleague of yours. (Hamidu approaches Professor DOKUBO for a handshake. BETTY hands a letter to a lady who has come out from the room where BETTY was knocking.) Betty Sister, Landlord say make I give you. (The lady takes the letter, sees PAPA and greets him, while BETTY goes into her own room. This lady is MISS CHINWE EJINDU – an exquisite slice of refined womanhood in her mid-twenties. There is an air of the intellectual with a wisp of the mystical about her.) Chinwe Good evening sir. Papa Good evening, Miss Ejindu – how is Onyema? Chinwe He went to Scout practice, Sir. Papa I see … (Introducing Dr. HAMIDU to Prof. DOKUBO) Dr Hamidu Gidado, our new neighbour – from Gongola State, Professor Tekena Dokubo of the Lagos University Teaching Hospital. Dokubo (Shaking hands.) Gongola that’s a long way off Hamidu I’m on Youth Corps Service. Dokubo Oh, I see. What hospital are you posted to here? Hamidu Emohua. Dokubo Emohua! (We hear a boy’s voice offstage intoning with great fervour, and approaching.) Voice Oh, Black spring! O, Black spring Rock Big plans Grip Black song Pack long ribs Slack probing. (Presently, the boy, dressed in scout uniform, appears; stops abruptly as he senses PAPA’s presence. Looks about furtively, and hides.) Hamidu I prefer the village. Dokubo Well … Papa Ernesto Che Guevara! Hamidu Nigeria will survive, Papa (Moving away.) How is Mama feeling today, sir? Papa (Moving away with DOKUBO.) Well, still the same. (HAMIDU starts crossing to the toilet offstage.)

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If: A Tragedy of the Ruled  147 Akpan (A moderately built, rough-edged man stamped with the alias “TEN TROUBLE, ONE GOD”, cascades to full view on a rickety old bicycle singing:) Ti olele, tiolele, tiolele, t-i-o! Nigeria will be great, Truly great, someday. (He sees boy leaning against the wall, and calls to him.) Akpan A-ah, Onyema – why are you hiding? (He dismounts from his decrepit, rust-mottled bicycle on seeing PAPA, and approaches the group, anxiously scanning the faces of all present.) A-ah, Papa … (To HAMIDU.) Che Guevara. How? Hamidu Ten Trouble! Akpan One God! (Greeting DOKUBO.) Doctor Sir. (To PAPA again.) Papa. Papa Chief Akpan. Akpan Sir. Papa I was just asking your wife about you. Akpan Hope nothing, sir? Papa No – nothing. Akpan Ah … (Relieved.) When I saw two doctors at a blow standing like this with you, I thought maybe … Mama’s condition. Papa Oh, nothing like that. (Akpan’s wife, ADIAGHA, who incidentally is WOMAN 1 in the hair-plaiting scene, comes out and barks a message at AKPAN in Ibibio language flaunting the letter she got from BETTY.) Adiagha Idat mma odo, Betty, abo ete ke anyie ufok ama ono nwed o’usok. (Flips the letter to Akpan’s feet.) Emediono ntoro’ (Meaning: That crazy women, Betty or whatever her name, says the Landlord sends this letter to you, you know?) Akpan (Stoops resignedly, picks up the letter, parks his bicycle, and goes into his room, singing:) Tiolele, tiolele, etc. (While all these are going on, ONYEMA has sneaked up to a boulder in the yard; brought something out of his pocket; lifted the boulder, and hidden the article under it. Which done, he rises, prinks himself up, and decides to accost PAPA and the others in the yard.) Onyema (Coming forward nervously greets PAPA.) Good afternoon – I mean good morning … sorry, good evening, sir! Papa (Stops and looks down at ONYEMA.) Make up your mind, young man. Which period of the day do you want us to be in? Onyema Evening sir. Papa Very well. Onyema Good evening, sir. Papa If you say so. (CHINWE comes out of her room approaching PAPA with both the letter from the Landlord, and another letter.) (Still addressing ONYEMA.) But tell me young man, what crime did you commit that has so upset you, to tell the time of day becomes a problem?

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148  Ola Rotimi Onyema No crime, sir. Chinwe Onyema, have you told Papa about the result of your National Common Entrance Exams? (Hands ONYEMA the other letter.) Onyema (Proffers the letter to Papa) I passed, sir. Chinwe His name is first on the list. Dokubo Is that right! First in the entire nation! Onyema That’s what my Headmaster said, sir. Dokubo Fantastic! (Offering a cash gift.) Take this – buy anything you like. (ONYEMA looks at PAPA who has finished scrutinizing the result slip.) Papa Go on – take it. Onyema (Takes it.) Thank you, sir. Papa (Handing the result slip back to ONYEMA.) You keep up the good work when you get to the College. Understand? Right up there. Don’t let it get into your head that you topped the nation at the Common Entrance. You follow? Onyema Yes, sir. Papa Someone has to top the list, anyway. It could be someone from Ogbolomabiri; it could be someone from Kafanchan. In this instance, it happens to be someone from this very backyard in Diobu, Port Harcourt. You. Which all means a tough world, this. And the secret of success is STRUGGLE. Onyema Yes, sir. Papa Now, your hand. (Holds out his hand. ONYEMA shakes PAPA’s hand elatedly.) Good. (To CHINWE.) How is his fever? Chinwe Getting better sir. Dr. Hamidu gave him an injection yesterday. Dokubo What’s the case? Chinwe They say it’s asthma, sir. Dokubo Oh – well, just keep him warm in a weather like this. Papa (To ONYEMA, introducing DOKUBO.) See this man here? He was like you. Lived right here. Dokubo In that room … (Points to a room.) with my parents. Papa He’s now a Professor – at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital. (ONYEMA sizes up DOKUBO in awe.) Papa Never joked with his studies. Played well, studied more, and worked hard. Dokubo Papa was our Headmaster then – St. Peter’s … (Simulates whipping. ONYEMA is tickled) Evening lessons a-a-h! (AKPAN and GARUBA advance with their letters towards CHINWE and PAPA.) Papa They still come round, and they know me! Dokubo (Pats ONYEMA on the back.) Keep it up. Onyema (Enters CHINWE’s room.) Chinwe Thank you, sir. (Papa notices AKPAN and GARUBA.) Dokubo Papa, don’t worry seeing me off, sir. I’ll be back to see Mama again this evening. Say, about 7 o’clock.

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If: A Tragedy of the Ruled  149 Papa Very well then. (DOKUBO exits.) Akpan Papa. (Holds out the letter to PAPA.) Papa Yes. (Takes letter.) Chinwe Maybe Papa is exempted. Akpan (To HAMIDU, who is returning from the toilet.) Che Guevera, did you get this too? Chinwe Dr. Hamidu is new here, he wouldn’t get it. (Hands her copy to HAMIDU.) Hamidu What is it? Akpan Quit notice! (HAMIDU hands the letter back to CHINWE after reading it; sits in front of his room, and starts scanning the pages of a magazine.) Papa (Sitting on the verandah.) Er … Where are Betty and Mr. Falegan? Chinwe Mr. Falegan hasn’t yet come back from work sir, but I think Betty is in her room. Akpan Think? She’s there! She brought the letters from her boyfriend! Papa Call her here. Akpan Sorry, sir, I don’t think she should discuss this matter with us. Chinwe I agree, sir. I mean, after all, I doubt if she too received this kind of letter. Since she’s not with us, she’s against us. Akpan That’s right. Chinwe Matthew 12:30. Papa In that case, since I too didn’t get the letter, can I discuss it? Akpan Papa your case is different. Chinwe You are different, Papa. We see you as our father in the entire neighbourhood the keeper of the vineyard. Anything that affects us, affects you too. Papa Let’s call Betty. Akpan Can Che Guevara join us also? Papa Che Guevera, like me and, perhaps, Betty too, didn’t get this letter. But Che Guevara is here, and he is listening. If he feels like joining us, that’s up to him. The point is we haven’t given Betty a chance to decide, So, I say, let’s call Betty. Chinwe But she fornicates with the landlord, everybody knows. Papa That’s beside the point. Go call Betty. (CHINWE gets up, a statue of suppressed reluctance; goes to knock on BETTY’S door.) Betty (Barks within.) Na wetin? (CHINWE is silent. In an instant BETTY’S door flies open fiercely, and BETTY bristles forth into view. Her manner changes immediately to mild, embarrassed cordiality as she realizes CHINWE is the caller.) Ah, Sister Chinwe, na you? Chinwe (Detached monotone.) Papa wants you. (Returns to the gathering. BETTY notices PAPA in the group, and comes to him politely.)

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150  Ola Rotimi Betty (Wondering.) Good evening, sir. Papa Good evening, Betty. Yes … there is this letter from the landlord. He wants some of us to pack out of here immediately. Did you get this kind of letter? Betty No, sah. Papa Well, he did not write to me either. I don’t know why. But, anyway, we want to discuss what to do about it. Are you going to join us? (BETTY looks about, scanning the faces of all present.) Well? Betty (Defensively.) Me I no know wetin landlord wrote, o. Ehen! Landlord only give me four letter. He say one for Sister Chinwe; one for Ten Trouble; one for Mr. Garuba Kazaure, and one for … em Mr. Banji wey-him-name. Finish, sah! I no know wetin landlord wrote, o. Papa We are not saying you know what the landlord wrote. All we’re asking is as one of us in this house, will you join us to discuss the matter? Betty (Hesitantly.) If dem … (Indicating AKPAN and CHINWE) want me, sah. Papa You never mind that – do you want to? Betty I want, sah. Anything you say. Papa Join us then, (BETTY sits on the ground, unsure of being part of the group.) Now, what I want to say first is simply this: we must let the landlord know that we all here are one. If because we refuse to take oaths to vote for him in the coming elections, this now is his way of punishing us, fair enough. But let him punish all of us. No exceptions. I see divide and rule tactics at work here, and we must resist them at all costs. Akpan Exactly Sir. I mean – brother, where in this crazy Port Harcourt, can a man find a toilet – forget about single rooms. I mean a filthy latrine to rent and sleep in within 24 hours? Ehn? Chinwe Papa, for my part, I have this to say. For three months now, we’ve been dragging this house-rent issue. Now it’s surely taking a turn for the worse. Akpan Let it take! Chinwe I think there is more to it than we sense. Akpan Ehen – like what? (Mr. BANJI FALEGAN – a young man in his mid-twenties, athletic of build, enters. He pulls out the letter stuck to the jamb of his door, and comes to the group, reading the letter.) Chinwe For instance – why did the landlord write a letter like this at this time that he is standing election? And he says he needs our votes! The elections take place tomorrow; he brings these letters today. The man is not a fool. Banji Blackmail – political blackmail that’s it! I refuse to – Good evening, sir … Ten Trouble! Akpan One God, brother, One God.

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If: A Tragedy of the Ruled  151 Banji I refuse to vote for him, let alone swearing on juju to do so! Chinwe Who is saying. Banji (Affecting Americanese.) Well, just count me outa this baby, ‘cause nothing’s gonna make Banji Falegan here pitch his pretty li’l voting tent with some money swinging hepcat who figures he’s got the right kanda combo to rule this here nation no more! Papa (Slightly amused.) Chinwe didn’t mean that, did she? Banji She hinted at it, sir. She raised the issue of the political intent of this. (Strikes at the letter in disdain.) Crap! Chinwe I’m not saying we should vote for him or swear to his juju; I for one can’t serve God and mammon. Banji So what were you driving at, baby? Chinwe Let’s manage and pay him his thirty naira. Akpan Thirty nai – from twenty to thirty naira! What kind of robbery is that? Chinwe Let’s give unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s. Banji Well. Akpan (Incensed.) How can one – Papa Patience, patience, gentlemen. No need to attack ourselves. Hm. Let me say on thing since the political angle has crept in. I believe in this: if you go to a place and you want to know how the people live that is, their character, their values, their entire lifestyle … don’t go into their houses. Mhm. Go to their dustbins. Akpan (Laughs and applauds PAPA.) P-a-pi! Papa Oh yes. The dustbin is the most sincere reflection of the tastes of a people. Now, how does this apply to our case? The judiciary. The Law Courts where wanton inequities like this are meant to be dumped for destruction by the fire of justice … like unwanted matter in a dunghill. That’s where we’ll take this matter to, next. Akpan Hear, hear! Banji And I’ll take up the case – Allah! Mhmh. Papa But we must bide our time. Everything really depends on our votes. Which brings me back to my dustbin picture. I said the dustbin presents the most sincere reflection of the values of a people. The same goes for the judiciary in a nation. A forthright judiciary is a reflection of the confidence it derives from the ethics of the people. The people then are the last hope for safeguarding that ethics through the kinds of persons they put in power. That, is the language you must speak tomorrow. With your votes. You know the candidates. They are rice; our votes, the water. Rice is rice. It is when you pour it in water that the empty husks float. (Another round of applause.) Anything short of this language, any vote cast for a politician tomorrow on the basis of sheer fatherhood by birth; or of brotherhood by clan; or sisterhood by religion, is your doom and my doom. Our last hope then, is in a sound Government that will inspire a forthright judiciary before which we’ll present our case. That’s

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152  Ola Rotimi all. Meanwhile, we bide our time. We’ll write to the landlord and tell him – one, we regard his letter as discriminatory and vindictive. Banji That’s right! Papa Two, he should reconsider his decision to increase the rents. Banji Which increase we deem arbitrary and unjustified in law – since the said building has neither appreciated in value through renovation done thereon, nor improved through extension carried out thereto. Akpan Di law! Banji You wait! Papa I shall write the letter, and have it dispatched tomorrow by registered mail. Meanwhile let no one pay more than the present twenty naira. Akpan It’s baseless! Dingy hovels like these – cells! He calls them rooms. Thirty naira! Papa Any other point before we wind up? (BETTY raises her hand.) Betty (Rising.) Tank sah. My own be say di munu-munu talk wey dem dey take me talk for dis house, e too much. Ah-ah! True-true, me and landlord dey walka, but I know myself. Na who say fowl no dey sweat for body, because feder no gree person see sweat? My own be say, small time now, God hear my pray, I gader small money, I go my village go to trader. I no come die for Port Harcourt! Akpan (Retorting the snide remark.) Na who come die for Port Harcourt? Betty I talk to you? I call you put? Ehn? Wush one be – Papa All right, all right! That’s enough. No need to quarrel. Hamidu I wonder whether I can say something, sir. Papa Yes? Hamidu Only three points. Emm … . first, your not being asked to quit, sir. I don’t think it’s an oversight. The landlord wants to buy you over. That’s what. He knows damned well that you’re respected not only in this yard, but in the entire neighbourhood. And so the trick: appear kind to the popular figure, and you’ll hypnotize the populace for your own selfish ends. Pure capitalist gambit yanked straight off the precepts of Machiavellian stratagems. True, I didn’t get the letter either. I think it’s because my employers pay my rent direct to him. How much they pay? I don’t know. I only remember telling them I didn’t want to be housed in Hotel Presidential. So they brought me to Diobu. I’m glad, sir, that you haven’t fallen for that Capitalist inducement by counting yourself out of this matter. (Group is tickled.) My second point. Your decision to bide your time. It is very wise. On the eve of the elections, what do we have? A Capitalist candidate comes to blackmail you into getting him in power. Indeed, your own counter strategy in this confrontation should be play for time. “Don’t fight a powerful enemy when he is ready to fight you,” says Mao Tse-Tung. As of today, the common man has no power. But who knows? For a change, the oppressed masses may soon be rescued from the forces of exploitation that have long gripped them – gripped

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If: A Tragedy of the Ruled  153 them in the stranglehold of an inguinal hernia. Banji That of course will depend on the big IF. Hamidu That’s right. That is IF the masses, the oppressed masses – again for a change will use their votes as tools for their own freedom. IF that fails, then mass struggle becomes imperative. Which brings me to the final point. It has to do with the way Papa handled the Betty issue. Solidarity. The day our solidarity dissolves is the day our humanity ends, and our worthlessness begins Like our brother here – Garuba Kazaure. (Brings him forward.) Today he hears nothing – hardly a sound. And he’s totally incapable of speech. But he started life like any normal man, I hear. With all his senses and reflexes unimpaired. But he had no future because he wasn’t born into a family of the “haves”. So, he decided to carve out a future for himself. With his own hands. Appropriately, perhaps, he took to boxing. Carried cement in the daytime, boxed at night. His first big night came. The Commonwealth Middleweight Championship. He wanted fame, he wanted victory, he wanted to Live! But he killed his opponent. And that was the end of his dream, his hopes, his humanity. Thenceforth, he withdrew from boxing, withdrew from life itself, shutting himself up in what in medicine we call hysteria neurosis. How about that? A once healthy and normal man simply stopped talking, stopped hearing. It is the system. The notoriously impelling Capitalist system had driven him to a career he basically hadn’t the heart for. And having got him there, the system manoeuvred him into a corner, then charged him with the most bestial of Capitalist impulses: wipe out the competitor! Which he did practically and cleanly. Finally, the system again welcomes him back. Now a new man. The way the system prefers him to be – a new man totally dehumanized, totally chosified, as Aimé Césaire would describe him. A chosified being. A man no more a man but a THING! (Taking GARUBA back to his seat.) Now the point is this – Solidarity. Nobody should be deemed useless in a struggle against oppression. Not even our already chosified brother here – Garuba. The same goes for Betty. And you … Chinwe, and me, and all of us. Nobody is useless. That is why, sir, your insisting that Betty join in this meeting is commendable. The greatest obstacle we have to face in this struggle is not the power of the oppressors; not the trickery of reactionaries. No. The greatest obstacle is HATE. Why? Because when a people are oppressed long enough, they grow to hate and fight themselves, while secretly admiring the oppressor. That’s what I call the Janus-psychosis of oppression. The day one poor man starts loving another poor man, is the day the oppressors start shitting in their pants. (Applause by AKPAN, and BANJI: BETTY also beams on HAMIDU, vaguely impressed.) Papa (Rising.) I’ll write the letter tonight and let you see it before it is mailed tomorrow. Chinwe No need to see it, Papa.

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154  Ola Rotimi Akpan Just mail it! Banji We are with you, Papa. Hamidu May I come and see Mama, sir? Papa Yes, yes … (Papa enters his room, while Hamidu goes into his room. Chinwe, Garuba and Betty also depart for their respective rooms, while Banji and Akpan hang around.) Banji Che Guevara! Akpan Bo, the man talks! The one … (Chuckles.) The one I like best is the Chosi … what is it? Chosi … Banji -fication. Chosification: the turning into a THING. Akpan (Brings out a notebook from his back pocket.) Let me nail it down in a shorthand before it flies off! (Scribbles, then frivolously.) He said Garuba had been turned into a thing. In other words … (Laughs.) Garuba has been … “thingified!” Banji Yes – the Capitalist Paper Tigers can go to any length. (GARUBA appears, better dressed, going out. AKPAN regards him, solemnly, then half in pity, half in humour, shaking his head.) Akpan Hmm! The ‘thingifization’ of Garuba! (HAMIDU emerges, carrying a medical kit and a stethoscope in one hand, a book in the other. He approaches BANJI and AKPAN. Just then, BETTY who has also come out of her room, wielding a transister-radio, crosses over to HAMIDU.) Betty Sah, I tank you wey you talk well about me, sah. Banji (Playfully.) We all talk well about you, Betty baby, a-ah? Hamidu (Puts his kit down, flipping the pages of the book.) Don’t worry, we are all one. Banji (To BETTY.) You see? Come on bo, let’s dance Rex Lawson! (Takes BETTY by the hand, leading her in a dance to the Highlife music emanating from her radio. BETTY is amused but is not responding to BANJI’s dance steps.) Akpan (Teasingly.) Betty, dance now, abi you, too, done “thingify”? (BETTY wriggles free from BANJI’s arms, and goes off to the bathroom area.) Banji (In mock anger, striking a tabloid pose.) Ten Trouble! Akpan One God, brother, One God. Banji You see now! You done make Betty vex leave man-pikin useless for dance-floor. Me and you go dance bone-to-bone, o! Hamidu Ten Trouble – come and take a look. (CHINWE hurries out of her room, fixing her hair; AKPAN going to join. HAMIDU in poring over the pages of the book.) Chinwe Hey, people, wait o! The arrangement for Mama’s birthday, tomorrow. Banji Ehen – I haven’t even paid my contribution yet. (About to give CHINWE some money.) Chinwe Papa says he doesn’t want cooking or things like that. Just light refreshment – soft drinks. Banji Soft drinks! What kind of a party is that? Hamidu Look, why don’t we meet later in the evening and discuss. Chinwe Ah – I won’t have time. I have Bible Class anytime from now.

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If: A Tragedy of the Ruled  155 Akpan I’ve said it before, and will say it till I die. Still you people will never listen to the voice of prophecy. Cook, drink, spend money! Like Lagos Capitalists or … or some Port Harcourt, G.R.A. bourgeois. Ehn … me: Monkey dey drink Campari? No, way! Banji Hell! Chinwe, what about your choir – why don’t we invite them to perform at the party? Akpan The 7th Cross Choir? Chei, can we pay them? Banji (To HAMIDU.) At least, brother that is art! Hamidu I won’t mind that one. Chinwe They won’t even charge, if I invite them. Banji Really? Great! Kai! Super! Bring them, bring them, bring them! (Seizes her by the hand gleefully, and sweeps her off in a whirling dance.) Chinwe Ooohh! (Manages to free herself.) Akpan Bo! Di people dey sing! (Tries crooning.) (HAMIDU finally locates a section in the book, proffers the entire book to BANJI and AKPAN.) Hamidu Here … All about the struggle against Capitalist Paper Tigers! Banji (Grabs the book avidly.) Das Kapital. Marx. Kai! (HAMIDU picks up his medical kit and goes into PAPA’s room. AKPAN and BANJI sit on the verandah to read the book.) Betty (Returning from the bathroom.) Wetin be Paper Tiger? Banji Like … like landlord! Akpan Bo, Betty we want to do lesson. Don’t disturb. (BANJI takes a humorous swipe at CHINWE who is about to withdraw into her room.) Banji That’s right! Go meet Chinwe and read the Bible. Our own Bible is Karl Marx. Chinwe That’s why you’re doomed! Banji (Enjoying it.) Ehn, we are doomed, we agree! Chinwe Betty, don’t mind them, hear? Betty will soon perfect her Catechism and be baptized. You wait. Banji True? Akpan (Teasing.) Heavens! The day Betty masters the catechism, Allah, I’ll pass my PhD Law, Wallahi! Chinwe Sit down there! Betty, you don’t mind them. Come. (BETTY starts crossing to CHINWE, stops defensively in her tracks, as ADIAGHA comes stomping in from the kitchen, bearing an earthenware pot containing some sauce which she has just warmed up. She too halts to avoid a collision with BETTY. They both now glower hostilely at one another, then hiss in mutual contempt. Betty resumes her advance towards CHINWE’S room, while ADIAGHA turns her attention to AKPAN, addressing him in a manner unmistakably reproachful.) Adiagha Okpodo enye iyunoo iduak edidia nkpo isi-doho, owo ama onyon utom, enye osuk etie etuk ke ufok ye, ifon omo? (Meaning: If even he doesn’t care to eat, when a man comes home from work, won’t he try and spend some time with the slaves he left at home all day?)

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156  Ola Rotimi (She storms saucily into their room.) Akpan My darling-wife-for-evermore! (To BANJI, getting up.) Look, brother – I’ll collect the book from you later. “If even he doesn’t care to eat,” says my darling-wife-for-evermore. “When a man comes home from work, shouldn’t he try to spend some time with the slaves he left at home all day?” (Sings, heading for his room.) Tiolele … tiolele … tiolele, dol. Nigeria will be great, truly great some day. (BANJI also gets up and makes for his own room. CHINWE comes out with a book of Common Prayer, and settles down with BETTY on the verandah to teach her the catechism.) Chinwe You remember – when I ask what is your name? Akpan (Addressing BANJI.) Say, Di Law! Maybe you could give me a dictation from it. How’s that? Shorthand. Long time we had one. Chinwe You will say … (ONYEMA comes bouncing a tennis ball.) Akpan Either you or Che. Chinwe Your name. Banji Whenever you’re ready. Betty I remember, sister. Banji (To ONYEMA.) Professor, how’re things? Onyema Fine, sir. (BANJI enters his room.) Chinwe Onyema – when you’re hungry, your food is on the table. Don’t wait for me, people are coming for Bible class today. (ONYEMA continues to bounce his ball, more thoughtfully than playfully.) Now – what is your name N or M? Betty My name is Betty Oviamwen. Chinwe Good. Now, recite the creed. Betty (Haltingly.) I believe in God … the father almighty Chinwe Yes … Maker of Heaven and Earth – Betty Ah, yes, make I begin again Onyema Aunty Chinwe! Betty I believe in – Onyema Aunty Chi – Chinwe Yes? Onyema Is it possible? Chinwe What? Onyema A young man like that! Chinwe A young man like who? Onyema Who was with Papa. The man who gave me N5.00. They say he is a Professor. Is it possible? Chinwe It is possible. As Papa said you only have to read. And with God nothing is impossible. Betty (Jocose excitement.) Onfes, you too go be Professor. You hear? You no be like me so, wey head no dey. You na Professor proper-proper. Only

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If: A Tragedy of the Ruled  157 say, remember me, o. By dat time . … (Rising to totter like an old woman.) Your Betty go done old kuje-kuje, kuje-kuje … Chei, Professor Onyema, remember Betty dat time, o! Ehen. Na Betty dey make hot water for you when you be small pikin dey get pneumonia up-and-down, o! Ehen … Chinwe A-ah, why he go forget you? Betty Eh – na so dem be. When dem done know big-big book finish, dem begin dey talk Karla Marxi, dem no go remember poor person again, Na so-so grammar! Onyema People who talk about Karl Marx are good people. Chinwe (Stunned.) Hia! Betty I no talk? Onyema Ehn. They think about poor people. Like brother Banji and brother Hamidu, they always like to help poor people. They are … they are better than Mr. Peters. Chinwe Who is Mr. Peters? Onyema Our Scoutmaster, now. Everytime, a Scout’s duty “Help others, help others.” Yet he can’t help Kalada Amaye. With only N10.00. He can’t help him. “Bob-a-job, bob-a-job.” Every month end: “bob-ajob!” The money we got today alone – I counted it. N37.58 kobo. Yet ordinary N10, Mr. Peters refused to give Kalada Amave. Betty Who be Kalada Amaye? Onyema A boy in our school. In my class. Only Kalada and I passed the National Common Entrance Exam in my school. Chinwe What does he need N10 for? Onyema (Matter of fact.) Deposit for the College. Chinwe Oh. Well, did your scoutsmaster know that Kalada needed N10 deposit fee? Onyema I told him. Chinwe And he said – Onyema “Quiet! Kalada is not a Scout we can’t help him with Scout money. Now get out!” Betty Kalada no be scout? Onyema How can he be? The father is a truck-pusher! Chinwe I see. Onyema The mother sells firewood. Chinwe All right. Don’t worry, I’ll give you N10 for Kalada. Onyema I’ve got the money, I’ll give him. Chinwe N10? But Professor Dokubo gave you only N5. Onyema Not that. Chinwe Which one then? Onyema I … I … What does Mr. Peters do with we give him every month end? “Bob-a-job: bob a job! Chinwe (Aghast.) Onyema! I … I hope you didn’t take N10 from the boba-job collection. I trust you too much to do such a thing. But if you have – it’s a mistake. Now tell me the truth. (ONYEMA is silent.) Onyema …

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158  Ola Rotimi the good Lord doesn’t approve of such a thing! Onyema To help a poor boy? Chinwe Stealing. It’s a sin! Onyema Ehen – so, what has God done to Mr, Peters, the biggest thief of all? Chinwe That’s not for you to judge. If Mr. Peters is a thief, that doesn’t mean you should be a thief. Onyema (Resentfully.) I’m not a thief! Chinwe I am not saying you are. All I’m saying is return not evil for evil. Now, if you’ve taken the money from the bob-a-job collection, you must return it. I’ll give you my own N10 for your Kalada. Leave Mr. Peters’ punishment to the good Lord. You have no right to punish him. Onyema Mr. Peters has no right to let Kalada suffer, a-ah! Kalada and I should be going to College together this September. Without a deposit, he can’t go. “Boy Scout, Boy Scout; help others; help others!” Brother Che and Brother Banji who talk about Karl Marx and Lenin, they help others! (He makes for their room, in a huff.) Betty Iye me! (Meaning: My mother!) Chinwe He is my life. Oh, God! If anything happens to him, I’m dead. Betty No fear, Sister, not’ing go do am. Di boy get sense. Chinwe I live for him, Betty. Him alone. He is the child of my only brother. His mother left us. During the war. One evening … January 9, 1970 … my brother was brought back from the war front to our village … bleeding … from gunshot wounds in the neck. I swore. As he lay dying in my arms … I swore I would take care of his only son, Onyema … till … till I die! Betty Not’ing no go happen, sister. We go pray. (Enter MAMA ROSA (WOMAN 2 in the hair-plaiting scene). Behind her is an ostensibly life-harried man in skimpy fisherman’s wear an old singlet and a threadbare loincloth. MAMA ROSA hails CHINWE boisterously, disrupting the pensive solemnity of her mood.) Mama Rosa Sister! Sister, eh! Lawyer dey for house? Betty (Snappy riposte.) You no know lawyer room? Mama Rosa Wush one be your own? Betty Why you no go knock him room? Mama Rosa Why you dey shout? Betty Why I no go shout? Mama Rosa Na you I ask? Betty Foolish woman! Mama Rosa Craze-woman! (AKPAN emerges from his room.) Akpan Mama Rosa -What’s matter? Mama Rosa Na lawyer I find come sah. Akpan Knock his room, now. (She crosses to knock on BANJI’S door.)

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If: A Tragedy of the Ruled  159 Banji (Within.) Who’s it? Mama Rosa Na me, O – Mama Rosa. Banji One minute. (HAMIDU comes out of PAPA’s room.) Betty How mama feeling, sir? Hamidu Perhaps, she’ll sleep now … (Crossing to his room.) I gave her a sedative. Akpan Why don’t you advise Papa to send her to the hospital? Hamidu They can’t treat her here. Akpan Really! Betty A-ah! Chinwe What kind of illness is that? Hamidu We suspect cancer. Akpan True! Hamidu Mammary cancer. We’re arranging to fly her to Lagos tomorrow. Chinwe To LUTH? Betty So the party tomorrow done cancel! Hamidu She’ll leave after the party. By the last flight. (He enters his room, weightily.) Chinwe (Prayerfully, going into MAMA’s room.) Chineke biko kwa, ehni (Meaning: Harken to our plea, O Lord.) (BETTY retires morosely to her own room. BANJI, in bathrobe, comes out to meet MAMA ROSA and FISHERMAN. AKPAN goes into BANJI’s room without interrupting BANJI’s dialogue with MAMA ROSA and FISHERMAN; picks up the book, Das Kapital, and comes back to sit on the verandah in front of HAMIDU’s room. PAPA comes out from his room, heading for the toilet area, off left.) Mama Rosa (Introducing FISHERMAN.) Dis na my broder wey I go bail now-now for Police Station, sah. Dem catch am for fishing-port say e no pay tax. Monday na court. Broder, I no know anybody for dis country. I beg, make you helep me. Banji I see. What really happened? Mama Rosa (To FISHERMAN, in Kalabari language.) Mioku, duko o pirii. Ye goyegoye duko o pirii. (Meaning: Now tell him. Tell him everything.) Fisherman Duko o pirii, yen njibabo. Mama Rosa He say him be Fisherman. Fisherman Tan i da so njibaboo. Mama Rosa Him papa na fisherman. Fisherman Ida da so tan njibaboo. Mama Rosa Him papa-papa, na fisherman. Fisherman Toru the anie wamina durno doki yee. Mama Rosa Na river be dem life. Fisherman Mioku torume dikibujiri ofori bara ke fi korotee. Mama Rosa Now di river done spoil finish. Fisherman Pulo-ida ogbome pulo ke toru memgba wasama famatee! Mama Rosa Oil Company dem done pour oil for all di river.

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160  Ola Rotimi Fisherman Wamina pembe kurukuru apu so benki bu sote pulp. Ke wamina njiba toruma buu sara famatee. Mama Rosa Our Black people dem done join white people, take oil spoil di river. Fisherman Mioku wamini njibapuma gbosibi fikorotee. Deri nji so bari oforii, pei be ye so. Mioku wa eri ban ye pulp sukume minji torume wasamate gba wa dikiari! Mama Rosa Fisherman dem no get anytin again. Fish for sell no dey; fish to eat sef, no dey. So-so black oil full up for river, dey look dem for face! Fisherman Tombo namakoriba, te ani buu igbigi nyanaba tereme anie mbo inete komsini oso-igbigi gbeba ani bara oko-a? Mama Rosa A nim. (Meaning: That’s right.) Person go work, get money before he pay tax, no be so? Fisherman A biim o gboru ye mie wa pirii. O mie ban munoso o mie bia-a? Mama Rosa He wan to beg you to do one ting for am. He say you go fit? Banji What is it? Mama Rosa Anie tie? Fisherman Wa alagba biari. Mama Rosa E say make you give dem gun. Banji Give them what? Mama Rosa Gun, gun! Fisherman O duko ke Komsini pirii mine ini alagba ke wa pirii miete wa inote Pulo-ida-ogbome na owuso ban bara. Mama Rosa He say tell Gov’ment make Gov’ment give dem gun to fight di Oil Company dem. Fisherman Pulo-ida-ogbome na owusome mweni Komsinime bala-famari bebe wamini njibapuma wa balafa-aa. Kuma yee Komsinime, pa anie mie ke wa pirii. Alagba ke wa pirii. Fatee. Mama Rosa If Gov’ment dey fear di oil people, di fisherman dem no dey fear. So, tell Gov’ment to give dem gun. Das all. Banji I see … Tell him that that won’t work. Mama Rosa Ori mee anie sarasara-aaa. Fisherman Tie gote? Mama Rosa Why? Banji Tell him it is the same Government that has given power to the Oilmen to look for oil in the river. Mama Rosa Ori mee pia gbori Komsini anie koro ke pulo-ida piriye mine n pulo idaa toruma bio. Fisherman (Incredulously.) Komsini, I-ya-h! (Meaning: Our Government? Impossible!) Banji And that Government will arrest anybody who dares to disturb the Oilmen! Mama Rosa Ani saki Komsini mbo oloba ani boo te pulo-ida dasema boo. Fisherman Kura pulome am wa bari.

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If: A Tragedy of the Ruled  161 Mama Rosa But di oil dey kill dem. Banji It’s the oil that gives life to the nation. Mama Rosa Ori mee pulome anie dumo ke se me piriari ye. (FISHERMAN lowers to a squat, unnerved, confused.) Fisherman Okpai! Banji Now, about the tax case on Monday. Mama Rosa Komsini oso igbigi gboloma ye fame tan ene buu. Banji Tell him Government hasn’t yet given me licence to practice as a lawyer. Mama Rosa Mioku amu koro nyana-aa o ye dawote bo berekon wari be irobo so. Banji But I shall get a friend, who is a good lawyer, to defend him on Monday. Mama Rosa Kuma o jen iruobo nyana ba te o duaba feme be tari eneme butt Berekon-warime bio. Fisherman Yeil Ari igbigi nyana-aa. Mama Rosa Him no get money, o! Banji Tell him not to worry. I shall do my best. Mama Rosa Ori mee dein-sime. Ori amina ine bara mie i piriba. Banji (Withdrawing into his room.) Come back later. Let me wash up and get dressed meanwhile. (GARUBA trots out of his room outfitted in a pair of boxer’s trunks.) Mama Rosa Tank you, sah. (Departing with FISHERMAN) Yee wa so. Ori mee wa sote kaladikite boo. Boo, biomgbo lokomama. (GARUBA shadow-boxes into the yard, uttering a yodelling sound. In that instant, ONYEMA bursts out of his room and joins him. ONYEMA is also clad in a pair of boxer’s shorts with a singlet to match, and a rather over-sized pair of gloves. CHINWE comes after him, stoops to tie his shoe laces. Which done, she kisses him on the cheek and waves him goodbye as he jogs away in the company of GARUBA. Meanwhile neighbourhood children saunter in noisily, carrying books in sundry ways – on heads, under armpits, in hands, etc.) Chike Ukot! The Others (Echo him.) Ukot! Ukot! (UKOT bolts out from his room to meet them.) Femi Is Papa in? Ukot Let me see … (Scuttles to PAPA’s door, knocks respectfully, opens the door cautiously, peers into the room; withdraws gently, shutting the door behind him. All this while, the children have ranged themselves in an orderly formation, waiting in disciplined, silent expectation. PAPA is not in, only MAMA – sleeping. At those words, the orderly forma­tion dissolves into gleeful rowdiness.) Kiri (Pulls out a football from his satchel.) Let’s play football and wait? Femi I choose Audu. Chike I choose Kiri and Ukot. Audu I don’t agree, I don’t agree – how can only Femi and I be one team,

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162  Ola Rotimi and you, Chike, Kiri and Ukot be one – Chike All right, let the girls join you. Audu I don’t agree! Femi Ok – Audu, let the girls be our goalie and backmen. Audu I don’t agree! I don’t agree. Adesua We are not joining you, o; we’re playing by ourselves. (The GIRLS launch into a hand-clapping foot-matching-game: “ten-ten”. PAPA materializes from the toilet area, taking the CHILDREN by surprise. They scamper desperately for their books and freeze to attention.) Papa (To AUDU.) You don’t agree to what, on what, for what, so that what, and why? (AUDU is dumbfounded). Femi (Volubly.) We don’t agree to go home, sir. We’ve come for lesson with you, but Ukot lied to us that you were not at home. So we said until we’d seen you we don’t agree to go back home, sir. Papa I see. Anyhow, there will be no lesson today. Children (Feigned disappointment.) Ooh. Papa Er … Mama is not feeling too well, and I want to take care of her. Children (Chorus variously.) Sorry, sir. Papa So – some other day. I’ll send Ukot to tell you when. Children (Happily.) All right, sir. Papa Meanwhile, go through the homework I gave you. You remember them? Chum Circumference is Pi times Diameter – where Pi is 22/7 or 3.1429, sir. Papa Good. Adesua Volume is Pi times Radius squared times Height. Biagheli Perimeter 2 into L + B. Papa Fine. Knu The titles of Kings. The Oba of Benin, the Obi of Onitsha. Papa Good. Obiageli The … ern … the … ehen … the Ooni of … em. Femi The Ooni of Calabar. Papa (Alarmed.) I see … well, now! This is very interesting … yes, go on – the Ooni of Ikot Ekpene. Yes … Children (Chorus sheepishly.) The Ooni of Ikot Ekpene. Papa (Sarcastically.) That’s right. The Amayanabo of Maiduguri. Children The Amayanabo of Maiduguri. Papa The Sardauna of Okrika. Children The Sardauna of Okrika. Papa The Queen of Russia. Children The Queen of Russia Papa The Tzar of America! Children The Tzar of America. Papa And the Obong of Bauchi. Ukot (Perplexed.) That’s not …

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If: A Tragedy of the Ruled  163 Papa That’s not what? Ukot We are not correct, sir. Papa No? I see … what’s not correct about that? It’s fine. This is Nigeria, young man. Anything goes. Say anything, do anything. What matters is the fact that you’re saying something, or doing something. Good, bad it doesn’t matter. Right? (Ominously. Pulling his belt from his trousers.) Now you silly, little gremlins! If that’s the philosophy of your fathers, I’ll have none of it! (Cracks his belt in the air.) To the backyard! We’ll sweat it out till you’ve learned every bit of it. You little rapscallions! And when I’m through with you, you go home and report to your parents who spend all their time running after corruption and diseased contracts. You playdazed parakeets! I take no kobo from your parents. Why? Because it’s from you I demand something. And what is that thing? Simple: prepare your minds for a rough life tomorrow which your parents do not seem prepared to make better today. That’s all I ask. But what do you give me instead? Drunkenness: The Obong of Australia; the Emir of Ikwerre! Such non- move on! You ragweeds! (CHILDREN stampede to the other side of the yard offstage. By this time, CHINWE and BETTY’s guests have arrived for a Bible Class, and are settling down on the seats arranged for them in the main yard.) (PRODUCER’S NOTE: All the following Three Scenes are to run con­currently – overlapping, underlying, dove-tailing but never clashing, never jarring with one another.) (HAMIDU is dictating to AKPAN who is sitting on the verandah in front of HAMIDU’s room, taking the dictation in shorthand. PAPA’s voice and those of the CHILDREN reciting their lesson blare in now and again from offstage.) Hamidu (Dictating from manuscript.) My criteria for voting are therefore as follows: one, a good party does not simply promise it will give you this, it will bring you that. A good party also tells you how it can be done. Two, the man at the head of the Party. Voters must ask themselves is the leader of the Party capable of controlling and disciplining his Partymen? Now, I say this is most important because the collapse of a nation begins with indiscipline in the ranks of those who rule or govern. Therefore to any Political Leader who aspires to a successful rule of this nation, I say, the fundamental secret to that success is this discipline your disciples, And you’ll control the country. (BIBLE CLASS MEMBERS raise a soulful, subliminal chorus, while GROUP LEADER says the opening prayer.) Group Leader Father of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, we humbly bow before thee. Our sight is dim, our wills are vain. Our faith weakens, our purpose shifts. Steady us, O God, that we may walk in thy righteousness day by day, in exaltation of thy name, and to the glory of thy son Jesus Christ, our Saviour.

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164  Ola Rotimi All Amen. (Members sit.) Leader Beloved, last week I tried to explain what Baptism is all about. Today, let’s answer this question: Is Baptism necessary? For you can’t discuss Baptism without acknowledging the purpose of Baptism – which is rooted in salvation. Now, by salvation what do we mean? We mean acceptance acceptance into the kingdom of … Members God. Leader It is written “verily, verily I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot enter into the kingdom of …” Members God. Leader John 3:3. and how can he be born again, brethren? The answer is right in there – St. John 3:5 – in black and white. He must be born “of water and of the …” Members Holy Spirit. Leader That’s right! If you’re not satisfied, why, St. Peter also gives the same testimony Acts of the Apostles 2:38 – “Repent and be baptised … in the name of Jesus Christ … and ye shall receive the gift.” What gift? “The gift of the Holy Spirit.” But first brother, you must own up. That’s the truth. You must own up that you are a sinner. And let me tell you there is nothing shameful, nothing degrading about accepting that you are a sinner. Why? Because, you are not the only sinner in this world. We all are born sinners. Congenital sinners that is, sinners right from the very womb that begot us. Psalm 51:5. Sister Chinwe. Chinwe (Rising and reading from the Bible.) “Behold I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.” Leader We all have sinned, brethren. And in sinning, we have “come short of the glory of God!” Romans 3:23. So, beloved sister; beloved brother: you must have the courage, the sincerity to own up that you are a sinner. In all earnestness enter into self-confession, that’s what it means for “whosoever confesseth … his sins,” says Proverb 28:13 “shall have … ” What? Members “Shall have mercy.” Leader Of course, he “shall have mercy”. But there is a proviso here, brethren. You must first believe in Him. It’s not enough to confess. You must also believe, have faith. Faith in whom? In God through Christ, for it is through Him that your manifold sins can be washed away. Romans 10:13. That’s right, so long as you call to him and trust in Him, what will you have, sister Jessica? John 1:11-12. Jessica (Rises and reads.) “And the woman saith unto him: Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep: from whence –” Leader (Startled.) What well? Chapter 1! I said Chapter 1, Sister. You’re parroting Chapter 4, verse 11. Jessica Oh! (Flipping to the right page.) Leader (Impatiently.) John says “To them gave he power … that believe in his name.” Isn’t that so?

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If: A Tragedy of the Ruled  165 Jessica It is so, sir. Leader A-ah. We’re talking of salvation; you’re talking of wells that are deep! This is the only way, brethren, the true way to salvation. The surest path to eternal life. Through faith in Christ Jesus who loves you. John 3:16. All “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son –” Leader To do what? Turn to Isaiah 53:6, you’ll find the answer. Yes, God sent the sinless Christ – 2nd Corinthians 5:21 – to take away our sins and in turn fill us with the righteousness of God Himself so that … PAPA AND CHILDREN LESSON (Recited repeatedly in correlation to the duration of -the other lessons.) Papa Oba of Benin. Children Oba of Benin. Papa Obi of Onitsha. Children Obi of Onitsha. Papa Obong of Calabar. Children Obong of Calabar. Papa Ooni of Ife. Children Ooni of Ife. Papa Sardauna of Sokoto. Children Sardauna of Sokoto. Papa Shehu of Borno. Children Shehu of Borno. Papa Alaafin of Oyo. Children Alaafin of Oyo. Papa Alake of Abeokuta. Children Alake of Abeokuta. Papa Amayanabo of Nembe. Children Amayanabo of Nembe Papa Papa Olu of Warri. Children Olu of Warri. Papa Emir of Kano. Children Emir of Kano. Papa Ovie of Isoko. Children Ovie of Isoko. (Somewhat abruptly, all these happenings fade into total silence, except for the voices of PAPA and the CHILDREN which continue to drift in from offstage. Everyone on stage listens suspensefully to the cause of this sudden lull. CHINWE and BETTY break away from the Bible class, scurrying toward PAPA’s room. A cry of pain from within. AKPAN and HAMIDU also identify the cry, AKPAN hastening across to summon BANJI from his room, while HAMIDU dashes into his room.) Akpan God! It’s Mama! Chinwe (To BETTY.) Quick, go. (CHINWE disappears into PAPA’s room; BETTY heads for where PAPA and

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166  Ola Rotimi THE CHILDREN are. HAMIDU darts out of his room wielding a stethoscope and a medical kit, racing towards PAPA’s room. GARUBA and ONYEMA too trot into view from their boxing practice. MAMA ROSA, the FISHERMAN in tow, is heading for BANJI’s room when they too become attracted by the prevailing bustle. Everyone in the yard is standing with solemn concern, peering in the direction of PAPA’s room. CHINWE and BETTY soon reemerge from PAPA’s room and approach MEMBERS OF THE BIBLE CLASS.) Chinwe It’s our mother. Pray for her, brethren. She is in great pain. (LEADER prompts the GROUP to another choral rendition, while he goes into PAPA’s room. He comes out not long after, to say a prayer over the singing.) Leader O blessed Lord, the Father of mercies, we beseech thee to look down in pity and compassion upon this thy servant grieved with sickness. Grant her thy peace in body and spirit, O Lord … . (Lights fading …) This we ask in the name of thy son Jesus Christ our Saviour. (Blackout.)

HAPPENINGS II (Lights come on again, shortly after. We see just the tenants of the building and Dr DOKUBO. All the visitors have left.) Dr Dokubo (Coming out of PAPA’s room, carrying a pillow.) How is the hot water doing? Chinwe (Off stage apparently in the kitchen.) Almost ready, sir. Onyema Is mama going to the hospital now? Dr Dokubo No – I’m only taking her to my place for the night. Just to observe her. (Akpan’s wife, ADIAGHA, approaches Dr DOKUBO and takes the pillow from him.) Adiagha Na where sah? Dr Dokubo Oh – to the car, please tell my wife to put it under Mama’s head. Adiagha (Addresses AKPAN in Ibibio as she exits.) Nyem odukit idaha- emi, o! (Meaning: I want to see you, right now.) (BETTY hands Dr DOKUBO a rubber-bottle which she has brought out from her room.) Dr Dokubo Thank you. Please, get me some water for my hands. (BETTY leaves for the kitchen.) Hamidu (To PAPA who has come out, putting his shoes on.) Papa is going too? Dr Dokubo Papa, don’t worry sir. You stay at home and rest. Papa It’s all right – I’ll rest when I come back. Later in the evening. Dr Dokubo All right, sir. (PAPA heads for the car off-stage.) Ten Trouble.

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If: A Tragedy of the Ruled  167 Akpan One God, sir. Dr Dokubo Please, open the car for Papa. Let him sit at the back with my wife and Mama. I’m coming right away. (BETTY brings some water in a basin, together with a piece of soap and a towel. ADIAGHA, returning to her room, barks at AKPAN again.) Adiagha Ndi omokop se mbo. Ehen. (Meaning: I hope you heard me?) Akpan (To BANJI) Di Law. Please get Papa into the car. This woman says she must see me now! (BANJI follows PAPA out.) Hamidu This party tomorrow – why don’t Papa and Mama cancel it? Dr Dokubo (Washing his hands.) Their 40th wedding anniversary! Hamidu So Mama can be flown to LUTH first thing in the morning for a thorough biopsy. Dr Dokubo Mama insists on having the party. She won’t postpone it one second. Somehow, she believes she may not live much longer. Hamidu It’s really sad they’re not blessed with children. Dr Dokubo (Wiping his hands.) They’re too noble to let that ruin their attachment to one another. The neighbourhood take them as their Papa and Mama; they in turn take the neighbourhood as their children. To them that’s enough satisfaction. (To BETTY.) Thank you. (BETTY bears the basin of water and the towel away, as CHINWE brings a kettle of hot water. Dr DOKUBO holds the rubber-bottle, while CHINWE pours the hot water into it.) Hamidu Kai! To think that people like that, with selfless. concern for the community, remain doomed to a hovel like this… . . Sharing one room, while grabbers strut the nation, scooping wealth without sweat! Makes me sick! Plain sick! Chinwe (Departing to see PAPA and MAMA off.) We’re but strangers here, Heaven is our home. (HAMIDU eyes her wearily.) Hamidu Na lie, sister – Diobu is our home! (Exits.) Dr Dokubo (To ONYEMA.) Cheer up! Mama will be all right. I’ll bring her down for the party tomorrow evening before I take her to Lagos. Ok? (Dr DOKUBO also leaves. ONYEMA is alone. He opens a book, reading it on the verandah. Presently, quarrelling voices rise in AKPAN’s room. Not long, articles come flying out from the room, landing in the yard. The articles are mainly books. Amidst all this, UKOT bursts out of the room and scoots agitatedly to ONYEMA who is gaping with baffled interest at the books crashing onto the yard.) Ukot My father says no; my mother too says no. She won’t stay. Onyema So what will happen now? Ukot She kept fighting with my father, now. (Two more books fly out again, and Adiagha storms out after them.) Adiagha (Stops to address UKOT roundly.) Semi Ukot! Idat nt’uso! Nduaka

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168  Ola Rotimi edikanna idun uyem mmabinwuo ke itie ufen emi, omokop? Diana ke nyanyon. Ukpukere ubo ke idat uso aya uno kobo kiet ke okuk ukpe usun, iwot ufono nt’enye. Udusasana ikpon, kukot uto Port Harcourt unyon Ekpene Ukpa. Mmia ata do ise! (Meaning: You there – Ukot! Crazy as your father. I don’t want to start looking for you the moment I’m ready to get out of this hell, understand? Off I’ll go! You bet me! And if you think your crazy father will have a hobo for your transport fare, you’re just as crazy as that father of yours. On foot it will be for you! Foot. And alone from Port Harcourt here, all the way to Ekpene Ukpa! Bet it! She stomps off toward the kitchen area, soon re-appearing with assorted pots and pans.) Nyema Mama Ukot. Please let Ukot stay now, and continue school here. Adiagha Onyema! School dey for my village too. You hear? My village Ekpene Ukpa. School dey dere too! (Drops her burden on the ground and enters the room.) Ukot (Resignedly to ONYEMA.) What did I tell you! (CHINWE re-enters with BETTY. Just then, ADIAGHA stumbles from the room again, carrying a battered old suitcase this time. CHINWE perceives what is afoot and is visibly disturbed. But BETTY takes in the situation with cynical unconcern, and makes breezily for her room.) Chinwe Mama Ukot, what is the matter? Akpan (Comes out and forlornly starts picking up his books from the ground.) Adiagha (To CHINWE.) Why na so-so Mama Ukot, Mama Ukot? Him nko? Marry wey I marry, na suffer I come suffer? Na wetin? Dem swear for am? Di poor wey e poor when I marry am, thirteen year done pass; na so e dey. Money for chop no reach. (BETTY comes singing gayly as she crosses to the kitchen with her pot of stew. But ADIAGHA would not be outdone, so she shoots the first line of her next tirade obliquely at BETTY before continuing with her substantive gripe.) Me na, I no come make bamboat for P’racourt, you hear? I be village gal. (Now turns again to CHINWE and the others.) Money no dey, money no dey, but the crazeman dey buy book. Look dem … (Kicks at the books with vengeful contempt.) Look! Na bad e dey bad go. Di time we e dey drink sef better. Come wey dis man, Hamidu, or Guava, come for dis yard, my man no drink again. We tank God. But money change road. Na book road him money begin put head. Everyday a return work; e eat; open book; e go come butu, dey talk grammar with Che Guevara and Banji. Den e go begin sing “Tio lele, tio lele … Nigeria will be great!” Nigeria go great, Nigeria go great na by sing nahim country dey take great? Ehn? No be inside belle nahim person dey take know country wey great? Una answer now? Dis Che Guevara, abi na Che Guava, weder na Che Paw-paw abi na the Banana him say him be sef – di man be doctor. Banji get degree for lawyer. My man yon na Njakiri: suffer-head! Money no know him face; chop no know my belle. Na wetin? I come quench for P’racourt? (She starts stuffing the pots and pans into the suitcase. HAMIDU and BANJI enter.)

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If: A Tragedy of the Ruled  169 Banji A-ah! Mama Ukot, na wetin – Akpan Let no one plead with her, please. (BETTY comes chugging across from the kitchen, and leaving behind her a copious trail of pungent smoke from the pot of stew she’s bearing into her room. ADIAGHA looks hatefully at BETTY, then continues her castigation of AKPAN.) Adiagha From newspaper seller, e come be clerk. We dey wait. Clerk finish, e say him wan typist. RSA 1. 1 wait. Den e say na RSA II. I wait. Pass way e pass dat na -e begin talk now say na degree for lawyer nahim e want put head. E pass dat tomorrow, e go say e remain RSA 10. E done do! (Heaves the suitcase onto her head, and takes off, pausing a bit to hiss a curse on BETTY at the window. BETTY replies instantly with an equally stinging hiss, swiftly reinforced with a smacking cluck of the tongue to boot. UKOT runs helplessly after his mother.) Chinwe (Attempts to stop ADIAGHA.) Mama Ukot, please – Akpan I say don’t beg her! Didn’t Papa and Mama spend all evening talking to her yesterday? What does she think she is, a god? Let her go! (He trudges back into his room with the books he has gathered up from the ground.) Hamidu I don’t understand this. Chinwe Don’t understand what? Hamidu I mean … Leaving the home is no solution to family problems. Chinwe (Caustically.) Is it not? What is, then? Ehn? Why d’you expect her to stay on, anyway? Aren’t you both responsible for her leaving? Amidu What d’you mean? Banji There’s something called libel, madam. Hamidu No – wait a minute. What d’you… Banji What’s wrong with those books? Chinwe Why must his wife and child suffer because of them? Banji Listen to her! Book is bad! Yet you went to a University and came out with a first class degree in Mathematics. (AKPAN, a towel over his shoulders, is heading for the bathroom.) Chinwe That’s not the point! I could afford to study then. But now it would be downright selfish of me to run off to do a PhD. Why? Because I now have a responsibility – a nephew to care for. Responsibility is the crux of my contention. Hamidu So, Mr Akpan should spend all his earnings on food for his wife and son. Right? He shouldn’t think of self-improvement. The kind that would ensure greater benefits for the very wife and son tomorrow. Right? Chinwe His responsibility must be to the family now – not tomorrow. Hamidu Capitalist myopism of the Epicurean kind! Chinwe (Incensed.) Call it what you like – the truth is, you’re both guilty of a mortal sin! Banji How? Chinwe By bringing asunder those whom God hath joined together. That’s how!

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170  Ola Rotimi Hamidu Your Bible too says “Man does not live by bread alone”. Remem­ ber? Chinwe Don’t quote that passage out of context. The Bible says “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that cometh out of the mouth of God.” The truth is, Mr. Akpan lives neither by bread, nor by the word of God! Hamidu Let me tell you, sister, what the truth is. The honest-to-goodness truth. Mr. Akpan, like all other down-trodden wretches of the earth, is preparing himself for that great day which Christ himself has predicted in the Bible! Chinwe What great day? Hamidu The day of socialist victory. Chinwe What has Christ to do with socialist victory? Hamidu Oh, yes, it’s right there… . Chinwe Where? Hamidu Right in the Bible; I don’t remember the chapter and verse, but I can quote it straight off! Chinwe Go on! Hamidu “Blessed are the meek” says He, “for they shall possess the land.” Now mark. The key words are “meek” and “possess the land”. Note Christ said “the meek”. Not the High-up. Not the proud Aristocrat. Not the haughty Capitalist. Not the smug Bourgeois. Oh, no. “The meek”. That is, the humble; the socially despised the labourers and the peasants. Blessed are such persons the wretched of the earth, for their long-suffering. One day, Christ says, one day the tide will surely change and, I quote, “they shall possess the land”. Now, sister, if that is not a visionary affirmation of the inescapable collapse of Capitalist oligarchy, and the supervention of Proletariat polity with its corollary of equitable sharing of the resources of the land, hell, I wonder what Socialism is all about. (Retiring into his room.) Chinwe Kid yourself! (Leaves for her own room. AKPAN meanwhile has returned from the bathroom, dressed. He stops by the tap, combing his hair at a mirror held out cockily in one hand. BANJI comes over to him.) Banji (Exhortative.) Desertion. Plain and simple! Look at it if you had com­ mitted an offence, like … all right, adultery – a different matter. In point of law, your wife would have a Prima Facie case against you, see having caught you In Flagrante Delicto. Under such circumstances – I mean – no use. As the defendant, you’ll have no case. Just grant a waiver to a court hearing and forget it. Or, well, for purposes of alimony, agree to settle out of court after getting your wife to file in a nolle prosequi – you know. But as it is, this is a case of unwarranted desertion. Pure and simple. On top of that, forcible abduction of the only child to your marriage! Chinwe (Comes out carrying a bucket of clothes which she goes to hang on the

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If: A Tragedy of the Ruled  171 clothes line.) Left to me, brother, I’d say protect yourself. Take the legal initiative to prove desertion. You don’t have to claim damages. Just let it be on record. Why? Brother you never know – oh, yes – you never – in case she decides to sue you in future? Stare Decisis. The suit will be null and void and of no effect. Even in a Customary Court, the issue by then shall have become Res Judicata. Oh, yes. I mean … . Chinwe That’s right – go on. Keep on plying him with false hopes. Akpan Nobody is giving me false hopes! I know what I want in life. It may take long to get it, but once there is life, there is hope. Ok – so I’ve passed stage II RSA, and I’m now preparing for the Stage III and Intermediate Law. Now, there are thousands like me. Born strugglers. Some with wives lose their wives in the course of the struggle for success. Some lose their parents. Some lose children. So long as I know that my struggle is ultimately for the good of my wife and child, I remain undaunted. Finish. Che Guevara! I’ll come for dictation this night if you don’t mind. First I must go cool my head someplace. (Locks his door.) Di Law – see you. (Exits. Her chore completed, CHINWE crosses back to her room). Banji (To ONYEMA.) Say, Prof, what are you scribbling? Onyema A poem, sir. Banji A poem? (Goes to him with warm interest.) What on? Onyema Self reliance. Banji Self reliance. That’s great! Hey – you know what? Read it at Mama’s party tomorrow. How’s that? Onyema All right, sir. (BANJI pats him fondly on the back, goes offstage. But first idly he turns the faucet of the tap in the backyard, at the same time moving on cynically without looking for result. Of course, there is none. ONYEMA is alone. Soon, a boy in rags tip-toes furtively, diffidently in from the outside. Pleasantly surprised to find ONYEMA alone. Boy stalks silently up to ONYEMA, then tickles him in the ribs. ONYEMA springs up defensively, coming face to face with the anemic looking disheveled youth who stands grinning radiantly at him. ONYEMA quickly puts a finger over his lips to hush Boy. Boy happens to be the much-talked about KALADA. ONYEMA leads him guardedly to the location of the boulder.) Onyema It is under here. Kalada The money! (Ecstatically wraps ONYEMA up in a nervous embrace.) So you … Onyema I didn’t steal it! Kalada (Sceptically.) Ehen? Onyema I only seized it. Kalada All right. Onyema (Impatiently.) Well, d’you want it, or not? Kalada I want it, I want it! (They both bend over to roll the boulder off. ONYEMA recovers a small wad of currency notes from the ground, hands these to KALADA who counts them.) Five Naira! Onyema I’ll add five more … (Dips into his pocket and gives KALADA a 5

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172  Ola Rotimi note.) This one is my own. Ehen. Kalada Chei! So you and me too will go to College, after all! Biology, Chemistry, Literature, Geometry! Chei! (Embraces ONYEMA again, then slowly recoils.) But I am afraid, o. My mother – she will say ehen, now someone has paid your College deposit! Who will pay for the other problems? Medical tests? Uniforms? What about bus fares? And shoes? Ehn? (Simulates slaps.) Kpai! You selfish goat! Look-look at your six small brothers. Kpai! And your two sisters – kpai! Kpai! You will kill me – you and your selfish books! Onyema Let me tell my aunty then. Maybe she will let you live with us. Kalada (Incredulous.) Ehen. Onyema Brother Banji and Dr Hamidu too can help. If I tell them. They are nice people. Kalada Ehen. Beg them for me, then. Onyema I will try. Kalada When can I come back to know? Onyema Tomorrow now. Evening. Kalada Chei, Onyes, Onyes – you do well o. (Suddenly stops, having second thoughts). Wait, you keep this for me. If my mother sees it – vanish! Onyema You keep it there yourself. (KALADA puts the money back in the ground, and rolls the boulder over it, again. Which done, ONYEMA places a foot on the boulder, thinking. KALADA begins to leave.) Kalada Onyes, bye! Onyema (Gazing dreamily ahead of him.) Bye … bye … (KALADA hastens his steps, and is soon out of sight, as lights fade to Blackout.)

HAPPENINGS III (It is the dead hours of the night. A drunken, crooning duet precedes lights. BETTY’s door opens, and she hurries out, crosses to CHINWE’s door, and starts knocking on it, urgently.) Betty Sister … Sister … he done come … sister! Chinwe’s voice Who is it? Betty Na me – Betty. Ten Trouble just dey come. (Enter the slurring twosome AKPAN and a FRIEND. They sing on, half dancing, half staggering to the rhythm of their improvised drumming.) Up, great Palmites Up, brave Bacchants of the land Our grandsires’ voices bid us all In Palmwine’s praise unite. Thus united, stand to face Our nation’s task

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If: A Tragedy of the Ruled  173 As citizens, as patriots In building up our race. Stand bravely for the nation Defend from plundering hands The customs of our fathers And palm trees of our land. Akpan (Catches sight of BETTY.) Say, Betty baby – still up, ehn? No, no, no! Not … nice. Not decent at all. I’ve always said it, and I insist upon it but, alas – mankind will never listen to the voice of – of prophecy. Repeat! Women … ! Women must not stick around at night. The daytime? No trouble. But at night? Ehn-ehn … Nights are made for men and – and demons. Fullstop! Betty Ten Trouble. Akpan One God, Sister. One … God! Betty Na where you go since … Two o’clock done sharp sef. (CHINWE appears in a bathrobe draped over her sleeping gown. Akpan’s FRIEND lets fly a piercing wolf call upon sighting CHINWE’s sensually delicate feminity, heightened by the intimate apparel.) Akpan (Appealing to FRIEND for greater courtesy.) No, no! She is a sister. (FRIEND bows with a flourish.) Chinwe (More a feeling of concern than a query) Papa Ukot. Where have you been all this time? Akpan Where does a man go, or what does a man do, whose wife after fourteen full years of marriage suddenly bolts out on him? And why? Because the man happens to be a victim of … circumstances. Does the man resort to grappling in silence with the shock of that desertion? Or does he make bold to temper that shock by distancing memory with the aid of a fresh marriage? No answer? Well, a fresh marriage then it will be for me … So … (Raises his bottle of alcohol.) Ladies, I beg leave to introduce to you, my new wife till-death-do-us-part! Friend The former Miss Bacchanalia Ogogoro! (AKPAN and FRIEND take a long draught from their respective bottles. CHINWE is visibly downcast.) Akpan Aha-a! Betty, I see you’ve been learning the catechism. That is not – no, no, no. I protest. I do, I do, I do. Every Friday … right? Chinwe, you’re supposed to teach us the catechism. Today you have rejected me. You have ganged up with Betty in a league of … of women. Betty No be you no come for Bible class? Akpan No – no excuses. No, apologies either. I’m rejected. Finish. Ok, I accept. Akpan Ntuk Akpan. No way! The likes of you are not wanted in the Kingdom of God. Yet, I must enter a kingdom! Therefore, into the kingdom of Bacchus I venture. And there this day, I humbly declare myself a Bishop. (Calls to his friend.) Hey-come hither! As Bishop of your tabernacle, it behoves me to perform my sacred duties and save your soul. Come hither, I say! (FRIEND advances.) Now, I am going to baptise

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174  Ola Rotimi you, whether you like it or not, and henceforth make you fisher-of-men. Friend (Dancing as he sings.) I will make you fishers of – Akpan (Peremptorily, with priestly austerity.) Order! (FRIEND obeys.) Take off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground. (FRIEND sips from AKPAN’s bottle addressing BETTY and CHINWE as members of a congregation.) This candidate, having been served the holy water without force or persuasion; and himself having tasted of that source of life and wisdom, again, without force or persuasion, I shall now begin to start, to conimence, to go on, to proceed to set out, to administer the Oath of Fortification. Now repeat after me (FRIEND echoes his recital.) I Elkennah Igwe, having now defied the norms of society, as my forebear, Adam, defied Deity to taste of the fruit of Life and Death and so became wiser by half, I have tasted the sacred sap of Bacchus, and so humbly arrogate full wisdom to myself. When society shall sneer at me For being a perennial devotee of Bacchus; I shall show maturity and forgive them For they know not what they do. When society shall laugh at me Because I stagger in my track; I shall forgive them; For they know not That all I’m doing really is Exercising, as a man, the all-too-familiar right of a bird Freedom of movement and exploration space. When perchance I do fall down As I tread the ground after some harmless sips, All I’m doing really is Demonstrate the truism of the law of gravity: What is up Must come down. (BETTY is enjoying the antics. PAPA opens his door quietly and emerges stealthily, watching AKPAN with distaste, but unnoticed by AKPAN.) When society shall laugh at me For constant belching or vomiting; Or for a looseness with my urine, I shall not feel ashamed, Nor in the least be troubled For I am only fulfilling The natural Law of the Unity of Opposites: What goes in Must come out. (Arm outstretched imperiously in benediction.) Go now, and be undaunted by the scorn of an ignorant society. (FRIEND rises.) Now, we’ll sing the

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If: A Tragedy of the Ruled  175 Anthem of the Palmites. Two – three – go! (They dance and march in the process.) Up, great Palmites Up, brave Bachants of the land Our grandsires’ voices bid us all In Palmwine’s praise unite. Thus united, stand to face Our nation’s task As citizens, as patriots In building up our race. Stand bravely for the nation … . (They change over to:) Tio lele, Tio lele, Tio le le, tio! Nigeria will be great Truly great someday (PAPA steps farther forward at this point, and is seen by AKPAN. Jolted, and incredulous, AKPAN takes off totteringly to hide in a corner of the building.) Friend (Rudely to PAPA.) Behold the Landlord! Roused from the caressing arms of deep slumber! Chinwe Shut up! Friend The daughter, ehn? Fair enough. Just 24 hours more, I tell you. This time tomorrow, all ye tenant-suckers, vampires to the oppressed – just you wait! Tomorrow is D-day. Nigerians will rise up to a man at the polls and God help them to think straight! To those of you who’ve had a chance to raise this land from misery, but have raised only their families to affluence; you who now come to say we’ll give you X, we’ll ‘dash’ you Y, tomorrow our votes will say to you No! We don’t want your handouts! We want your downfall! And that will spell the end to indigenized imperial … ism! That’s what. Kai! Suddenly, I’m scared. Will the people think? Think of what will be good for them? (Hotly.) Slaves! Slaves! Eternal slaves that’s what we are! Workers, students, farmersthe whole lot of contented, blind wretches! Will you again bondage your future to eternal servitude? Go on then, keep it up! Vote on tribal grounds. Vote for money that you’ll shit out the next morning. Or worse still, don’t vote at all! Give a new lease of life to indegenized colonialism. In turn I give you this … (A windy spit.) F-i-a-a! (Staggers to a corner of the house, to urinate, back to the audience.) Papa Akpan! Akpan! Can you hear me? Akpan (Appearing, cowed.) My lord, I heard thy voice. But lo, I was ashamed, having tasted of that which thou biddest me to taste no more. Friend No apologies! Akpan The woman, my lord, that Eve of a wife. Her departure forced me to this. Friend I say apologies to no one! Least of all, a super bourgeois! Akpan Shut up, he is not a bourgeois. Friend (Coming back.) Your landlord, isn’t he?

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176  Ola Rotimi Akpan Our father, not our landlord. Friend Yeah? (Sizes PAPA up briefly, then.) Looks like a landlord to me! Coming out of a deep sleep to frown at us. Akpan That is Papa – the man I spoke to you about. He talked to my wife still … . Friend (Reverently.) The former Headmaster? Akpan Papa, this is Mr. Igwe – a teacher at St. Luke’s College. Friend (Squats before PAPA.) I’m very sorry for – Papa Young man. One thing you’ll soon learn in the teaching profession in which I was for 42 years, is this, as you get older, the less you talk, and the more you think. We all listened patiently to your dream of a new nation. But you forget that persons make a nation. And the progress of a nation begins with self-discipline of the person. From what I see the priority of your kind of new Nigeria will certainly not be good health care for the people; it won’t be good food for the people; it won’t be good water supply for the people; good schools for the people; committed technology for the people; protection of our economic resources from internal and external rape. No. D’you know what your priority will be? Breweries. Immediate construction of 361 breweries in the land. That is, 19 breweries for each of the 19 States in the land. All in the name of equal distribution of our economic wealth, “to reflect our Federal character”! Such, indeed, will be your foundation for a new Nigeria. A nation of drunks! Now, go to your home and think. (FRIEND retreats, much more chastened now.) Akpan You come into my room! I want you to teach me precisely how drinking can make your wife come back. Good night all. (He enters.) Betty and Chinwe Good night, sir. (AKPAN gestures friend to leave: FRIEND obeys. AKPAN puts his bottle down on the ground submissively, and snail-paces towards PAPA’s room. CHINWE meanwhile has crossed to collect her wash from the clothesline.) Betty (Teasingly.) Ten Trouble done jam trouble today! Akpan (Crabbed.) Look, look! Make una no ten trouble me nothin! You hear? Why una no tell me say Papa done come back? Chinwe Why we go tell you? Betty Even sef, you ‘gree us talk? (Mimicking.) Archbishop of Tabernacle … fisher of men … piss and palmtree; dis and dat! Ehen! Monkey go chop pepper today. (Prods him on then turns round and capers impishly into her own room.) (HAMIDU enters from the outside, medical kit in hand.) Hamidu What’s happening? Akpan Chei! (Self-pityingly.) Brother, women are Satans! (He totters guardedly towards PAPA’s room; getting there he will knock reverently on the door before slipping in, in childlike contrition.) (CHINWE is heading back for her room with an armful of clothes.) Chinwe (Casually, to HAMIDU.) Hello.

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If: A Tragedy of the Ruled  177 Hamidu How’re you … Oh, by the way… (Opening his medical kit to get something out. CHINWE stops, turns round.) This is the medicine I spoke about. For Onyema. (Proffers it to CHINWE.) Chinwe (Takes it, scrutinizing the label) Ephedrine. Hamidu Yeah. Chinwe Thank you very much. How much is it? Hamidu Oh, never mind. Chinwe Doctor…will this…cure him? Hamidu Well… Chinwe I mean … completely. Hamidu Hmm…it certainly will relieve him of pain, when ever he has an attack – yeah. Chinwe So…asthma can’t be cured. Hamidu Er…let’s put it this way: some asthmatic patients get better, even get completely cured, as they grow older. It’s at the tender age that one has to be extra careful. (CHINWE sighs in despair.) Anyway, the important thing really is to make sure that someone is always around – you know, in case of a sudden attack. Chinwe What can cause that? Hamidu A sudden attack? Oooh…exposure to cold for one thing; severe emotional upset for another – you know, shocks like that. (Jovially.) Anyhow with you around, I can’t see our Professor Onyeme getting any of those shocks. He’ll be all right. (Departing.) Nothing to worry about. Chinwe Thank you very much. (Departing also.) Hamidu Good night. (Enters his room, shutting his door. Lights fading on CHINWE entering her own room. Blackout.)

HAPPENINGS IV … bliss presaging cataclysm (General activity. Chairs being arranged, a table being set, a crate of soft drinks borne in, etc.) Banji Say, Betty Baby, have you gone to vote yet? Betty Since morning. Akpan Na who you vote for? Betty Why I go tell you? Banji It doesn’t matter – so long as you didn’t vote for money, or for Paper Tigers, Baby, you’re all right? Betty Na who be Paper Tiger? Akpan Like Landlord, na. Money people wey no want poor man better for country. Betty Ah-me na FLF I vote, O!

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178  Ola Rotimi Banji and Akpan (Robustly.) Up, FLF! (In the midst of all this, Reggae music – Nigerian style – is blaring forth from BETTY’s radio. She is dancing to this in the course of her chore. HAMIDU, who is busy with some other work, pauses to watch BETTY dancing. The music is “Fire in Soweto” by Sonny Okosun.) Hamidu I see you like that music. Betty (Spiritedly.) Yes – Sonny Okosun. Good for dancing. You know Sonny? Oziddi band. Kai! Hamidu D’you know what it says? Betty Who? Hamidu The music – d’you understand the words? Betty Ehn. About Fire na. Fire burning di people in ehn … (Suddenly she has to think.) Soweto, ehen – and ehm, ehm (Carefree flip of the hand.) Dat oder place! Hamidu You know about Soweto? Betty Soweto. No be dat place wey dem say dem dey suffer black people? Hamidu (Impressed.) Suffer, black people – yes; like you and me. Betty Ehn – I know, na. Hamidu Is it a good thing? Betty Wetin? Hamidu To suffer. Betty A-ah – how suffer go be good? (Chuckles, breaking off the dance, now curious.) Na who dey say suffer na good thing? Hamidu So why were you dancing to it? Betty A-ah – music no be for dance? Hamidu Listen. They say people are – let’s even forget about who the victims are – their colour I mean green, white, black – it doesn’t matter. Just … any human being, you know – like you and me. People. Suffering. The man – Sonny? Yes. – Sonny Okosun says “fire is burning them”. And you’re dancing to that news! Betty Why Sonny sing am now? Hamidu You can listen to it. Makes people think. But dancing to it? (Shakes his head.) (Choral singing floating in from outside). Banji (Excitedly.) They’re here – the 7th Cross Choir is here. (He goes to summon PAPA and GUESTS from PAPA’s room). Betty (Taking off.) Make I go look – Akpan Hey, hey … he-y! (Lugging in an old gramophone from PAPA’s room.) Come back – no be here dem dey come? Which one you dey leave work run 440 go meet dem? Betty Hmm – Ten Trouble! You self too trouble person. (Goes into her room to get dressed. DOKUBO and PAPA ushered in by BANJI, appear at the same time as the CHOIR enters singing stirringly. CHINWE is prominent in the CHOIR. MAMA and MRS DOKUBO soon emerge from PAPA’s room. Applause by those who are not engaged in the singing which is still in

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If: A Tragedy of the Ruled  179 progress. CHINWE breaks off from the procession, goes to MAMA, kisses her on the cheek. MAMA and PAPA take their seat at the table, flanked by DOKUBO and his WIFE. CHOIR LEADER goes and shakes hands with MAMA, PAPA, DOKUBO, and WIFE, CHINWE introducing them. The pleasantries over, LEADER moves to a vantage position, and conducts the singing to an end. Applause.) Akpan Encore! Encore! Chei– Betty (Approaches with a neatly wrapped present.) Mama, dis na di small present I get for you. (MAMA is moved, embraces BETTY gratefully.) Hamidu (Handing his own parcel to MAMA.) Mama, I arrived here at a time when you’re not well. But even in this short time, you and Papa have meant a lot to me. Please, take this. Akpan (Proffers his gift.) Mama. You will go to Lagos, and you will come back in peace and in better health. (GARUBA springs up fitfully from a low stool, and makes for his room.) Chinwe Mama this is from me and your child, Onyema. Ehn … Onyema himself says he has something special for you. Banji That’s right – Onyema, and his Group, come out! (ONYEMA leads a group of neighbourhood children in a march.) Onyema New Nigeria Youth Brigade! Children group Double N Y B. Onyema New Nigeria Youth Brigade! Children Double N Y B. Onyema Are we living or are we dead? Children We exist! Onyema H-a-n! Children H-i-i-n! Onyema Are we living or are we dead? Children We exist! Onyema H-a-n! Children H-i-i-n! Onyema Describe the enemies of our land, in the words of Major Chuk­ wuma Kaduna Nzeogwu! Children (In unison.) January 15, 1966. According to Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu, the enemies of our land are “the political profiteers; the intellectual swindlers; the foreign business puppets; the men in high and low places who seek bribes and demand 10 per cent; those that seek to keep the country permanently divided and poor so that they can remain in power as VIP’s of waste and decay; the tribalists, the nepotists; those that make our motherland look big for nothing before the world; and all who try to put the social, economic and political calendar of Nigeria back, by their words and their deeds.” Those are our enemies. Onyema New Nigeria Youth’s Brigade! Children Double N Y B.

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180  Ola Rotimi Onyema Are we living or are we dead? Children We exist! Onyema H-a-ni. Children H-i-i-n! Onyema I say are we living or are we dead? Children We exist! Onyema H-a-n! Children H-i-i-n! Onyema What’s the ideal of the nation? Children Self-reliance Onyema Two – three, go. Children (Sing) Self-reliance self-help This is the only way The only way, the only way To build a great nation. Self-reliance, self-help This is the only way The only way, the only way To do our nation proud. A true-born of Nigeria Never counts himself apart While waiting for some others To care for all his needs In the task of nation building Both “you” and “I” are one. If Ahmadu tries, And Amadi tries, Fubara tries, Funso tries If Okon tries, and Okonkwo tries To do that which must be done Then like little drops to an ocean We’ll build a great nation. Self-reliance, self-help This is the only way The only way, the only way To build a great nation. Yes, self-reliance, self-help This is the only way, The only way, the only way To do our nation proud.

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If: A Tragedy of the Ruled  181 (CHILDREN march out, saluting MAMA who hugs them all one after the other. Applause as the CHILDREN exit.) Mama I do not know how to thank you all to my heart’s content. I do not at all know. I can only pray that I may come back from treatment in Lagos and see you all. From my little children Onyema and his brigade, to my husband who has always stood by me, in spite of our problems all these 40 years of marriage. We are a passing generation … (Enter GARUBA dangling his boxing gloves in both hands. He proffers these proudly to MAMA who receives them, hugging him. Applause.) Our plane leaves in about three hours. So, you will all please excuse the rush. Apart from being our 40th wedding anniversary, today is also my birthday. Perhaps more important than that, exactly 35 years ago today also, with the help of Papa, I was able to pass the Higher Elementary Teachers examinations, and so prove to my people that women too can pass the exams that men pass! (Laughter.) I felt I should mark these important occasions before I left for Lagos. One way I would like us to remember that day, 40 years ago, when Papa and I got married, is by playing once again the record which we both danced to, on our wedding day. And I’d like Papa to get up and dance it with me. You all should also please join in sharing the memory with us. Thank you. (Applause. AKPAN cranks up the gramophone, puts a record on it. Music Tin Cun Tan – a Latin American number. PAPA holds out a hand and MAMA takes it. They start dancing with quiet grace. All others, excepting the choir, join in. GARUBA too is dancing – solo, if a bit out of beat. BANJI engages BETTY: DOKUBO pairs up with his WIFE. HAMIDU goes to CHINWE who is busy serving soft drinks to members of the CHOIR.) Hamidu Senora! Senora … (CHINWE turns.) Hamidu Can we try the impossible? Chinwe What? Hamidu A dance. Chinwe A what! Hamidu Dance – dance you and I. Chinwe Well, now! What will Karl Marx say to that? Hamidu A bourgeois pastime, true, but – anything to make Mama and Papa happy today. Chinwe Ok, Doc, let’s hit it! (They dance together, beautifully. Everyone is surprised by this spectacle. AKPAN, about to guzzle a drink, sees them and freezes, placing the drink down to wipe his eyes clear and gape. GARUBA is so excited, he dips a hand into his pocket, takes out a ten kobo piece, and pastes this on CHINWE’s forehead, then taps HAMIDU smartly on the shoulder, raising a fist in approbation. Record comes to an end; MAMA goes and hugs CHINWE, then HAMIDU, kissing their cheeks. AKPAN is moved by all the goings-on, and is unwilling to be outdone. He steps forward, raises a hand. Quiet prevails. He strikes a solemn pose.)

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182  Ola Rotimi Akpan I see a vision! By this time tomorrow, the Final Liberation Front has won the elections – handsdown, and the real march towards a truly New Nigeria has commenced. The myth that only a few known, monied men must forever control our lives, shall have been buried for all time. Six months from now, I pass my RSA Stage III and the Law exams. A telegram comes from Calabar. I am appointed Secretary to the Governor. Come the next elections. By the year of the next elections, we’ve joined the FLF. I contest the Gubernatorial seat itself. I clear it – hands down. Che Guevara is for the Presidency. My first task – with your Presidentship’s permission – we pull down this house! Banji Which House? Akpan This very Babel. The government buys it outright, and pulls it down. In its place, a school. Yep, a school named after our Papa here. A special school for the training of young minds. I seek your Presidentship’s permission to open the building. You grant it. I come down from Calabar, resplendent in my Governor’s habiliments. The whole world has gathered to witness Africa’s first school for the mind. I stand me before the noble edifice. Stretched right across the front of the new building, the ceremonial tape. (Deftly removes a tape from one of MAMA’s gifts – BANJI holds one end, HAMIDU the other.) Betty is by my side, in the capacity of Special Secretary to me, the Governor. By then she too has improved, has become a changed person. Maybe she has passed two GCE papers or something. She believes in the revolution. So I make her Officer-in-charge Government Protocol. She has provided this tape, stretched across the building. The preliminaries over, I advance at that point, erect of bearing, graceful of address, solemn … Extend my hand to the right, feeling for the pair of scissors to cut tape. But … wonders shall never end! No scissors! Indeed the leopard cannot change its spots. After all these years of revolution and progress, Betty hasn’t changed, Brothers! Not one bit. She is still the same beautiful, but feather-brained magpie she used to be in the early days of our struggle. Tape, yes. But no scissors to cut tape. Meanwhile, true to form, Betty is playing the butterfly – fluttering coquettishly way back in the crowd. I’m here, dying to cut this goddam tape! No scissors. No scissors, and the World Press have beamed their cameras on me, I tell you! God, what do I do? Drowned in shame, I become desperate. I start sinking down, down, down. My mouth comes to level with the tape – harm! Hamidu What? (AKPAN has snapped at the tape, chewing it in two. At that point BETTY enters, innocently bringing a tray to collect the empty glasses. AKPAN shoots a finger in her direction and bawls out.) Akpan Saboteur! You will pay for this! (BETTY freezes, turns to him, puzzled.) You disgrace me! Saboteur!

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If: A Tragedy of the Ruled  183 Betty Na wetiri? Akpan Arrest her! Arrest the dolt, I say! (BANJI grabs BETTY with mock alacrity. MAMA as well as everyone else, is enjoying the joke immensely.) Betty Wetin I do now? Akpan (Picking bits of thread off his teeth.) Oh-o, you’ll soon know! (Changing from accusatory indignation to simple narration.) People come round. Begging me … Pleading. I’m led into privacy. But behold! In the midst of the pleading, kneeling crowd, who do I see now? My wife! Wanting now to reconcile with me, to take me back. The sight of her angers me to the core! But, well, she is the mother of my only son. I start looking for water to wash my mouth … (Seizes a glass from the tray CHINWE is carrying, guzzling the contents amidst laughter by the GROUP.) Mama Let Betty go, I beg. Akpan I shall set her free, and shall forgive my wife too. But on this condition. The 7th Cross Choir must sing another song. Now One, two – (General laughter. CHOIR rises and sings. As singing is about ending, LAND– LORD enters, carrying a large, garishly wrapped parcel under his armpit. Uneasy silence. LANDLORD approaches the gathering, smiling buoyantly.) Landlord Merry evening to you all – Papa, good evening, sir. Papa Good evening, Chief. Landlord Mama, I hear today is your birthday. So I’ve brought this token gift. Eh … I’m sorry I’m a bit late, but I’m sure you all know how busy I’ve been – the political campaigns and then the voting which began this morning, and all that. Which reminds me – it’s not too late yet for those of you who haven’t gone to the polls. Voting ends at 6 – which gives you – what? 25 more minutes. And remember, it is The Patriotic People’s Party. PPP. Your Party; my Party. The only Party to save the nation, indeed to rescue the black man from perpetual misery, perpetual backwardness. All I’m saying is when you see a monkey, you see its hands. We are for progress. And we mean business this time. As you know, I’m to be your servant from this Constituency at Senate. All I’m saying is I am ready to serve you; will be honoured to serve you. True, between us there have been a few problems. But these are private issues, minor misunderstandings. House rent increases and all that. All I’m saying really is help me with a few more kobo so that I can renovate this place. That’s all. A place like this in Lagos would fetch thousands. I mean thousands. But anyway, I’m not here to talk personal business. All I’m saying is we have come here to celebrate the birthday of our mother here, and to observe the wedding anniversary of our Papa and Mama. As I said earlier on, I’ve brought this … (Displays present, then holds out a camera.) Someone come and flash us, as I make the formal handing-over! (No one stirs.) Betty – come on.

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184  Ola Rotimi (BETTY does not move.) Looks like I’m interrupting your proceedings. It’s because I’m in a hurry to get back to the Counting Station before six. So … y-e-s (Proffers camera to CHINWE.) Miss Ejindu. (GARUBA staggers to his feet. With a growl, advances to LANDLORD, pulls the parcel from him, crosses with it to MAMA; puts it on MAMA’s lap, takes MAMA’s right hand, touches the gift with it, then touches her chest with the hand. He does this three times, then picks up the parcel again, and goes back to LANDLORD who meanwhile has planted himself in a chair, forcing a chat with someone in the gathering to cover up his embarrassment. GARUBA dumps the parcel contemptuously at LANDLORD’s feet. LANDLORD is enraged.) Landlord What the cheek! (Rising.) How dare you …! (GARUBA raises a hand, displaying three fingers; then starts counting, his arm flailing the air like a boxing referee’s One, two, three … On the third count, GARUBA yanks his shirt off his body and, with a boxer’s swagger, charges in the direction of LANDLORD. HAMIDU and BANJI dash out from the crowd and intercept GARUBA’s advance. Crowd is astir.) All right, boxer … you win! (LANDLORD picks up his parcel, and departs, unrushed.) Akpan You fellows should have let Garuba pieces the blighter! Betty (Belligerently.) Why e go pieces am? Akpan Why e no go pieces am? Papa (Rising.) That’s enough! We must get moving, anyway. I’m sorry about that interruption but the Chief needs to learn to respect peoples’ feelings. Akpan Hear, Hear! Papa (Shaking hands with CHOIR LEADER.) Thank you very much Pastor. Dr Dokubo All those who want to follow Mama to the airport are welcome. Hamidu Mama, I’ll be on duty this evening till eleven, so I can’t come along. At any rate, go well, ma. (Choir sings another piece, accompanying MAMA and PAPA out. Dr and Mrs DOKUBO also follow them. BANJI and AKPAN are lugging MAMA’s suitcases.) Chinwe (To ONYEMA who is busy with GARUBA, clearing the chairs.) When you finish, your food is in the food-flask. Ok? Take two of this … (Handing him a bottle of tablets.) and sleep early. Your flannel – put it on and leave the lights on. Understand? Akpan Professor is ill again? Chinwe His asthma, now. We didn’t sleep last night. Sneezed till daybreak. Akpan Why didn’t you tell Che Guevara? Chinwe He gave us these tablets. Akpan (Scanning the label on the bottle.) Ephedrine. (To ONYEMA.) Prof, drink them, Ok? And put some warm clothes on too. Chinwe I’ll be back home as soon as Mama’s plane leaves. All right? Onyema. All right, Aunty. (He puts the bottle in his pocket, and resumes his chore with GARUBA, packing the chairs away.)

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If: A Tragedy of the Ruled  185 Chinwe Betty! Betty – are you coming? Betty No, sister … (Appears from her room, a wrapper girdled casually round her bosom and down.) I wan helep clean di yard. Chinwe Oh, Ok. In that case … (Takes bottle from ONYEMA’s pocket and hands it to BETTY.) Please, make sure Onyema takes two of these before he sleeps. Hear? Betty Ehn … (Tucks the bottle under her brassiere.) Make I lead una reach front house. (She accompanies CHINWE out. The chairs all cleared, GARUBA spars in boxing briefly with ONYEMA, then goes into his room, leaving ONYEMA to wind up with the sweeping. Feeling hot, ONYEMA removes his shirt and hangs it on the faucet of the tap, then proceeds with the sweeping. After a short while, BETTY runs in urgently.) Betty Onyema, Landlord motor dey come. If e ask for me, tell am say I no dey. (She hurries into her room, and shuts the door. Soon, enter two POLICEMEN. They accost ONYEMA.) Policeman 1 Where is Garuba? Onyema Sir? Policeman 2 (Brusquely.) Garuba – Garuba. Who is so called? Onyema (Intuitively suspicious.) Oh, e no dey. Policeman 1 Where e go? (ONYEMA hesitates.) Policeman 2 (Impatiently.) Come on, Room 3, the Chief said Room 3. (POLICEMEN head for GARUBA’s room.) Onyema Na him broder nahim dey inside. (POLICEMEN break into the room, without knocking.) Policeman 1 Na you be Garuba? Policeman 2 You no fit talk? Policeman 1 (To ONYEMA.) Dis man deaf? Onyema I no tell you say na Garuba broder be dat? Dat one no dey hear, no dey talk. (POLICEMEN look at one another, nonplussed, then … .) Policeman 2 (To his colleague.) Bo, go call di Chief make him come identify dis kine ting. (POLICEMAN 1 hurries out, while POLICEMAN II withdraws into the yard, surveying it. GARUBA emerges from his room and stands within the door staring curiously at POLICEMAN I. Meanwhile, ONYEMA has hastened to alert BETTY, after knocking furtively on BETTY’s room door to be let in. BETTY comes out of her room, still clad in a wrapper, ONYEMA following. BETTY takes in the situation and is about to go for GARUBA, when LANDLORD appears, accompanied by POLICEMAN 1 and two brawny THUGS.) Betty (Reservedly.) Good evening, sir. (LANDLORD ignores her presence and addresses his cohorts instead, his gaze fixed on GARUBA.)

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186  Ola Rotimi Landlord That is the hemp addict who assaulted me this evening … If you like, do your work! (He steps aside. POLICEMEN and THUGS charge at GARUBA who ducks quickly back into his room, trying to bolt the door. POLICEMEN resort to ramming the door with their bodies. BETTY rushes at them, planting her own body solidly between them and the door. POLICEMEN look at LANDLORD for instructions as to what to do with the intruder.) Landlord Betty, stop being crazy! Now, move aside. D’you hear? All I’m saying is: this is my house and you do as I tell you! (BETTY is adamant. LANDLORD further incensed, turns to POLICEMEN.) Betty Number one Harbouring a criminal! Two Obstructing the course of Justice. (This spurs POLICEMEN on to swift action – more desperate, ruthless. In a flash, they pounce on BETTY. A ferocious scuffle ensues. They succeed in dislodging BETTY from the door, swinging her out into the yard, while they themselves crash headlong into GARUBA’s room. Collecting herself maniacally up BETTY tumbles in after them. Audible struggling within.) Landlord (To THUGS.) Throw his things out! (THUGS swagger haughtily toward GARUBA’s room. Onyema tries to run in also, but is intercepted by LANDLORD (or a THUG) who yanks him back and deposits him with effortless finality on the boulder under which he had himself buried KALADA’s money. He crouches over the boulder, seething with rage and loathing. POLICEMEN now stumble out, GARUBA hemmed-in between them, handcuffed and bleeding from the head. He appears dazed, unnerved. BETTY flies wildly after them, hooking her arm doggedly to GARUBA’s. Thugs enter GARUBA’s room, and in no time, GARUBA’s beggarly possessions are crashing lamely onto the yard, a lone bed, a mat that serves as mattress, a stool, a, small, makeshift table, a misshapen, old trunk-box. The job done, THUGS loll about, spoiling for more action.) Garuba Now, Betty, you stop being – Betty (Berserk.) No call my name! You … you wicked Paper Tiger! (Spits at his feet.) Landlord (Absorbs the shock for a while then.) It is well! (Crosses to GARUBA’s room, pulls the door closed, takes out a huge padlock from his pocket, clanks it shut on the door; then blurts out peremptorily, striding out …) To the Police Station. Betty Yes! To Police Station. Den, go kill us and bury us with your money! (POLICEMEN follow LANDLORD, hauling their dazed captive and BETTY along. THUGS pull up smugly at the rear. Lights focus on ONYEMA still crouching on the ground, horrified, staring fixedly after the departing group.) Betty’s Voice (Trails behind, calling out with anxious urgency.) Onyema – enter house. Hear? No cry … we go come back now-now. Go … go wear your shirt! (ONYEMA does not budge. Lights dim slowly on him … to Blackout.)

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If: A Tragedy of the Ruled  187 HAPPENINGS V (Lights come on again indicating late hours of the night. All is still, except for the querulous chirruping of crickets. We notice an object lying on the very spot where ONYEMA was last seen in a crouch. On closer focus, we realize that the object is in fact a human form. Indeed, ONYEMA himself, motionless on the bare ground. Enter BANJI in a hurry from outside, stops to marvel at GARUBA’s scattered belongings in the yard; goes to GARUBA’s room, finds the door padlocked; gropes for the switch to the backyard light. Clicks it on. Darkness persists.) Banji As usual! (Sighs, enters his room.) (Not long after, we hear music approaching from outside. HAMIDU soon appears, carrying his medical kit and a portable radio from which the music emanates. BANJI hears the sound, and calls out to him.) Banji (Within.) Ernesto! Ernesto Chef. Is that you? Hamidu Banji! (BANJI emerges stuffing pillows into pillow-cases.) No lights? Banji As usual. Hamidu (Indicating GARUBA’s personal effects.) What’s happening? Banji I don’t know. Hey, have you heard? Hamidu PPP is leading. Banji And listen to this. Mama didn’t travel after all. Hamidu Why? Banji Flight cancelled! After waiting – when did we leave here? 6.15 right? Ok. 7, 8, 9 – at 10.25 p.m., I tell you. After waiting for four damned hours – the announcement “Sorry. Bla … flight WT bla-bla-bla, has been cancelled.” Hamidu (Cynically.) Due to operational reasons – Banji As usual! But the Flight Officer gave me the low-down, see? Not only the Port Harcourt-Lagos flight. All domestic services are being grounded for two days. Fummu Why? Banji Why? To convey members and well-wishers of the PPP to Lagos to celebrate their victory! Hamidu You’re kidding! Banji Kidding? You try flying tomorrow. Hamidu Where is Mama then? Banji Back in Dr Dokubo’s house. Papa, Chinwe, Ten Trouble, everybody, downcast. I came to get some pillows. Mama may have to travel by land tomorrow. Can you imagine that? A woman in that condition, galloping on a 12-hour journey over the rough and tumble of our roads! (Pushing his arms through the pillows to look like some pristine bird with a pair of grotesquely bloated flappers.) Yep! The big shots are back in power – all Government production machines will henceforth become personal or Party property. Nigeria we hail thee! What must we expect next? The return of sirens and outriders! Kpu-kpu-kpu-kpu – Fi-e-e-n-n! All traffic stop for five hours! The rulers

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188  Ola Rotimi of the nation are flying to Alaska to … urinate! V -u-u-u-ml. (Speeds off, feigning an aeroplane in flight.) (HAMIDU rises nervelessly from the verandah where he has been sitting, trudges dejectedly towards his room. Occupied with his own thoughts, HAMIDU does not notice the body on the ground. He comes to the door of his room; puts down the radio; with the free hand reaches into the pocket of his trousers; brings out a key and opens the door. Enters, leaving the radio behind. RADIO announces …) Radio This is Radio Rivers. Coming up now to midnight. Before we say goodnight, this final piece by Johann Sebastian Bach entitled Jesu Lead My Footsteps Ever. (Music comes on. HAMIDU reappears from his room, a lantern in one hand, a bucket dangling from the other. A skimpy loin-cloth girds his waist. He is heading for the bathroom, but first has to get his towel from the clothesline. In the process, his lantern picks up the body on the ground. He stands, transfixed, trying to make out the object. Then, cautiously, he moves closer, sinks down, rocks the body, calling “Onyema! Onyema!” No response. He feels ONYEMA’s wrist for pulse-beats; listens to his heart; examines the pupils. He scoops the body up onto the verandah, anal hurries in panic to CHINWE’s room. Pounds urgently on CHINWE’s door, calling aloud in the process: “Chinwe … Chinwe, are you in there?” No response. He hurries over to AKPAN’s door; knocks, bawling: “Akpan … Mr. Akpan … I…” Again no reply from within. Whirls round, starts heading for BETTY’s room, stops short and veers instead to where the body lies languidly; scoops it up in both arms and bears it urgently into his room. Footsteps approaching from the outside. Presently, BETTY and GARUBA enter the yard. They pause briefly to stare at GARUBA’s belongings. GARUBA goes to the door of his room; regards the imposing barrier that was once his own door; seizes the padlock, jerks it rudely. No use. He stands staring powerlessly at it. All this time, HAMIDU’s radio is broadcasting the following news.) Radio Broadcast Radio Rivers. The news summary. The nation went to the polls today to elect a new Government. Reports reaching our studios say that the Patriotic Peoples’ Party has won a majority of 40 seats in Senate; The Final Liberation Front 25 seats; the National Democratic Vanguard 10 seats; The Republican Peoples Convention 6; The Total Freedom Congress 4 seats. The results from two States are yet to be announced. Political observers describe today’s elections to the Senate as very crucial. They explain that the outcome may have a psychological effect on the mode of voting in the four other elections yet to be contested by the Parties. Again, the results of today’s Senatorial elections PPP 40; FLF 25 seats; NDV 10; RPC 6; TFC 4. That brings us to the end of today’s broadcast. Good night everyone, tomorrow is nother day. (BETTY is attracted by the radio as by the desolate glimmer from the lantern on the ground where HAMIDU has left it. She starts crossing to HAMIDU’s room, calling out as she approaches it “Broda … broda doctor. Broda …!” HAMIDU now emerges from his room and accosts BETTY heatedly.)

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If: A Tragedy of the Ruled  189 Hamidu What happened to Onyema? Betty (Nonplussed.) Onyema! Hamidu How did he get here? (Indicating the ground where ONYEMA was picked up.) Betty Dere? Hamidu Where have you been? Betty Wetin do di boy? Hamidu Answer me, I say! Where have you been – the two of you? Betty I … I – Hamidu I heard you both come in together. Where were you before then? Betty Police Station. Hamidu Police – What did you go there to do – the Police Station? Betty Landlord take us dere. Hamidu Landlord! Betty He bring police and tugs come beat me and Garuba. Hamidu And they beat Onyema too? Betty No. Only – Hamidu Only what? Betty Onyema been kneel down dere dey cry when police dem dey take us go. Hamidu And what about the other neighbours? Betty I never see dem since dem follow Mama go airport dis evening. Hamidu So … That’s all? Onyema didn’t fall down or, or anything like that? (BETTY shakes her head, suspecting HAMIDU’s sanity. Are you sure?) Betty Na true, sah. (Producing the tablets from her brassiere.) Even sef I never give am di medicine wey sister Chinwe say make. I give am, before police and Landlord come take us go. Hamidu (Absently, choking with emotions.) He should not have stayed outside – naked like that all night. (Whirls round and hurries back into his room. BETTY looks about, still confounded, then makes guardedly for HAMIDU, almost bumping into HAMIDU who comes bearing ONYEMA out. Impulsively, BETTY feels ONYEMA’s limp body and is about to cry out in fright but is stopped by HAMIDU.) Sshh! No time for that – we’ve got to rush him to the hospital! You run off and get a taxi. Betty No taxi by dis time, sah. We go walk-a … (Pulling ONYEMA from HAMIDU.) Make I carry am. Hamidu A car, then … (Submits to BETTY’s insistence, and starts helping BETTY swathe ONYEMA onto her back.) D’you know anyone in the neighbourhood whom we could beg? Betty Ah-broda, nobody go ‘gree give car like dat for dis Nigeria, o! We go waka! Oya – Garuba … (Beckons to GARUBA to pick up the lantern. GARUBA gets the message, crosses over, picks up lantern, and leads the way hurriedly, BETTY following. HAMIDU fetches his medical kit, and runs up to them. Lights fade to Blackout.)

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190  Ola Rotimi HAPPENINGS VI … the substance of nothingness The Evening Following… (GARUBA and AKPAN have been packing GARUBA’s belongings from the yard into HAMIDU’s room. BANJI soon appears from PAPA’s room, dully; crosses to AKPAN who is now standing in front of HAMIDU’s room, looking expectantly in the direction of the room.) Akpan How is Papa taking it? Banji Still hasn’t said a word. Not one word. It’s very strange. He simply lies down there on the bed, gazing at the ceiling. Akpan God! The news must have shocked him like hell! Banji The more I think about it, the more I feel Onyema wanted to die like that! Believe me, I mean – the boy is too sensible, man, too intelligent to stay outside with no clothes on all night! An asthma patient with pneumonia plus. (HAMIDU comes out of his room, dressing up.) Hamidu I’ve never felt so useless in my goddam life. Allah! As a trained doctor, I’m useless here, and I’ll never forgive this country for that. To think that there we were in the streets, the boy gasping for life. All we needed was an oxygen mask. That’s all. In a land where human life means something, there would be telephones. Telephones that work. In minutes a well equipped ambulance would be at your doorstep. But here. How can you work and claim to be useful without the tools of your trade? How? Akpan This land can render a man useless so perfectly. Banji So, that’s the point. That’s Onyema’s response, his own answer to a society rife with contradictions. He saw what happened at the party. A rich man brandishing his loathsome power so much it provoked even the deaf and dumb. (A solemn chorus floats in, swelling progressively as the singers draw nearer. Later he again was witness to the consequences of affluence disgraced by the deaf and dumb. The arrest and brutal manhandling of the common man proved too revolting for his young mind to bear. He must have asked himself one question does a boy like him: honest and sensitive – does he stand a chance in a nation with no value for the dignity of man? A nation wher’ Money and Position mean everything? What is the future of our children? Indeed where is the future of Africa herself? The GROUP enters, still singing. CHINWE is at the head of the Group. Clad in black, she is flanked by a PRIEST (or BIBLE CLASS LEADER of the earlier Happenings), and a woman whom we soon recognize as MAMA ROSA, also of the earlier Happenings. On seeing BANJI and HAMIDU, CHINWE disengages herself from PRIEST and MAMA ROSA, and approaches the two men, absently. Stopping a few paces from them, she scans them both briefly then speaks to HAMIDU.)

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If: A Tragedy of the Ruled  191 Chinwe Brother, could you, I beg you, get Papa to say something? Any­ thing. Let Papa pray for the boy – anything. Papa was his idol. And you too. Hamidu Don’t worry. Papa will say something. When the School children arrive here. Chinwe I thank you … I … thank you all. (She turns away, to retire to her room, but her attention is arrested by something farther away – hanging from the tap. ONYEMA’s shirt – the one he had taken off and hung while clearing the chairs with GARUBA the previous evening. CHINWE totters dreamily toward the tap. Getting there, she reaches out, slowly, pulls the shirt tenderly off the faucet, drawing it close to her bosom where she now fondles it possessively. PRIEST goes to her, places a hand on her shoulder, leading her away from the tap as he recites.) Priest Take ye in good part the chastisement of the Lord. For as Saint Paul saith in the twelth chapter to the Hebrews, whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth. He scourgeth every child whom he receiveth. (Meanwhile the voices of CHILDREN singing are heard, approaching.) Amidu (To BANJI.) Go tell Papa the children are coming. (BANJI goes to knock on PAPA’s door. No answer.) Banji (Still knocking.) Papa … Papa … Papa! (HAMIDU hurries over and pounds on the door.) Hamidu Papa … Papa … the children are here … your children … they’ve come to see you. Papa . they want you … Please, come out … They need you … now … (Pauses briefly for a response.) They’re waiting … please don’t do this to them … Papa… (Hopelessly.) This can’t be sleeping! Banji You think … he has … (HAMIDU gets more desperate, jolts the door with a frenzied thrust of his foot. Door flies open. PAPA appears! Silence. PAPA approaches, backwards, arms folded over his chest. Fully out to view, he stands still back still turned to audience, talking volubly, as if addressing the bare walls.) Papa If it does not go round, how can it come back, in the circumstances? True, true, but … let’s look at it the other way, Ladies and Gentlemen. No, no – seriously … What? Selfless leadership. Well, if you say so … want it so … fair enough, why not? It’s only valid. That what? Angels? Who’s talking about angels? Oh, you mean hyprocrisy! Well, well now, that depends … It looks quite bright to me. Green rainbows. No doubt about that! All right, all right, agreed generations come, generations go, the Nation remains. Who has had his chance? Oh, of course, please, go ahead … that’s right – sit down, take your time! No need to rush. With all pleasure … (Clears his throat.) Now, as I was saying … if chickens were frogs and frogs were drifting … . drifting, just … drifting. (Stops abruptly.) Priest (Decisively, coming forward.) Brethren – we move on. The Dead cannot wait for the Living!’ (GROUP resumes singing – a subdued but soulful back-up to PRIEST’s own impassioned exhortation.)

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192  Ola Rotimi Take ye in good part the chastisement of the Lord for, as Saint Paul saith in the twelfth Chapter to the Hebrews, whom the Lord Loveth, he chasteneth. He scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are you bastards, and not sons! (PRIEST leads the GROUP out in a procession, the CHILDREN in front, ADULTS following. We notice KALADA in the midst of the children. But as they depart, he lingers around, sidling to hide in a corner in the backyard. CHINWE is escorted by MAMA ROSA back into her room. The others, except PAPA and HAMIDU, all exit. HAMIDU, who all this time has been staring with numbed puzzlement at PAPA, now addresses him.) Hamidu If things were normal, I would have hated you – hated you for this, hated you red! But I forgive you – forgive you because nothing is normal here. Forgive you, but reject your new philosophy. “Blessed are they in these times who feel nothing, see nothing, hear nothing, but keep existing!” Is that it? Well we cannot … we cannot build a nation on a foundation of individual self-preservation! You hear? What sense is the survival of the individual in a nation drowning in a mire of misshapen values? We must survive together. (Backing out.) We shall survive. We all indeed … . must survive! Together. (Turns and strides out determinedly to join the funeral procession. KALADA emerges from his hiding place. He stands studying PAPA for some time, then goes to the boulder under which himself and ONYEMA had hidden some money in Happenings II. Slowly, he rolls the boulder away, picks up the money and rises, meditating over it. This scene is covered by a Voice-Over replay of part of the dialogue between ONYEMA and KALADA in the earlier Happenings II.) Onyema It is under here. Kalada The money! So you – Onyema I didn’t steal it! Kalada Ehen? Onyema I only seized it. Kalada All right. Onyema Well … d’you want it or not? Kalada I want it, I want it! … Chen Onyes, Onyes .! You do well, O! Voice (Over fading off.) … Bye … bye … (KALADA squats again, places the money back in the ground, rolls the boulder over it, turns round, and walks away. The singing voices of the cortege still waft into our hearing. Lights Fade … Slowly on PAPA, still standing … alone … To Blackout.) Voice It is finished.

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Ola Rotimi Creating Theatrical Spaces

MARTIN BANHAM

Ola Rotimi (1938–2000) lived somewhat in the shadow of his fellow Nigerian dramatist Wole Soyinka but, while Soyinka commands international respect and admiration, Rotimi’s reputation in Nigeria, both as a playwright and director, is unsurpassed. His fellow Nigerian dramatist Femi Osofisan has said that Rotimi ‘has no equal on the Nigerian stage when it comes to the control of physical space or the manipulation of audience response … Rotimi is lord of the arena stage, and his link with the audience is immediate, tactile and sensual’ (Osofisan, 1986). Born of Yoruba and Ijo parents (a significant cross-community parentage in terms of Rotimi’s committed stance against the destructive elements of tribalism), his father was an engineer and trade unionist. It is surely significant that both parents were heavily involved in amateur dramatics. Rotimi’s father regularly directed shows, while his mother for a time ran a women’s dance troupe and promoted drama in the Ijo language. Rotimi was educated at the prestigious Methodist Boys High School in Lagos and then in the United States at Boston University and Yale, specializing in playwriting. His first play, To Stir the God of Iron, was performed in Boston in 1963, with his much more famous and frequently produced socialist prowomen and anti-politician comedy, Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again, premiering at Yale in 1966 and winning an award as Yale Major Play of the Year. While studying in the US, Rotimi married his British wife Hazel May Guadreau who was also at Boston University, studying music. Rotimi returned to Nigeria in 1966 to teach at the then University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University) where he founded the Ori Olokun Players, basing their activities in a disused hotel. The simple hotel had the traditional Yoruba open courtyard, surrounded on three sides by single story buildings. Rotimi and his colleagues converted this into a performance arena, with the playing space on a shallow platform in the courtyard and the audience sitting around it, as shown in the illustration overleaf. Rotimi’s early plays, The Gods Are Not to Blame (1968), Kurunmi (1969) and Ovonramwen Nogbaisi (1971) were premiered in this space. Directly

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194  Martin Banham

Stage design for If. (Illustration by Simon Banham) or indirectly each of these plays engages with major incidents in Nigerian history. The Gods Are Not to Blame, which is a version of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, allegorically addresses the Nigerian Civil War that tore the country apart in the late 1960s. Kurunmi and Ovonramwen Nogbaisi imaginatively chronicle and comment upon actual historical events, relating them to the present. Kurunmi relates to the internecine Yoruba wars in the nineteenth century, and reflects on the Nigerian Civil War of the 1960s. Ovonramwen Nogbaisi is based on the British sacking of the city of Benin in 1897, and the exile of the Oba of Benin. For the audience, gathering round the action and viewing it actually and metaphorically from different angles, history and myth become reality. With large casts, musicians and dancers (Kurunmi has a cast of at least 49, Ovonramwen Nogbaisi at least 42) this in a real sense creates total theatre immersing the audience in the action, sounds and sight of the performance. Shared between performers and audience in the same space, and relating historical incidents to the real experience of the spectators, Rotimi’s productions carried immense power and relevance. When in 1977 Rotimi moved to the University of Port Harcourt, he left behind the original Ori Olokun theatre but not the passion for making the performance space an integral part of his dramaturgy. It was in Port Harcourt in 1979 that he created and directed his play If: A Tragedy of the Ruled. In a personal note to the present writer, Rotimi has described If as marking a departure from his earlier creative directions and the beginning of a new phase both in style and concerns. His ‘concern’ for the way the

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Ola Rotimi: Creating Theatrical Spaces  195 play should work in action is conveyed by ‘A Note on the Dynamics of this Production’ contained in the preface to the printed text: From the point of view of directing, this, purposefully, is a drama of juxtaposed, variegated actions: a further exploration of theatrical ‘natural­ ness’ in the evocation of African atmosphere and rhythms through time, space, sound and matter. Technically here, no action needs to stop so that another can begin. Sometimes, the actions of one moment crash one upon another; other times, they follow one after the other with innate civility, yet ‘trippingly’-driven in their ‘natural’ modes by the tensions of threatening wills. Overall, a convoluting concourse of happenings is the particular stage picture to be evoked. The illustration, which is based on the actual ground plan and design of the Port Harcourt production, shows the rooms that are occupied by the characters of the play, and the central courtyard through which they pass, and in which they sit, gossip, play, cook, wash, and also by the audience – inhabiting the same space and complicit in the actions and lives and deaths of the characters. This complicity is important. If is a highly charged political play. The characters are drawn from a range of social classes and ethnic backgrounds. Their courtyard is a microcosm of Nigeria. It represents all that country’s tensions, prejudices and fears. The closeness of the audience to the action forces it to confront the picture that Rotimi draws of a country that, unless it unifies people of all ethnic backgrounds and social classes, will always be prey to the corrupt and the exploitative. The compound’s owner, ‘Landlord’, is the primary symbol of oppression. His tenants are played off against each other in order to reinforce his power. Their varied lives are presented with a fluency that subordinates the development of a single story-line to the cumulative development of a picture of persecution, prejudice, poverty and corruption, in the face of which they either fight or succumb. Often this is effected with considerable technical skill with scenes running simultaneously, controlled by a shifting focus that is as much the choice of individual audience members as it is of the playwright. At one point, for instance, three scenes run together – two men engaged in devising a political manifesto, a bible class responding ecstatically to its leaders’ evangelising, and an old teacher leading his children’s recitation of the titles of the kings of Nigeria. The life of the courtyard is played out with the ‘naturalness’ that Rotimi calls for, but it is the uncompromising naturalness of The Lower Depths rather than the distancing of The Cherry Orchard. The play is structured not into acts and scenes but into ‘happenings’. In using this term Rotimi was, I am sure, very aware of its meaning in terms of the apparently spontaneous performances of the alternative arts scene of the mid-twentieth century, particularly in the USA. Certainly the sense of spontaneity, of something you come across unexpectedly in the street, is what he was aiming for. But he is also using the term in a simpler sense – something you happen to choose to look at, perhaps only fleetingly, from

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196  Martin Banham a range of activities that are taking place around you. At the heart of this theatrical structure is the actor/audience relationship. As fellow inhabitants of the courtyard or compound, members of the audience are neighbours to specific characters, intimate observers of private actions, entirely captured within the space of the play. The challenge the characters face is one from which the audience, collectively and individually, cannot escape. This has always been the power of community performance in Nigerian society: actors and audience occupy the same space, and are responsible for the decisions made within that space. Rotimi’s genius was to make modern African theatre share that sense of communal function. It is pertinent at this point to see Rotimi’s use of language in the Nigerian context – something he implicitly identifies as being the essential tool at the heart of matters of unity and progress. The play uses standard English, variants of English, pidgin and indigenous languages. In many cases these indicate the educational background of the user, but pidgin, for instance, is also used to give a witty and effective dynamic to specific characters. See, for instance, Adiagha’s scornful, pidgin English, attack on her husband, berating him for putting his pursuit of qualifications before the provision of food for his family. Money no dey, money no dey, the crazeman dey buy book … Everyday a return work; e eat, open book, e go come butu, dey talk grammar with Che Guevara and Banji. Den e go begin sing: ‘Tio lele, tio lele … Nigeria will be great!’ Nigeria go great, Nigeria go great: na by sing nahim country dey take great? Ehn? No be inside belle nahim person dey take know country wey great? … Dis Che Guevara, abi na Che Guava, weder na Che Paw-paw abi na Banana him say him be sef – di man be doctor. Banji get degree for lawyer. My man yon na Njakiri: suffer-head! Money no know him face; chop no know my belle. (He has no money but the crazy man buys books. Every day he returns from work, eats, opens a book, sits down. Talks away with Che Guevara and Banji. Then he begins to sing: ‘In good time, in good time … Nigeria will be great!’ Nigeria great, Nigeria great: is it by singing the country will be great? Eh? Is it not through hard work that a country becomes great? Eh? And this Che Guevara or does he call himself Che Guava, Che Pawpaw or Che Banana – he is a doctor: Banji is a qualified lawyer. But my man is a labourer. Because he does not have money I can’t feed myself.) Later in the play the discussion between Mama Rosa and a Fisherman is carried out in two languages – English and Kalabari – with Mama Rosa inter­ preting, using translation as a dramatic device, and simultaneously under­lining the way that language can be used to divide and rule. If is a play that fully engaged with the contemporary political debate within Nigeria, and which has a clearly declared point of view. The play’s

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Ola Rotimi: Creating Theatrical Spaces  197 achievement is to create a rich, diverse and truthful picture of life in the community of the compound, and to make it relevant to the life of the nation. It does so, not only through the power of the central statement but also through its wit and humanity. Two other plays of Rotimi are also to be noted. Akassa You Mi (published 2001, though performed earlier) and Hopes of the Living Dead (published 1988). Akassa You Mi is an historical drama, dealing with an incident in the late 19th century when troops of the Nembe Kingdom under Frederick William Koko attacked the premises of the Royal Niger Company at Akassa. In the published text Rotimi offers ‘Advice to the Director’ which gives a good insight into the playwright’s ‘feel’ for performance. He writes: 1. The production must NOT drag. Good pacing and the application of logical, perceptive cuts where necessary in the text, should help realize the pulsating dynamics deserving of the actions the play offers. 2. The set must be simple and easily changeable to avoid the kind of time lag that could engender languor. 3. As much as possible, the auditorium should accommodate parts of the happenings. The Council of War scene, for instance, and the final ‘Oration’ scene. Even the ‘Pirates scene’. 4. Depiction of scenes – particularly the ‘gathering scenes’ should avoid the ‘sit-stand-deliver-sit again’ pattern of naïve dramatization. Ingenuity is expected here, to bring ‘life’ into the stage picture. (p. 2) In the author’s preface to the published text (which contains a dedication to ‘a people in search of a leader’) Rotimi writes ‘this play, as is, means so much to me that I strongly feel like not only directing it myself, but even playing a part in it’ (vi). The role Rotimi relished was the legendary ‘Crocodile-Without-Shame’ who is described by other characters as ‘man of action – that’s him! A god himself in the act! … They say the man can remain deep in the rivers for days, with just his nose – nothing more – nostrils skimming past at water-level … Like a crocodile’s.’ Rotimi’s relish for this role is a fine indication of his passion to be in the midst of the theatrical action he creates rather than playing the distant playwright. Hopes of the Living Dead is based on the real life story of Ikoli Harcourt White, of Kalibari parentage, an orphan by the age of fifteen who then developed leprosy. Harcourt White is later identified as one of the father’s of contemporary Nigerian choral music. The production notes to the published text tell how the young Harcourt White was hospitalized at Port Harcourt general Hospital under the experimental care of a Scottish medical practitioner, Dr Ferguson. Ferguson’s work drew criticism arguing that it upset the work of a ‘normal’ hospital, and he eventually abandoned his research and left. Public attitudes towards the lepers were aggressive, with pressure to exclude them from hospital care and turn them out to cope for themselves. The lepers fought back led by the extraordinary example of

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198  Martin Banham Harcourt White. He demanded from his fellow patients self-reliance and selfhelp and the triumphant finale of the play is the establishment of innovative Uzuakoli Leper Settlement where the people could live in security, work for themselves and receive appropriate treatment. The vulnerability amongst the patients that the authorities hoped to exploit was the diversity of their backgrounds and languages. The unity that Harcourt White demanded meant surmounting the ignorance and prejudice created by these divisions. The parallel with the political unity of present-day Nigeria is clear. There are many striking features about the play. Theatrically the play is energized by cliff-hanging action and by the skill of Rotimi’s characterdrawing, and is enriched not only by splendid moments of physical farce and verbal comedy but also by Harcourt White’s songs and music. A cast of thirty performers plus singers indicates the scale of the production, and another scale of significance is that of the languages used. Over fifteen languages are employed in the play. Here the experiments that are worked with in If are taken to their logical conclusion: in a multi-lingual nation all languages can be and are used simultaneously and ‘translation’ is effected with a surprising degree of ease and fluency. If may be regarded as a pessimistic play: by contrast Hopes of the Living Dead is triumphantly optimistic. Rotimi has argued that committed literature is not limited to any single formula. His own experiments made a forceful contribution to the public debate within Nigeria (and have on occasions been regarded by the authorities as being unsuitable to decorate public celebrations!) The strength of his remarkable work lies not in the propagation of any simple ideological dogma, but in its powerful theatrical advocacy of political and social action, and in his consummate theatrical craftsmanship.

Works cited Osofisan, Femi (1986), ‘The Alternative Tradition: A Survey of Nigerian Literature in English Since the Civil War’, Présence Africaine, Vol. 139, pp. 162-85. Rotimi, Ola (1971), The Gods Are Not to Blame, London: Oxford University Press. —— (1971), Kurunmi, London: Oxford University Press. —— (1974), Ovonramwen Nogbaisi, Benin City: Ethiope Publishing Corporation. —— (1977), Our Husband has Gone Mad Again, Ibadan: University Press plc. —— (1983), If: A Tragedy of the Ruled, Ibadan: Heinemann Educational Books. —— (1988), Hopes of the Living Dead, Ibadan: Spectrum Books. —— (2001), Akassa You Mi, University of Port Harcourt Press.

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Morountodun (I have found a sweet thing)

FEMI OSOFISAN

CAST The Director Titubi Deputy Superintendent of Police Salami Police Corporal Alhaja Kabirat Alhaji Buraimoh Lawyer Isaac Lati Warder Baba Marshal Bogunde Kokondi Mama Kayode Mosun Wura Molade Moremi Niniola Oronmiyon Warrior Titubi’s followers Drummers Yeye-Oba group

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200  Femi Osofisan

One (Stage opens on the Dressing Area, marked out by mats and wooden frames, etc, of an evidently ambulant and somewhat amateurish theatre company. A bench. Tables and stools, and possibly a table with a long mirror. Lockers. A flurry of activity: actors making up, trying costumes, reading script, rehearsing gestures, miming some of the later actions in the play. Enter the DIRECTOR, rubbing his hands.) Director Hurry up. Hurry up. Play opens in five minutes. An Actor Fair house today? Director Fair. Better than in the last town we stopped. Another Actor And no signs of trouble? Director No signs yet. But don’t worry. Another Actor That’s what you said yesterday. Yet we were almost lynched. Director This time I’ve sent for the police. Another Actor The police! Is that a joke? Director Please hurry up. We’re doing nothing illegal. We can seek police protection as much as anybody. Another Actor I hope you’re right. Yesterday was hell. Director There’ll be no disturbance tonight. (He watches them for a while, then steps out of place, and approaches the audience.) Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. We will soon be starting. But while the actors prepare, I will try and give you a rapid summary of our play tonight. The play, as you will soon see, starts in the year 1969, the month of September. That year, if you remember, the civil war was raging in the east of our country, but this play has nothing to do with that. It deals with another war, the one that was later to be popularly known as the Agbekoya uprising, in which ordinary farmers, in the west of the country, rose up and confronted the state. Maybe you remember? Illiterate farmers, whom we had all along thought to be docile, peace-loving, if not even stupid, suddenly took to arms and began to fight against the government! Two, three, four … seven months! And the war was still hot and bitter. Farmers dying, policemen falling, soldiers going and not returning. Were they not all our kinsmen? If we could not speak about the war in the east, because of stiff decrees, would we also be silent about the one in the west? And suppose another should start in the north? Well, we decided not to be silent. We decided to go and rouse people up by doing a play on the subject. (Noises begin, from the entrances. He looks up briefly, then continues.) We decided to do a play about it, and take it round to all open places. And that was when our troubles began. (Noises rise again, but subside as attendants are heard talking to crowd. DIRECTOR takes out a handkerchief and wipes his brow.) We thought we were contributing towards the process of finding a solution. But before we knew it, we had become part of the problem. (Noises grow. The actors freeze, anxious. The DIRECTOR fights to continue.)

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Morountodun  201 As I was saying … the night of … (The noise drowns his voice now.) Please excuse me … I’ll go and see … (He walks quickly towards the main entrance but is soon violently pushed back by a shouting, near-hysterical mob, consisting mainly of women bearing placards and some handbills which they begin to distribute round the auditorium. They are attended by a couple of drummers who are apparently trying to make money out of the occasion.) (Full lights return, flooding the entire theatre. Most of the actors on stage have quickly sneaked out. Now we can read some of the inscriptions carried out by the agitators DOWN WITH AGITATORS! WIPE OUT THE INSANE LOVERS OF POVERTY! AWAY WITH HYPOCRITES! CRUSH THE PEASANT REVOLT! CLEAN THE CITY OF LOUTS! DEATH TO THE JOBLESS! NO FOREIGN IDEOLOGIES! TO EARN IS HUMAN! WHO DOES NOT WANT MONEY? etc. The intruders are also chanting.) Stand! Stand! Fight to be rich For happiness: Oh fight for your right To rise in life! With good luck and stubbornness With sweat, sweat, and cleverness De – ter – mi – na – tion! Ma – ni – pu – la – tion! Oh fight for your share And do not care! (A little group, superbly dressed, with lots of jewellery and make-up, and wearing conspicuously the Moremi necklace then in vogue – a little gold dagger, surrounded with golden nuggets – takes over the stage. Leading them is TITUBI, a pretty, sensual, and obviously self-conscious woman.) Titubi (Addressing the audience.) Look at me. Go on, feast your eyes. Am I not good to look at? Ehn? So what is wrong with being rich? (Her speech throughout will be punctuated by rousing calls, ovations, etc, from her followers.) So there’s a peasant rebellion. And then? What have we got to do with it? Is it a sin to be rich? Ahn’ahn! It’s disgusting! Night after night! Day after day! Lies! Insults! In the newspapers! On the radio. On the television, nko? And then here they come with a play! But it’s got to stop! This is our country too, and we shall not run away! I, Titubi, daughter of Alhaja Kabirat, I am stopping this play tonight! And if you’re wise, you’ll go and return your tickets now and collect your money back. (Hisses.) Director (Struggling vainly.) Madam … please. Excuse me – Titubi Shut your mouth! Who are you? Director Please, madam … I …. I am the director of this play, and – Titubi Oh so it’s you! We’ve been looking for you. (The mob seizes him roughly. A couple of slaps.) No. No. Beat him … gently. Don’t make the

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202  Femi Osofisan useless man into a hero. Where are your actors? Director (Shouting.) Gone for the police! The police! Titubi Very good. We’ll soon have all of you in prison. Director We shall see. We shall see. We are respectable people. And all the men there, who have bought their tickets – Titubi Nobody will watch any show tonight. Either we stop it all, or we burn the place down. But nobody’s going to watch anything here tonight. We’ll all wait for the police. Director But why? Who are you? What have we done to you? Titubi It’s now that you will ask. You go round the place, shelling us with abuse. Slanders! Yet (Derisively.) – ‘Who are you? What have we done to you?’ Director I assure you there must be a mistake. We’ve never abused anybody. Titubi No? Help him revive his memory. (A couple of slaps again.) Gently, gently, don’t leave any mark on the wretched man. We have respect for the law, even though the law is a donkey. These beggars have been riding it with glee down our spine all these days. And it is enough. We’ve been bruised enough. And, enough of pretending not to notice! We didn’t ask anybody’s father not to be rich, did we? Crowd No-ooh! Titubi Did we see anybody’s grandmother trading and overturn her wares? Crowd No-ooh! Titubi Did we send locusts to anybody’s farm? Crowd No-oooh! Titubi Don’t we pay our own tax? Crowd Yesssss! Titubi So in what way are we responsible for the farmers’ uprising? Ehn? What does our being rich have to do with it? Or is it only when we wear rags that we qualify to breathe the air? Tell me, Mr Director! (Slaps him.) You mount these stupid plays, calling everybody a thief, simply because we work and sweat and use our brain. You want to say you don’t like money, abi? If I offer you cash now, hard, glowing cash, you won’t dance for me? Ehn? Look at it! (An assistant opens out her handbag. She dips into it and brings out a handful of currency notes, which she begins to paste disdainfully on the forehead of the DIRECTOR, who is now covered in sweat.) Money! See, you’re shivering already at the touch of it. It’s given you a hard-on. Dance, ijimerei Dance for me! (She starts the rousing song again, and her followers join. Again and again, clearly intoxicated now, she dips into the bag and flings out more money with increasing frenzy. There begins a furious scramble for the money, in which the DIRECTOR finally joins. The drummers too are very active.) Yeeesss! I have money and I can enslave you with it! I can buy all of your ringworm-infested actors if I choose. Aaahhhhh. (The piercing sound of a police siren, outside. Sounds of car doors banging. Noise of boots. Then a loud blast on the whistle. Steps approaching. Enter a Police Officer – actually a DEPUTY SUPERINTENDENT – in mufti, accompanied by a

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Morountodun  203 CORPORAL in full riot gear; shield, tear gas gun and canisters, etc. Among the crowd a moment of frozen indecision, and then – panic. Everybody runs out through various exits, in disarray, leaving TITUBI, and the DIRECTOR who is still on his haunches collecting the scattered money. The CORPORAL quickly holds him.) Superintendent Is this the leader, ma’am? Titubi Yes. Corporal Got him! With stolen money too! You didn’t think it wise to run, abi? You heard the law approaching, and you dared to wait. Director But … but … Corporal Silence! I gave you your chance to beat it. I shouted from a good distance. The others took the cue, and ran, but you, all you could do was offer your yansh. Well, the law’s going to kick it! Superintendent Take him away and lock him up. We’ll take his statement tomorrow. And the name of his comrades. Madam, sorry for all this palaver. I was on a routine visit to the station when your actors came. My name is Deputy Superintendent Salami. Titubi (Taking his hand.) Pleased to meet you. Superintendent Thugs are all over the place nowadays. We try our best, but we cannot always predict where or in what shape they’ll show up. But don’t worry, I promise you there won’t be any more disturbance tonight. Please continue your play. Director But, officer … Superintendent … I am the director of the play! Superintendent I beg your pardon? Titubi Don’t listen to him. Director I sent for you. This woman led the rioters here. Corporal Shut up your mouth. You think we can’t recognise a rioter when we see one, eh? Slandering a decent woman. Look, come quietly with me now or – Director But I swear to you that. Oh God, where are these actors? Listen – (Casting about desperately, his eyes light upon the audience.) – Ask them! They’ll tell you. Superintendent (After a moment’s thought.) Madam, is it true what he says? Titubi (Arrogantly.) What does he say? Superintendent That you are the intruder here? That you brought the mob? Titubi Do I look like someone who would lead a mob? Director She’s lying! She – Corporal Shut up and come with me now, or I’ll lose my patience. Superintendent Madam, I want the truth. Titubi Well, I did. I led them here. Corporal What! Titubi But they’re not rioters. They’re ordinary decent citizens. Some even more decent than you. Superintendent You came to disrupt the play? Titubi We came to stop it.

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204  Femi Osofisan Superintendent May I ask why? Corporal (Looking at the DIRECTOR malevolently.) He probably caused it. Titubi Exactly, Corporal. Superintendent Explain. Titubi Ask him. Superintendent I’m asking you. (To CORPORAL.) And you, release the man. Titubi Please don’t use that tone with me, Superintendent. If you’d been doing your work properly – the work you’re paid for out of our taxes, remember? – I wouldn’t be here. Superintendent Not bloody likely. Titubi And watch your language with me, Salami or whatever your name is! (The CORPORAL, indignant, visibly changes sides.) I wasn’t bred in the gutter. Superintendent I am still waiting for your explanation. Titubi And I said ask him. He put up this show. They come here night after night and throw bricks at us – Director But that’s – Superintendent I think this is enough. Madam, I appeal to you, please leave the stage now. Titubi And will the show go on or not? Superintendent Madam, don’t force me to put you under arrest. Titubi What? Let me hear that again. Superintendent At least until the play’s over. Titubi (Laughs.) Here are my wrists. Bring out your handcuffs. (The CORPORAL hesitates, looking at the officer.) Go on, what are you waiting for? Snap them on. (Laughs, strutting.) How many markets do you know in this town, you who call yourself Salami. Ehn, or are you too busy salaaming to look around you? This town is one long chain of markets, a roaring world of tough, fearless women. And do you know whose name, all alone, rules over all these women? Do you know or shall I tell you? If I open my mouth, and utter one single cry of pain, one call for help, now, the entire city will be in cinders this time tomorrow. You hear? You understand, salami mouth? Hurry up and snap on your handcuffs. Corporal Woman, if – Superintendent Ah yes, that’s what I was trying to recollect all along. Your face. Of course I recognise it. You’re Titubi, the spoilt daughter of Alhaja Kabirat, head of the market women. Titubi Whether I am spoilt or not, you’ll see tomorrow when you get to the office. You hear? Your superiors crawl to my dog-kennel. Not even ten of you can arrest me. Superintendent All right, if that’s the way you want it. Take her in! (The CORPORAL steps forward with handcuffs.) Titubi Dare it, you smelling pig. You offspring of some teak-laden litter at the back of a latrine! Dare to put your filthy hand on me and all of your

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Morountodun  205 wretched family will never finish paying for it. Superintendent Wait. (Sniggers.) Words are cheap, eh? Titubi Words can break the likes of you. Superintendent I congratulate you. Gestures are large, when the wind alone is the obstacle. Titubi Don’t think you’re clever. Every cobra is poisonous, whatever its gloss. Superintendent The hunter brings home a grass-cutter, and beats his chest. What will happen to the elephant-killer? Titubi The shoulder is not smaller is it, simply because it has chosen to wear a low-necked blouse? Superintendent Oh the cat has claws. The tiger has claws. But what feat of courage is it when the tiger goes up to the cat and says hm, your anus is smelling? Titubi Enough. I can see you have some wit. You missed your calling. You should be making money selling cloth in one of my mother’s stores at Gbagi. Superintendent I am going to arrest you, my young lady. Go on, Corple! (The CORPORAL, with determined struggle, and aided by the DIRECTOR, finally snaps the handcuffs on.) But I’d like to tell you something. I’d like to say how terribly impressed I am by this show you’ve put up here. So you are Titubi, the Amazon going to war! You’re wealthy, your mother owns the town, and you’re going to defend with your very life all that possession. But tell me, if you’re really serious, if you really want to save your fatarsed class, why haven’t you offered your services to crush this peasant revolt? You know there is a battle going on now, don’t you? That the farmers and villagers around us have risen in open rebellion, and are marching down upon the city? When they arrive, who do you think will be the first target? But you don’t volunteer to help in fighting them. No. This mere wooden platform is your battlefield. Shit! This is where you come to put up a gallant fight, wasting my time! (Spits.) Go on. Titu-Titu, the magnificent Moremi of the sixties! Make your show, let them clap for you! Destroy the theatre! Burn it down! They’ll put your name in the national archives! Shi-oooh! Corple, remove the handcuffs! Go on, free her! Give free rein to her prowess. (The CORPORAL does so.) Let’s go, man. I’m going to sleep. (He begins to march off, the CORPORAL following. The actors have gathered, jeering. TITUBI seems about to collapse, sobbing. Then suddenly she looks up and calls.) Titubi Salami! (SUPERINTENDENT stops, without turning round.) Salami, suppose I do volunteer? Superintendent (Turns now.) What? Titubi I said, suppose I offer to fight the peasants? Superintendent You’re not finished with your pranks for tonight? Titubi It’s their leader you’ve not been able to capture, isn’t it? That’s why the war drags on?

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206  Femi Osofisan Superintendent Well… Titubi (Hard.) Yes or no? Superintendent Well, yes … and no. Their leader proves elusive, but – Titubi But? Superintendent He may not really exist. Titubi He may not exist! A phantom leader! Superintendent I mean … there may not be just one leader, maybe a group of leaders … Titubi But someone leads that group? Superintendent Actually – Titubi You’re a liar, Salami. You know he exists. And you know his name. You admitted it in your interview with the press last week. Superintendent Okay, so I admitted it. They call him Marshal. Titubi I can bring him to you. Superintendent You? (Laughs.) Corple! Titubi Don’t laugh, Salami. Superintendent (Looks at her, stops laughing.) My word, I do believe you are serious. Titubi Two weeks. Give me only two weeks. Superintendent This is a dream? (Rubbing his eyes.) Titubi Two weeks. And I’ll bring him here, on his knees. Superintendent What the entire Police Force failed to – Titubi Is that why you’re afraid? That I might succeed? Superintendent (After a pause.) What do you want? Titubi Can you arrange for me to be captured? Superintendent What! Titubi That’s all the help I’ll require from you. Superintendent You’re not … crazy? Titubi Two weeks, I said. We’ve wasted five minutes of it. Superintendent (After a pause.) All right, girl. I’m going to call your bluff. An idea has just struck me. Follow me … to prison. Titubi Prison? Superintendent Yes. That’s where it’s all going to begin. Come, I’ll explain it all to you … (They draw aside and the SUPERINTENDENT begins to talk. The CORPORAL goes out and returns with a prison gown. TITUBI steps aside and changes into the gown. The CORPORAL collects her old clothes, including her jewellery. But she refuses to remove the necklace. The CORPORAL looks at the officer, who replies with shrug. The CORPORAL goes out with her old clothes and reappears in WARDER’S uniform. Meanwhile, on stage, the actors re-arrange the furniture of their Dressing Area, singing a prison work song. The set now approximates to a prison cell. They salute the officer with the mock song of prisoners, and go out. The SUPERINTENDENT leads TITUBI into the cell followed by the WARDER.)

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Morountodun  207 Superintendent You understand? Titubi Yes. I’ll wait. (As the officer leaves – Blackout, except for a single spotlight from which the DIRECTOR now speaks.)

Two Director And so that’s it, ladies and gentlemen. We came here to do a play, a simple play. But History – or what some of you call Chance or Fortune – has taken over the stage. And it will play itself out, whether we like it or not. All we can do is either quicken it or slow down its progress. And let this be a lesson to you, my friends. In the affairs of men, History is often like … like a … . (BOGUNDE appears, walking stealthily, and calls out.) Bogunde Sh! Director Yes? Bogunde May we come in now? It’s our cue. Director Yes, I think it’s safe. Put on your costumes and make-up. Disguise yourselves well. For when you come in, no one must recognise your real identity. In this scene, remember, you’ll be playing, not your real roles, but as … Bogunde Enough! Get out of the way! Director (Going, stops to talk to audience.) See what I mean? I’ll see you later. (BOGUNDE ushers in his men into strategic positions round the cell for the following scene.)

Three (Lights come on upon a scene overlooking TITUBI’S prison cell. A number of petty traders form a ramshackle street market, with fruit baskets and trays, portable clothes racks, tinsel jewellery and wrist watches and other items common to the ambulant street traders of the West African cities. Among the traders, in various disguises, are BOGUNDE and KOKONDI. They keep a careful, but not too noticeable, watch on the prison, even while pretending to trade and converse. Then MARSHAL walks in, under a wide straw hat, carrying some marketable items, including a bundle of what looks like firewood, but are in fact local rifles and matchets camouflaged. He goes to BOGUNDE, who is selling oranges – or any other fruit available. During their conversation, the other traders will also be calling MARSHAL to come and buy their own goods, as is common in any such market.) Marshal How much?

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208  Femi Osofisan Bogunde All clear over there now, Marshal. One shilling. Marshal Pardon? You know me too I be seller like you. Bogunde Still the regular guards about the place. No reinforcements. Marshal Make I pay nine pence now, I beg. Any visitors inside? Bogunde Ah Oga! Na the price meself buy am! No one has come in or gone out of the place in the past hour. Marshal They haven’t noticed your presence? Bogunde No. Marshal Good. I pay eight pence and take three. God bless. Bogunde I think we can attack the prison now. Marshal No, you wait as planned. You fit peel am for me? Bogunde Our warder is on duty. He’ll open the gate as soon as he hears the signal. Marshal Thank you. Bogunde Alao’s on the other side. Marshal Why not? I fit sell am to you. How many you want? Bogunde I’ll take the whole bundle. Marshal I know say I meet good man today. Come look. (Some of the other traders draw near.) This na good man. Listen carefully all of you. In exactly fifteen minutes the warders will go into the canteen for their lunch. The signal will be given. Be ready. Thank you. (They all laugh as if at a joke.) You know wetin? I get song wey I dey sing when I lucky like this. Make I teach you? You go sing with me? Traders Ye-e-es. Marshal Good. I go sing am. As you sing, you go put hand forward. Like this. Then draw back. Forward – draw back. Ready? (He sings. Lights fade on hands reaching out towards his bunde which, now partly undone, is seen to contain weapons. Slow fade-out.)

Four (TITUBI, in a prison cell, humming a song in good spirits. The traders’ song of the last scene remains in the background, occasionally breaking in strongly. Enter ALHAJA KABIRAT, richly dressed and holding a handkerchief to her nose.) Titubi (Running to her mother.) Mama! Alhaja (Coldly.) So this is where they put you. Titu! Titubi (Excitedly.) Yes, but only for a while. Did you get my note? Alhaja That’s why I am here. Titubi Isn’t it fantastic! I’m so…but how did you get in? I was told this place is on top security, no visitors and all that. Or, ah mama, you bribed the warders! Alhaja (Looking around.) No bed. No window. No fan or air conditioner. The walls damp and clammy. A terrible stench that followed me all the

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Morountodun  209 way here from the gates. (Breaks down finally.) Ah Allah! What have I done to deserve this? Titubi But its all part of the plan. After that night in the theatre, I agreed to it. I stay here. I pretend to be a prisoner. Then when the peasants break in and find me… Alhaja Quiet! You want to ruin me. Isn’t it? That’s your latest insanity, abi? To destroy me completely before my customers. Ehn? Just suppose I wasn’t in the shop, and someone else had read the note before it came into my hands? Everybody would have known by now that my own daughter is in this, this latrine. (She breaks down.) Ah Allah, what on earth could she have done? What unpardonable crime to meet this kind of humiliation? Titubi But Mama, it isn’t a punishment! I wasn’t arrested for anything. I came on my own free will. Alhaja I thank you! Let’s go now anyway. And the policemen who brought you here, they will wish they’d never been born! Titubi Aren’t you listening to me? I…. Alhaja Enough, I say! I’ve swallowed enough of this foul air into my lungs. Let’s go! Titubi You will spoil the whole plan. Maybe you’ve even spoiled it already. Alhaja Are you coming or not? Titubi Mama – Alhaja Titu! Or isn’t it my daughter I am talking to? Titubi The peasant revolt, Mama! You talk about it every day with your friends. I see all of you tremble. The peasants are upon us. They will eat everything up, all your wealth, the entire meaning of your life, unless someone acts. Alhaja And that someone is my daughter, abi? Titubi They’re coming, Mama, and the only way left is to infiltrate their ranks quickly, discover their real leader, and the source of their ammunition. I volunteered. (More excited.) You see, Mama, they are coming to this prison this week. The police have got the advance information that the peasants plan to raid this place to release their captured colleagues. So it’s perfectly simple. The police will let them come, and free the prisoners, including me. Alhaja And then? Titubi And then I go with them to their camp. Alhaja Are you still in your senses, Titu? You will go with who, to where? Titubi Look at this, Mama. Alhaja What? Titubi This necklace, with its pretty dagger. Alhaja What about it? Titubi The latest fashion. Which we girls call Moremi. Alhaja Are you teaching me! I sell it, by the hundreds. Titubi You taught me her story, Mama. When I was still too young to

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210  Femi Osofisan understand. But I’ve never forgotten Moremi, the brave woman of IleIfe, who saved the race. Now, when I wear this necklace, I feel a passion deeper than any passing vogue. It is as if I have become history itself. Alhaja Give me. Let me see. (TITUBI hands over the necklace. ALHAJA flings it down and stamps on it.) There! There goes your passion. I’ll tame you yet, before you run naked into the streets. Titubi I am going to do it, Mama. You won’t stop me. Alhaja We shall see. (Calling.) Lati! Lati! I had suspected something like this. Lati! (LATI appears.) Carry her! Titubi Wait! Mama, I – Alhaja Are you coming or not? (An idea strikes her.) Lati, when is the last plane leaving for Mecca? Lati Tomorrow afternoon, Alhaja. Alhaja Good, there’s still time. Titubi (Reading her thoughts.) I’m not going anywhere! Alhaja You’ll go on this year’s pilgrimage, Titu. I was thinking of sending you next year, when you’ll be more grown-up, but now, with this – Nothing like Mecca to help restore your mind. Titubi But I tell you – (The WARDER comes running in.) Warder Alhaja … Alhaja! Oga dey come! Quick, quick! Alhaja (Unmoved.) Yes? Warder Please, I beg, come. Come … he go ruin me, I beg … Alhaja Who? Warder Oga … Oga patapata. We head for this place … Alhaja Let him come. I have a few words for him. Warder But – Alhaja Shut up, idiot! I say let him come. He won’t be in a position to even touch your hair by the time … (Enter the DEPUTY SUPERINTENDENT who stops short, on seeing them.) Superintendent Well, well! Alhaja I’ve been waiting for you. Superintendent (Sarcastic tone.) I hope you made yourself comfortable. Alhaja This is my daughter! Superintendent Really? My name is Salami, Deputy SuAlhaja My own daughter! Superintendent I’m willing to believe you, Alhaja Kabirat. Alhaja What is she doing here? Superintendent I’m more interested in what you are doing here, madam. Alhaja You’re going to pay for this, Salami. You’re going to pay so much that you’ll regret the day you joined the Force. Superintendent I regret it already, Alhaja, if that will bring any comfort to you. In fact I’ve been regretting it ever since the day I signed up. Alhaja Let’s go, Titu. (Shouting to LATI.) Carry her! Carry the insane harlot for me!

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Morountodun  211 Superintendent (Calm.) Warder! Take the gentleman to Room Six. Room Six. And then come back here. (To LATI.) I’d advise you to, go now, quietly, in your own interest. Titubi (As LATI hesitates.) Go, Lati. Follow him. (LATI and the WARDER go out.) Superintendent He’s your driver, isn’t he? Titubi Yes. Superintendent And bodyguard? Maybe he’ll get a light sentence. Alhaja What do you mean? (The CORPORAL returns.) Superintendent Alhaja, your turn. A room in the B suite. Please follow Corple, or shall I lead you myself? Alhaja You’re full of jokes, I can see. Go on, amuse me. Superintendent It’s in the blood, madam. I can’t help it. My father was the official clown at the State House for many years before he retired. He couldn’t stand Independence, he’d said. Reality was so absurd that jokes were getting hard to invent. (In a sudden sharp tone.) Take her away. Titubi (As the CORPORAL steps forward.) Mr Salami, that’s my mother, you know. Superintendent So what! You think that should make me fall on my face? Titubi Your superiors do.more. Superintendent You amuse me. I come in and what do I see? An infiltration into a maximum security prison. At a moment like this! Madam, I don’t care how you got here, but I am certainly going to keep you, at least till the operation has taken off. After that we may talk. Alhaja You don’t mean it, young man. Even if you’re a dozen Salamis together, you wouldn’t thrust your fingers in fire. Titubi Listen, the deal is off. Talking to my mother like that, you … you … toad! I’m going home! Superintendent (Laughs.) You’re going home! As easy as that, eh? You think we’re playing children’s games here? Titubi Dare me, you hear! I’ll see how you’ll force me to go on your mission. Superintendent My mission! Is that what you believed when you volun­ teered? Alhaja Does he … does he know who I am at all? Superintendent Listen to me. The peasants out there are not more than a thousand strong. Let’s say, even two thousand. Two thousand men, armed mostly with crude dane guns, matchets, bows and arrows. What’s all that before the awesome apparatus of the State? Before our welltrained and well-equipped fighting squads? A wall of vegetable! So why have we not been able to crush them? Alhaja Are you asking me? Superintendent You should know, Alhaja. After all, these rebels are of your own creation, you who are used to feeding on others.

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212  Femi Osofisan Alhaja Look here – Superintendent I’ll tell you. The peasants are strong, and seemingly invincible, because they are solidly united by the greatest force in the world – hunger. They are hungry, their children die of kwashiorkor, and they have risen to say no, no more! Alhaja It’s a lie! No one has ever died of hunger in this country! I am surprised at you, a police officer, carrying this kind of baseless propaganda… Superintendent They claim that you and your politicians have been taking off the profits of their farms to feed, your cities, to feed your own throats and buy more jewels and frippery. And so, at last, they are coming for the reckoning. Alhaja And that’s why you are paid, isn’t it? To stop them. Not to stay here gloating on their imagined grievances. Superintendent We will stop them, Alhaja, only when everybody concerned decides to cooperate. When those who are threatened are brave enough to offer their services. Otherwise – finish! For we are no miracle workers. And one of these fine days you’ll wake to the noise of shooting in your kitchen. Your markets will be on fire, your pretty houses, your banks and insurance houses, the entire street will be burning. And there’ll be nowhere for you to hide. No! There’ll only be screams and blood everywhere, and you’ll be made to watch as six, seven men mount your daughter and ride her to death… Alhaja Stop! Superintendent It could be tomorrow … it could be tonight … Alhaja Stop him, I say! In the name of Allah! Superintendent Allah, madam, is always on the side of those who do more than just fold their arms and watch. We needed a brave woman. Your daughter volunteered. She is to be commended. Alhaja (Cowed now.) You think that if she … if Titu follows this crazy plan? Superintendent Your daughter has the best credentials for this kind of job. She’s willing to do it, and she’s richly endowed. Pretty, sensual, daring, and with quite a reputation with men, if my information is correct? Titubi Thank you … Superintendent Above all, she’s not known to be even remotely connected with the police. Alhaja And you think you can do it, Titu? Titubi I will do it, Mama. One woman did it before. Alhaja A woman? Titubi Moremi. Have you forgotten? Alhaja Oh! Titubi You think she was better than me? Alhaja (Clinging to her.) My poor poor doll! Titubi Wipe your tears, Mama. I’ll come back safe, you’ll see. And the war will be over. Superintendent Good. If you’ve made up your mind –

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Morountodun  213 Titubi Nothing can stop me now. Superintendent In that case, there’s no time to waste. Alhaja, I’m afraid I’ll have to cut short the leave-taking. You can cry in your own house as hard as you’ll cry here. Please – Corple! Please follow him, Alhaja. Alhaja Goodbye, Titu. I’ll not sleep till you come back. (Exit.) Superintendent She’ll not sleep till you return. She’ll be counting her profits in the market. Titubi You’re just a dog, Salami. A loathsome dog. Superintendent Hired by cannibals, to do your hunting. Anyway, let’s stop arguing, and I’ll give you your final instructions. For it’s going to be this evening. Titubi What? Superintendent The attack. We’ve got news at last. The peasants will be storming this prison today, in a couple of hours. You’ve got to be ready. Titubi I … I didn’t know it would be so soon. Superintendent The important things in life are always like that they come too soon or too late, but never at the time we expect. Anyway you know the instructions. Let them release you from here, with the other prisoners. Then follow them to their camp. They’ll question you, but we’ve already rehearsed that part. Maybe we’ll go through it once more before I leave you. When you get there, find out as much as you can. But don’t take any risks. That’s an order too. You’re not to take any undue risks. (She has turned her back.) Are you listening to me? Titubi I heard you – Superintendent Then– Titubi (Turning sharply.) Tell me, Salami. You don’t really believe it do you? You don’t believe she existed. Superintendent Who? Titubi Moremi. Superintendent Oh! Titubi But she did exist, didn’t she? Superintendent A myth. We’re dealing with reality here. And reality is a far more cruel thing. Titubi Yet it is the same reality that softens with time, isn’t it, that turns into myth? Superintendent Well … What’s that got to do with it? (Worried.) You’re sure you can go on this mission after all? Titubi (Laughs.) My mother always complains that I dream too much. Do you think so? Superintendent (After a pause.) We’ll go through that interrogation scene we’ve rehearsed again. Then maybe I’ll know. Get ready. I am the peasants’ leader, and you have been brought before me. Are we set? (TITUBI nods, falls on her knees.) Here we go. (Takes a different voice.) Hey, treat her gently! You’ll never lose your manners of an alaaru. You think she’s one of those bags of salt you used to carry at Agbeni, ehn? A woman

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214  Femi Osofisan is delicate. (TITUBI bursts out laughing. He stops.) Look, do you know they are already outside? And you’re laughing! (TITUBI composes herself again. He starts again.) Treat her gently. Gently. A woman is delicate. Sorry, my daughter. You’ll forgive his rough manners. What’s your name? Titubi Titu… you still don’t think I should use some other name? Superintendent No, not necessary. As I told you, none of the farmers has ever moved in the circles in which you are known. Your name won’t mean anything to them. So you keep it, and you’ll have no problems with remembering your identity. Shall we go on? Titubi Yes. Superintendent Rise, Titu. Sit down. (Offers ‘chair’.) Now, can you tell us what you’re doing here? My men say you insisted on coming. Titubi I was locked up there in the prison, sir, awaiting my trial. I didn’t ask to be released, but your men came and set me free. They forced all of us out of the cells. Superintendent Well? Titubi Of course I’m grateful, but where do I go now? If I return there, it’ll be much worse for me. They’ll think I had a hand in planning it all. Superintendent You mean you want to return to prison? Titubi I have nowhere else to go. Superintendent You can’t go home? Titubi No. Not any more. Superintendent Strange! …What about … your people? Titubi I have no people now. They’ve all renounced me. Superintendent Was your crime that terrible? Titubi Abominable. Superintendent You don’t mind telling us about it? Titubi Well … do you really insist? Superintendent I’m afraid we’ll have to know. Titubi What will you do to me? Superintendent Depends. Titubi On what? On my crime? Superintendent Did you kill someone? Titubi (After a silence.) Yes. Superintendent Who? Titubi I killed my own children. Superintendent No! Titubi So you see! Superintendent Your own children! Titubi I wasn’t myself. I swear I didn’t know what I was doing. Suddenly I wanted to end it all, but in such a way that no part of me would be left in his hands. I mean, my husband. How I hated him! How I hated myself! I hated the fact that he’d ever touched me and loved me. I wanted to scrape all my skin off, cut my tongue, my lips, all the parts of me that had ever come into contact with him. I swear I wasn’t myself! At last I said

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Morountodun  215 I’d kill myself and the children I had for him. I prepared the poison with a lot of sleeping drugs, locked myself in with the children… and we all drank it, one by one. The youngest, Ranti, just four months old, was the first to succumb. He dropped into sleep. Then the second, my daughter Yetunde. She too dropped her head on the pillow by my side … It was then that terror struck me. I rose up to scream for help, but my feet gave way, and I fell in a crash to the floor. and that was the last thing I knew for a long tong time … Superintendent So you’re the woman! The story came to us on Rediffusion. It was on every lip! Titubi They wouldn’t let me die. They kept me for months in the hospital and spent lots of money, just to make sure I survived to face the punishment. They will kill me in the end, but only after I have lived through the prolonged hell of agony and remorse. Superintendent Yes, yes, I remember. I think you were a nurse at the General Hospital? Titubi (Breaking off.) You’re just adding that on? Superintendent Yes. It just occurred to me. The woman was in fact a nurse. They might know. Titubi So I answer yes. Superintendent You went through the Nursing School, didn’t you? Titubi I didn’t finish the course. I got bored. Superintendent How much did you learn? Titubi Enough, don’t worry. I was in fact quite good. Superintendent If we use it, it means the farmers will be needing your help. And that way, you’ll win their trust even more rapidly. Titubi Then let’s use it. If they don’t ask, I’ll tell them. Superintendent Right, where were we? Titubi Almost the end of the interrogation. I was telling them about my children. Superintendent Continue. Finish up. Titubi (Going into the role again.) Three lovely children. My sons, so handsome and troublesome, thinking they owned the world … and my daughter, so gentle … ah, children are beautiful! Their voices echo in my head. I cannot sleep. I know I shall not know peace again till they put my neck in the noose that is waiting for me. Because I have lost the courage to take my life myself. I begged the warders, but they all shrank from me and that is why I followed your men. Please, I beg you, if compassion is one of the things that keep you together, please, help me. Help me end my life now. Kill me … (She begins to sob.) Superintendent Take her away! Titubi (Near hysterical.) You won’t help me? You won’t end my suffering for me? Superintendent (Applauding.) You’ll live, woman. Very very good. Even I was impressed. If you can remember all that, you’ll make it.

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216  Femi Osofisan Titubi (Unmoved.) Thank you. Superintendent Well, all that remains is for me to wish you good luck. (He offers his hand. She does not take it.) Titubi Goodbye. (He looks at her for some time, in silence, and then goes out. TITUBI walks slowly round the cell.) They are already outside, he said. They’ll soon be here! I … I am afraid, suddenly … (Pause.) No! Moremi was not afraid! (Snaps her fingers backwards over her head.) Fear go away! Doubt and trembling, retreat from me! … (She retrieves the Moremi necklace from the floor and looks at it.) She was a woman, like me. And she waited all alone, for the Igbo warriors. All her people went into hiding, but she alone stood and waited. I can feel her heart beating, like mine… But how lucky you were, Moremi! How I envy you! Look, I have only the dampness of these walls around me, to wish me goodbye. But you, you had the scent of the market around you. The smell of fish, the redolence of spices, sweet decay of wood, smell of rain-washed thatches, the tang of mud at your feet … ah Moremi! What were your thoughts at that lonely moment? Can I read your mind. Maybe it would strengthen me … (She puts on the necklace and seems to go into a reverie. Light changes occur, slowly, dimming gradually on the cell and brightening simultaneously on a small market square. The Moremi praise-song wells up and then sinks into a faint background. TITUBI, still in her reverie, joins in the singing. She remains visible throughout the following scene.)

Five (The market square. MOREMI herself, sitting on a bamboo bench or stool, is only faintly defined yet. The scene is set near the dawn of the Yoruba civilization at Ile-Ife. The manner of dressing and make-up should suggest this historical context. A voice calls, from off-stage.) Voice Moremi! Moremi! Are you not afraid? (Startled, TITUBI turns to see, and then freezes, in a half-light, watching the scene. In the market, the lights grow into the brilliance of sunlight. MOREMI raises her head.) Voice Are you not scared, Moremi? (The speaker appears. It is MOREMI’S friend, NINIOLA.) Moremi Niniola! Niniola Moremi! The Yeye-Oba group are coming, to pay our last respects, before the Igbo warriors arrive. I took a short cut to reach you first. Moremi Thank you, Niniola. I am glad to see you. Niniola I asked, are you not afraid? Moremi Well, up till this moment, I never thought of it. Fear was … a faraway land. When I went to Esinmirin to make my pledge, my heart was as stout as the iroko tree. Right up till the last moment of my

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Morountodun  217 departure, when I held my son Oluorogbo to my breast and bade him farewell. The priests led me darkly into the grove for the appropriate ceremonies, and then slowly, we danced past the shrine of my husband’s grandfather, Oduduwa. You know, going from god to god, looking into their impressive eyes, then walking through the streets, past the throngs of silent forms, the people watching, immobile, I felt like one drunk on wine. I felt strong and light, the noon breeze was in my veins … but then we arrived here, in the market, and the priests left. And I was alone, alone with these empty spaces … and … Niniola And? Moremi You say our comrades, the Yeye-Oba, will soon be here? Niniola Yes. If you listen hard, you can just catch their singing Moremi It’s as if … as if it’s suddenly grown cold. (Sighs.) Let them come quick. Perhaps, surrounded by their voices and the whirl of their feet, perhaps if we dance together again, like before, for a little while, perhaps Moremi will recover her courage. Niniola Listen, if you’re afraid – Moremi No! Please, Nini, don’t mention that word again. Please, or you will see me weaken and run. Niniola But that’s why I’ve come, Moremi. It is not too late. You can still change your mind. Moremi What? Moremi should change her mind at the last minute? Niniola Why not? Listen, I admire your courage, and I love you, but this is clearly the path of death. The Igbos are cruel and wanton. If they capture you – Moremi I cannot turn back. If we never risked our life, how shall we come to value it? Niniola I’ve heard you say this before, even in our much younger days when we understood nothing. The lure of death seems to have fastened to you unrelentingly like a leech. Your hunger for fame is limitless. You’ll never have enough. Now you must step in even where the gods have failed. You must be godhead itself! Moremi Are you angry, Nini? Niniola Come with me. Step back from this mad adventure. Moremi My friend … perhaps you are right. I am too ambitious. When I see the stars, I long desperately to touch them. Yes, Niniola, I am jealous of the gods! Niniola What! Moremi We fall on our knees, we multiply our supplications, we pile up the sacrifices. But suppose, Niniola, just suppose the gods are indifferent to us? Niniola Eewo! What are you saying? May such evil words never come from your mouth again. May the air dissolve them and scatter them into nothingness. Please, Moremi, if you must go, go. Follow the restless spirit that drives you. But don’t add the burden of blasphemy.

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218  Femi Osofisan Moremi You talk of beauty and success and glamour! But what is all that to me when, one fine day, in the midst of the most splendid rejoicing, with the choicest meat in my teeth, without warning at all, the Igbos can arrive suddenly, locusts in the air, and eat everything up? That is the life our gods have provided for us after all our rituals and sacrifices. No, no! Nini, it is time for use to rise, to stand and square up our shoulders by our own courage, and stop leaning on the gods. Niniola The gods are with us – Moremi With their backs turned to us – Niniola The gods will never turn their back! May the afternoon never suddenly take on the shroud of night in our life! Moremi Futile prayers! How many times already we’ve watched our festivals change into periods of mourning when the Igbos set on us. Yet we have made sacrifices upon sacrifices till the earth is glutted with blood. Our priests have scraped their throats hoarse on incantations, and their latest ploy is to try and make us accept defeat as fate. Tell me, my friend, what more shall we do to learn that the gods will not help us? I have decided. Moremi shall be the clay which the race requires to remould itself. Niniola You frighten me, Moremi. You repudiate the gods! So what of your pledge to Esinmirin? Who will give you protection on your journey? Suppose you never come back now? Moremi (Amused.) Come, Nini. Embrace me. I am glad you came and talked to me. Now Moremi is no longer afraid. Let the women come and we shall dance together, like the procession on a bridal night. Your doubt and your fear have strengthened me. I shall go, and I shall return. (Enter the women who make up the YEYE-OBA GROUP, singing a solemn dirge. They fan about MOREMI, NINIOLA joining them, and kneel, their hands extended in homage.) Moremi Oh stand, stand up my friends! What’s all this song of mourning? Abeke, Bisi, Jumoke, Rama, ahha, am I gone already to the land of our ancestors that you accompany my corpse with such lament? This is a day of joy, my friends! The land is going to be reborn, by the daring of a woman! Adunni, come, you’ve always been my keenest rival. Let me have the joy of competing with you again, and of beating you as usual! Come. (She calls out a song, which they pick up, and a dancing competition begins, first between MOREMI and ADUNNI, and then with other partners. At the height of it, a piercing cry, bringing them back to reality. A warrior runs by, calling ‘The Igbos ! The Igbos ! Run!’) (The women scatter at once in great panic, with NINIOLA, the last to go, making an unsuccessful attempt to drag MOREMI along with her. MOREMI, now alone, begins to preen herself. From behind her, ORONMIYON, dressed as another warrior, enters and calls her.)

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Morountodun  219

Six Oronmiyon Don’t be afraid. It’s me. Moremi My husband! Oronmiyon Sh! Moremi What are you – Oronmiyon Hush, I said. Moremi (Agitated.) At a moment like this, outside the palace and unpro­ tected! And in this uniform! Oronmiyon Listen – Moremi You frighten me. It is taboo for the king – (Recollecting herself, she curtseys.) – Kabiyesi. Oronmiyon Oh, forget that now. Moremi It is taboo for the king to walk the afternoon like this, alone and unshaded, with your face naked. What is the matter? Oronmiyon I slipped out through one of the hidden doors in the palace walls. Yes, the tasks of a king, who is also a husband, will sometimes require the tactics of a slave. (Laughs.) It won’t be the first time. Moremi But why now? The Igbos are – Oronmiyon Listen to me, Moremi. I know the Igbos will soon be here. They have crossed the moat already on the east side. That is why I have come. For you. It is not too late to change your mind. I’ll lead you back through the hidden passage into the palace. Moremi What, my lord? Oronmiyon I know you are a woman of tremendous courage. Right from the first day of your arrival you became my real favourite of the royal chambers with your beauty and your special grace, Moremi you were the principal ornament of the palace – Moremi (Teasing.) And yet, my lord, only two moons ago, took another wife? Oronmiyon Of course you understand. Kings are like Mother Bee. They must clothe themselves in people. The palace must fill its hives with the nectar of female voices. That is how our fathers made it. But your place of eminence was never in dispute, for your courage is strong, like our ancient rafters. Your name alone holds up with esteem the tottering roof of our besieged kingdom. And I suppose now that that was why I consented to this plan of yours, almost without reflection. I said to myself, echoing your words, that Moremi is the only person in this land who can succeed, if we are ever to discover the great power of the Igbos, if we are ever to find a counter to this mysterious power of theirs which turns my bravest warriors into helpless omolangidi each time the marauders come upon us … Moremi And now you have changed your mind, isn’t it? You have found the great secret which can defeat the Igbos who even now are bearing down upon us?

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220  Femi Osofisan Oronmiyon The secret I have found is you, Moremi. Moremi When time presses, my lord, we discard the horse of enigmas. Oronmiyon Well, I shall explain later. For now, just come with me. Moremi And what will your subjects say afterwards of Moremi, the ambitious woman of Ile-Ife? Will they not laugh and say, look at the brave hero who lost her nerve at the crucial moment and fled with her tail between her spindly feet. Oronmiyon This is no time to worry about that. Come quickly! Moremi My husband! Oronmiyon I say, do not worry. I, Oronmiyon, I am the public opinion. Subjects only echo the ruler’s caprices. Moremi So what about the mothers who will crowd to your palace tomorrow, as before, their hands empty again, those hands which only this morning held laughing children to their breasts? Ah, the thought that Oluorogbo, a prince born, can be stolen like that, stripped of his inheritance, and turned into a slave before nightfall! Oronmiyon That will never happen, I assure you. (Terrifying shrieks are heard, still rather far off.) Moremi Do you hear them, my lord? The Igbos are drawing near, combing the streets and alleys, scaling our walls with ease. And you know what is happening, as our story repeats itself. Already our men tremble by their household shrines, their prayers stuck in their teeth. Our warriors are beginning to babble like Obatala’s misfits. The women are pissing shamelessly in front of their screaming children. Your priests are again going to pieces in helpless rage, their vaunted charms now impotent like Osanyin left in the rain. (Shrieks again.) They are near, they approach, Kabiyesi, you can do nothing other than gnash your teeth. Once again we are encircled, and the mysterious paralysis is beginning to spread in our veins like the stupor of majele. Nothing in Ife has been discovered to counter it: no leaf or bark, no grass, no ritual amulet, we are lost, lost… And yet Moremi is prepared to stake her life, to take the risk of captivity in order to at last penetrate the enemy camp and learn their magic. What do you say, husband? Shall I stay behind and forsake all this so that this evening you can come and tickle my tender parts? Oronmiyon (Shouting.) Stay! I command it! Moremi And I say, no! Go back quick to the palace. For at this spot and in this moment, I am already beyond the lashing whips of your command! Oronmiyon You … you dare to defy me? Moremi Face to face we stand together, in the onrushing waters of danger. In my own hands I hold the paddle of my destiny. Oronmiyon Can I believe my ears, that this is Moremi talking to me! Moremi My husband, be yourself. Be the hero you’ve always been. Like in those days when you hurried back from Ijebuland to claim your throne from usurpers. Your exploits refurbish the throne of your ancestors. But when muscles slacken suddenly in the midst of dispute, they say it is time

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Morountodun  221 to use other tactics. I must go. Oronmiyon And which husband, be he king and all, will dare walk proud again, who has openly sacrificed his wife to ward off his own death? Moremi No! Nobody sacrifices Moremi. Nobody! I have chosen, all by myself. Neither by the gods’ cajoling, nor by your designing. Moremi chose, and carries the burden upon herself. Please go now. Oronmiyon I shall carry you, you stubborn woman! Come – Moremi (After struggling vainly with him and about to weaken.) My husband! (Bursts into tears.) I see now that you really love me! Oronmiyon But of course! What do you – Moremi Ah alas! Why do you come to show me now that it’s too late? Oronmiyon What do you mean, too late? There’s still time to slip back into the palace if you come quickly. Moremi I … I didn’t know you loved me so much. And now … I am no longer worth saving. Oronmiyon Look, let’s just go and … Moremi I thought you no longer wanted me. When you took your last wife – Oronmiyon Asake, yes? Moremi I became so jealous that … that … Oronmiyon Ehn-hen? Moremi Forgive me! It … I … it was Arogundade. Oronmiyon Arogundade? Ah, I see, the trader from Ijesaland. What about him? Moremi He … he … please forgive me. I’ve been unfaithful to you. I … I slept with him. Oronmiyon Abomination! You … you . . (He knocks her down brutally. Shrieks much closer now.) Well, your fate is sealed. By your own hands. No unfaithful woman may again enter the king’s chambers, as you know. It would be instant death… (He bends down and raises her up.) As you said, Moremi, you have chosen the manner of your own exit. You have chosen well. And it’s much better like this … But I forgive you. I promise, this town will remember you. And if you can, by this act of daring, cleanse yourself, we shall be here to receive you. Farewell, my love. (He runs off. MOREMI laughs and begins again to preen herself. Then suddenly she freezes, to become her legendary statue, watching the following scene.)

Seven (Lights come up bright on the prison cell as, simultaneously, a war song fills the air in a sudden violent upwelling. Armed peasants, led by BOGUNDE, break into the cell, frightening TITUBI into a corner.) Bogunde Free the woman! You see how these animals behave, to keep a woman in this odious place! I am sorry for our brothers who have been

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222  Femi Osofisan languishing here all these days. Woman, you are free. We farmers from the village release you. Go home and tell your friends. Goodbye. Men, let’s go. (They go. TITUBI, somewhat dazed, runs after them.) Titubi Wait for me! Please, wait for me! (Blackout.)

Eight (Caught in silhouette only, the peasants sing and dance to a clamorous song of harvest. As the celebration begins to die down, the DIRECTOR appears in a spotlight and speaks above the song.) Director There she goes then, my friends, bravely walking into danger. Stepping carelessly into the unknown. Ah, women! My friends, the world is strange and women reign over it. Let us salute their courage. Their capacity for love. Moremi, I remember you and I celebrate you. (He goes off into the Moremi praise-chant, as lights gradually fade, leaving us with the farmers.) Hail Moremi! The huge sacrifice that wards off death! The big offering that prevents diseases. Like the Ikoyi, you fearlessly faced battle. Moremi! You dared death To bring peace to the world You braved war That Ile-Ife might be peaceful. No kind deed is ever forgotten Moremi has become a deity (worshipped yearly) Moremi, like the sun, You shine so brightly! (Yoruba translation) Moremi o! Ebo dede tii beku Ese dede tii barun Ikoyi rogun rile tori bogun. A gbon bi asarun A laya bi iko Moremi a fori laku Kaye o la roju O faya raigun Kile Ife o le toro.

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Morountodun  223 Ohun rere o nii gbe o Moremi doro, o dorisa. Moremi doorun, o mu yan-yan!

Nine (The set now represents a room BABA’S parlour, in the village. Modest furnishings. Bric-a-brac. Screams begin as the DIRECTOR’S voice fades and before the lights come on. Lights. We see a small wood fire, in a clay pot. By the fire, a small group of peasants. Two or three of them hold down a woman, only barely identifiable as TITUBI, on the mat. Her condition is as appalling as the others; only half covered, her cloth wrapper shredded and mud-besplattered. She is covered in sweat, groaning in evident pain. MOSUN holds a bowl of water. MARSHAL, on his knees or crouching, takes out a knife from the fire.) Marshal Hold her again. Tight now. (They do so. He applies the knife to TITUBI’S shoulder. She screams. He leans forward and sucks at the incision.) That’s it! I’ve got it out at last. (Shows it. Various reactions, of relief, etc.) Bogunde It’s a splinter! Wura Not the real bullet? (Looking.) Kokondi How lucky! Mosun Look, she’s fainted. Poor girl. Marshal She’ll be all right. Bring the water. And the herbs. Wura Leave the rest to us. Kokondi I’ll dress it properly. At least she taught us how to do that. Marshal (Washing his hands.) Right. Go ahead with it. (BABA comes in, tired. MARSHAL goes to him. As the dialogue progresses, the men wash the wound, apply the herbs, and then tear off a strip of cloth to make a rough but conspicuous bandage with which they bind the wound. TITUBI sleeps through it all. BOGUNDE carries out the fire and returns.) Marshal How many? Baba (Gravely.) Ten of theirs. Three of ours. Marshal A heavy day. Baba One of the reasons I called this meeting. Wura Marshal’s plan was good. With those trees we felled across the road, they could not bring their lorries and big guns close enough. They had to come on foot. And we were waiting for them. Koko Otherwise the casualties would have been higher. Marshal They’ve been buried? Baba (Nodding.) Hm-hm. How is she? (Indicating TITUBI.) Marshal A flesh wound. She’ll survive. Baba I’m relieved. She’s been useful to us. Marshal So you all say. Baba We needed a nurse badly, and –

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224  Femi Osofisan Marshal (Ironically.) And she served the purpose. Baba More than. She surpassed even my expectations. (They both draw slightly aside.) There were nights she didn’t sleep at all, nursing the wounded. Marshal The bitterest poisons, they say, come in the most tasty mushrooms. Baba You’ve never really liked her, have you? Marshal Let’s just say I don’t believe she is what she claims. Baba She nursed you, once – Marshal (Impatiently.) I know. I am trying to repay it. Baba Look here, she came here, badly battered. An abandoned woman, suffering from the burden of her past. We promised to help her. To give her a second lease of life… Marshal You promised, you mean. Always too soft. Baba Yes. I promised. And she’s more than earned it. Marshal You promised. You always promise. Words are cheap. Baba I’ll let that pass, Marshal. Marshal You give your word. And we give our life. Baba (Angry.) Everybody in this camp, Marshal. Whether we carry a gun or not. We all give our life. Marshal Yes. And a few manage to live longer than others. Baba (Pause.) Look, let’s not quarrel, Marshal. You’re a fine fighter, the best here. But the trouble with you – Marshal And if the woman is a spy – Baba I disagree. I’ve watched her work. It can’t be all pretence. Wura (Calling.) Marshal! Marshal Yes? Wura You want to inspect it? Marshal You’ve finished? Kokondi (Proudly.) Come and look. Marshal No. Let her sleep. Mosun (Picking it up.) What do we do with this? Marshal What? Mosun Her fancy necklace. Kokondi Better put it on her. I hear it’s their latest madness in the city. Wura Yes. They call it Moremi. Kokondi Indeed! Last year they were wearing a blade. Now it’s a dagger. Soon it will be an axe. Baba City people! Marshal Put it back on her. Mosun Right, Marshal. Marshal And bring those two out, Bogunde. (BOGUNDE leaves, with KOKONDI.) Baba Prisoners? Marshal You’ll see. (BOGUNDE and KOKONDI return with prisoners.) Baba What! Alhaji Buraimoh!

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Morountodun  225 Marshal And Lawyer Isaac. Baba What are they? Marshal They led the vultures here. Baba It’s not possible. You mean they’re still at this game? Marshal Tell them, Bogunde. Bogunde They were hiding in the police lorry at the rear. They didn’t know we would spot them. But Alao and I were there, the bush. We set the lorry on fire. They ran out like rabbits. Marshal Now we know how the police were able to find this place. Kokondi This used to be our last resort. The police had never been able to reach us here. But where shall we go now? Baba I see. I’m sorry, Mosun… This must be hard for you. Mosun Justice will have to be done, Baba. Baba (To MARSHAL.) That means we have to move again? Marshal Yes, I’m afraid. Bogunde I’ve already given the orders. Marshal Somewhere temporary. Baba Good. We’ll leave in the night. Wura Marshal suggests we evacuate the women and the children at once. Bogunde and I agree. Baba You think so? Mosun It would be the wisest thing. Wura Since our raid on the prison, we’ve had to move camp five times. Five times. Even at the beginning, before their so-called Commission of Inquiry, it was not so bad. Kokondi The governor has obviously declared an all-out offensive against us. A total war. Mosun And we’re running short of ammunition. Bogunde That is serious. Baba We may have to agree to negotiate. Marshal Over my dead body. Baba Without ammunition – Marshal We’ll fight with our bare hands. Till death. Laura With our teeth and fingernails. Baba So you support him on that. Bogunde We’ve gone this before – Marshal City people have no compassion. The well-fed dog has no thought for those who are hungry. Wura That is the truth. We cannot run away. Marshal The rulers in the city will not rest till they’ve wiped us out com­ pletely, or brought us down, cringing on our knees. We’ll not negotiate. Baba Right. Back to present business. Alhaji Burai – Wura Wait. Should Mosun sit on this? Mosun Listen, we have a law, and we shall make no exceptions. Wura But –

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226  Femi Osofisan Mosun My father sent my mother out of his house when I was three. But even if I loved him passionately, I would still do my duty, as one of the chosen representatives of our people. Baba That is true. Still, you don’t have to stay – Mosun Why? Because I wasn’t there, an open target like the others, when the police brought their guns? Could my father tell the bullets to bypass his daughter? When the tax men marched through our farmlands, trampling our precious crops and our hard won harvests, did they spare those of my father’s daughter? And the sanitary inspectors who dipped their dirty fingers at will in my cooking pot? Ehn? Did my buttocks not burn too on that hot tin roof they sat us on at the barracks when we went up to protest? Where was my father? And when they finally rounded us up and flung us in prison, and the warders stripped us naked, and began to poke their fingers in us to humiliate us, did they remember my father, the big Alhaji who wines and dines with the governor? Marshal (Quietly.) He’s still your father, Mosun. Mosun Thank you for reminding me. Baba I think we were talking about evacuating the children Kokondi Mosun – Mosun For God’s sake! What’s wrong with all of you today? Marshal, even you! Didn’t you say oppression and injustice know no frontier of blood or decency? That treachery is a poison which must be burnt out wherever found? A viper! So why are you all trying to make exceptions for me? Marshal (After a silence.) The women and the children will be evacuated, to stay with relatives and friends or in-laws in the city. That will save them from the continuous panic of our movements each time the government forces attack. Bogunde And it will be better for our resistance, Mosun won’t you say goodbye to your mother before they leave? Mosun (Going.) Yes, I’ll go and – (Stopping.) Ah, I see. You’re with them too, Bogunde. You also wish to create privilege in our ranks. Kokondi I think we’d better just leave her. Wura She’s right. We must share everything. Both the good and the bad. Marshal They’ll need an escort. Wura, you’ll lead them? Wura Are you coming along? Kokondi Why? Wura You know I can’t handle them all alone. Baba Sorry, but we all have our hands full with other things. Wura Still it’ll be too much for me. Marshal Okay, I’ll come along. At least as far as the edge of the forest. Bogunde You and I were going to look to the defence lines – Titubi Could I … could I go instead? (They are startled; they’ve forgotten her presence.) Baba You? Titubi (Still in pain.) They … may need a nurse on the way too.

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Morountodun  227 Kokondi But you are in no shape to – Titubi I’m still alive. Mosun You need to rest, Titu. Already you’ve done more than enough for us. Titubi If I go, then Marshal can stay. Marshal Out of the question. You’ll stay. I’ll go with the children. Baba Thank you Titu, but we can’t let you exert yourself again until you’re healed. I mean, you, a stranger among us, you have – Titubi A stranger! That’s all I keep hearing. How much must one do to qualify to be one of you? (Embarrassed silence.) Baba You’re right, my daughter. Forgive us. The outsider who shares our salt and our suffering is already a kinsman. Marshal She stays behind, whatever the case. Let’s get on to the trial of these two. Baba Now? Mosun Now! I want it over with. Baba In that case, let’s – (A sudden upwelling of noise, off-stage. On stage, the men and women go into swift movements of self-defence, with MARSHAL and BOGUNDE leaping in a crouch towards the door. BOGUNDE caterwauls out, with MARSHAL covering him. All these in a few seconds. There is a frozen moment. Then BOGUNDE returns, calling urgently.) Bogunde (To TITUBI.) Sisi! Can you walk? They need you urgently. Marshal What is it? Bogunde Fresh tragedies, Marshal. The vultures had poisoned our stream before they retreated. All What! Marshal How many people? Bogunde Only two yet, fortunately. Ligali and his daughter. Baba You think Titu can still help? Titubi (Going peacefully.) I’ll see what I can do. Baba Wura, you’ll go with her? Mosun I’ll come too. Wura Marshal? Marshal All right, I’ll come along. (Exeunt BOGUNDE, MARSHAL, TITUBI, WURA and MOSUN.) Baba (After some silence.) Bring them forward and remove the cloth from their mouths. (KOKONDI does so.) Alhaji! And you, Lawyer Isaac! How will you explain all this? Isaac (All shaken.) Baba … please … help me. It wasn’t my fault, I swear! It was Buraimoh, ask him. He misled me. Buraimoh You’ll always be a worm, lawyer. Go on, abase yourself before these pigs. Baba We trusted both of you. When all this started, it was you we first approached. We met, all the villages in this Council area, and decided to

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228  Femi Osofisan send a delegation to meet you. Bogunde Wura, poor Akande who is now dead, with a ball in his head, Kokondi and I, we were the people chosen. We took Saka’s lorry, and then from the motor-park, we walked to your office, Isaac. I remember. It was raining, and we were all soaked when you opened the door. So you wouldn’t let us into your office, but spoke to us on the balcony. After that you drove us to Alhaji’s mansion on the hill. Both of you, we knew well. You were born here in our midst. Your father’s farms, lawyer, lie next to my family land. And Marshal had his first employment as a boy, working on Alhaji Buraimoh’s fields. So when the government announced its threats to raid us, and then flooded our villages with fierce-looking men with their guns and whips, it was you we immediately thought of. We said, they live in the city where these vandals come from. Both of them are big men, they can talk to government and make it listen. And you gave us your word … Isaac Please … let me defend myself. Let me – (MARSHAL and BOGUNDE return.) Baba Yes? Bogunde It was too late. Sisi could not help any more. Marshal Terrible, the way they writhed to death. Baba May their souls rest with our ancestors. Marshal and Bogunde Ase! Baba Poison! What is the land turning into? Bogunde All because we refuse to pay money we haven’t got. Because we refuse to let men with two balls like us march upon our heads. Baba Not even in the worst days of our history. Not even Gaha put majele in water for children to drink. Marshal They will pay for this. The war will never end. Baba You hear all this, Buraimoh and Isaac? What your friends did? Marshal Baba, the women and children leave immediately. Bogunde Titu is accompanying you, I hope you know. Marshal You didn’t – Bogunde I agreed. She was very insistent. Baba But I thought we had – Bogunde You won’t stop her now. Ligali’s daughter died in her arms. Baba I see. Bogunde I’ve never seen a woman look so shaken … and then so determined. She will come with you. Marshal And if her concern is all an act? Baba Then you will find out, won’t you? Marshal Right, let her come along. I can take care of serpents. But before we leave – the trial? Baba Yes, call Wura. Marshal And Mosun. We can’t leave her out now. (Exit KOKONDI.) Baba This will have to be quick. Bogunde Yes. Soon it’ll be nightfall.

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Morountodun  229 Buraimoh (Suddenly laughing.) A trial! Ha ha. This one here, this common thug, his father came here almost in the nude. We took the wretched man in from the open roads to save him from starvation. We even married a wife for him. And now their son dares, dares to look me in the face. Marshal It is true that my father and others slaved themselves to death, to make you rich and prosperous. Yes, I know, slave-owning becomes such a habit that you are enraged when the slave stands up to claim his rights as a human being. That is why you are doomed, Alhaji. Baba Here they come. (Enter KOKONDI, MOSUN, WURA.) Let’s begin. Buraimoh Welcome, welcome. Lawyer, you see them? Stop shivering man! That’s what inspires these ants to – Listen, what is our crime? I demand to know. Baba Your betrayal of the cause. Buraimoh Hear that! Allah-akbar! Where do you think you are? China? Cuba? Mozambique? Or some lunatic asylum? Who’s been teaching you these funny words? Baba Are you ready to defend yourselves? Buraimoh Look at them, Isaac! By Allah, stop it I say! Aren’t you a man? You took your share after all. Just look at who’s going to try you. Kokondi, who drives your mammy wagon. Kokondi Drove, you mean. I quit long ago. Buraimoh You were sacked, idiot! After the accident at the bridge. You ran here to avoid the police. Kokondi Yes? Ask Lawyer who took my money and yet gave me forged particulars. Buraimoh I see. The day of reckoning ehn? Each one with his little grievance. Mosun here was abanoned. I threw her mother out of my house. And Wura, welcome. Your child died. I refused to claim it on my return from Mecca. Go on, start your own accusation. Wura Your life is filled with uncountable sordid actions, Alhaji. But you are merely wasting time. We are not here for private squabbles. Tell us why you turned traitor. Defend yourself. Isaac I was never a traitor, I swear to you! I’d like you to consider my case separately – Buraimoh Shut up, you professional liar! Let me think. Marshal Think quick. Before the blood dries. Bogunde We wanted your help, but you used us. You sucked our veins. Isaac I did not use you. I defended you all as best I could at the Inquiry. The papers said so ­– Wura And what came of it? After all the eloquence, what did you get for us? Isaac It wasn’t my fault. The government took the decisions. Mosun Which merely happened to benefit you, isn’t it? Baba We said we couldn’t pay the tax, that harvests were poor, that we could hardly feed our children. And what happened? The government

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230  Femi Osofisan said, all right, we’ll change the tax collectors – Bogunde And you, Isaac, our own lawyer, you became the new akoda – Isaac We had to find a compromise. All I did was in your interest. Wura And you hired your own men to go on tax raids – Isaac Farmers! They were farmers like you. Kokondi With whips and guns? Buraimoh Why don’t you just kill us, since you’re so determined? Baba We said we didn’t want the Council any more. That its agents fleeced us, that inspectors smashed into our homes to remove whatever they wanted. That’s what we told you to help us expose at the Inquiry. We said you should demand that all the officials be probed and made to declare their assets. And what happened? They merely reshuffled the Council, and made you, Alhaji Buraimoh, its new chairman. You came here, demanding our cooperation, and when we refused, you brought the police back – Buraimoh I had a plan. If you had listened, instead of following this cannibal. Marshal indeed! Wallahi, I was going to get your sons scholarships into the big schools in the city. I was going to start a pipe-borne water scheme. Your roads would have been tarred, your homes lit – Marshal And you would have accomplished all that, wouldn’t you, the day fowls begin to grow teeth? Buraimoh You see what I mean? Wura Alhaji, the next time you have a nightmare, try and sell it to someone else … Buraimoh But listen, can one achieve everything in a single day? Marshal A day was enough, Alhaji, to destroy Wasimi. Buraimoh (Cowed now.) What … What do you mean? Marshal It was you that led the police there, wasn’t it? Buraimoh No … no … I swear by Allah … . Marshal In the night, when the people were asleep. We were not even armed then. All we said was that we would not work with your Council. So you led the police men from house to house, identifying the so-called agitators. You had a mask on, but your voice, Alhaji … we recognised your voice … Isaac I wasn’t there. You know that. I refused to follow them. Baba And today? Why did you come today? Isaac The devil! I was misled! Marshal They looted our homes and set them ablaze, while we loafed there in their city, signing worthless papers. Mosun I think we’ve said enough. Let’s have the verdict. Baba Marshal? Marshal (Turning up his clenched fist.) Guilty. Bogunde (Same gesture.) Guilty. Wura (The same.) Guilty. Kokondi (The same.) Guilty.

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Morountodun  231 Mosun (The same.) Guilty. Baba Take them away. Isaac (Whining.) No. no. I plead for mercy. please … (KOKONDI and BOGUNDE lead them away and then return.) Marshal The sentence? Mosun Death. Wura Mosun, I – Mosun Stop it. There will be no exceptions. Marshal Death then. Do we all agree? Baba No. (They look at him.) They say that when we scratch the body, we do not think of the itch alone. The skin also is delicate. Wura So what do we do? Baba Buraimoh is Mosun’s father, we cannot erase that. And as long as there’s blood between our fingernails, they say, there will be lice in the hair. Lawyer’s father also sat with me on the same pew in church, at that time when we could afford the luxury of Sundays. The verdict cannot be death. Mosun Go on, break me. Let my life lose all meaning. Baba This will only enrich it, my daughter. It is legitimate to kill in war. We’re jackals then. But executions are a different thing. Especially when the victims are our own kinsmen, even when they’ve gone astray. We don’t want our people to lose all respect for human life. Kokondi It is a strong point you have there, Baba. But what punishment then will be adequate? Baba I propose they lose all the harvest from their farms. And they’ll be retained here as hostages till the war is over. Wura Well, I agree to that. In spite of all they’ve done. Bogundi In view of the special circumstances. Kokondi Marshal? Marshal What do you want me to say? You’ve all decided. Just keep them out of my sight, that’s all. Baba I’ll take full responsibility for their life. Marshal Wura, can we leave now? Wura I am ready. (They start to go.) Baba (Calling.) Marshal? Marshal (Stops.) Yes? Baba Good luck. Marshal I won’t need it. (Blackout.)

Ten (To a brisk rhythm, reinforced by the blasts of a police whistle and the barkings of a dog, the actors rearrange the set. It is now the office of the DEPUTY SUPER­

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232  Femi Osofisan INTEN­ DENT. Furniture merely symbolic a desk, a file cabinet, governor’s por­trait, a table, chairs, etc. The CORPORAL stands behind the chair of the DEPUTY SUPERINTENDENT, who is half leaning back listening to ALHAJA KABIRAT shouting across the table.) Alhaja I say I want news of my daughter! Superintendent I heard you, Alhaja. Alhaja What has happened to her? Superintendent I assure you we’re trying our best to find out. Alhaja That is not enough! Two weeks you said. Only two weeks. And now it’s five weeks since she left. Superintendent I know. Alhaja And I’ve been rotting away in that hotel. Superintendent What? Corple, I ordered the best hotel? Alhaja You know that’s not what I mean. Superintendent You’re not resting enough? Alhaja I don’t need rest! Superintendent You’re sure you’ve not seen her since? Alhaja Where would I have seen her? Superintendent (Conciliating.) Calm yourself, Alhaja. You agreed to all this. You offered to cooperate. Alhaja Yes, I – Superintendent We put out the news that you had gone away to Mecca with your daughter. We even had photos of your departure faked and printed in the papers. Alhaja All so you can win another pip. Superintendent We’ll not go into our motives again, Alhaja. You know very well you’re doing this as much for yourself as for us. Alhaja Well, I want my daughter. Superintendent And your shops are doing fine, you can’t complain. I myself bring you the reports every night from your chief accountant. Alhaja That rogue? You think I trust him behind my back? Superintendent Well, it’s all for the protection of your daughter. Alhaja I ask you again, how is she? Superintendent And I tell you again, we’re awaiting reports. I know for certain that up to a few hours ago, she was fine. Alhaja A few hours ago! Superintendent Unless of course you’ve seen her since? Alhaja You’re not mad, Salami? Where would I – Superintendent You’re right. Corple here saw her with his own eyes. Alhaja (To CORPORAL.) You saw her! Where? Where? Tell me? Superintendent She was apparently helping the farmers to evacuate their children to the city. My men recognised her in time fortunately. Alhaja Ehn? What do you mean ‘fortunately’? Superintendent There was a blunder. A stupid blunder. But perhaps you know the details already.

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Morountodun  233 Alhaja By Allah, will you talk sensibly! What happened? Superintendent You’ve seen her? Alhaja What are you hiding from me? Superintendent But you’ve seen her? Alhaja Is my daughter hurt? Superintendent (Pauses, looking at her.) I believe Titu is all right. (Stands.) The sergeant who led the party is an ox. As dumb as a gun butt, I’ve had him detained. He ordered an attack on the people. And there were only women and children, unarmed. Alhaja No! Allah! Superintendent An accident of war. When people are stubborn, these things are bound to happen. Fighters can’t always be gentlemen. Now see the cost. And the incident seems certain to have toughened the farmer’s resistance. I doubt if anyone can break them now. Alhaja Titu was not one of the casualties? Superintendent Do you know? Alhaja Listen, I – Superintendent The lawyer. He was a casualty. Alhaja. Which lawyer? Superintendent You haven’t heard? Lawyer Isaac, who was helping us track these ruffians down. They were once with the peasants, he and Alhaji Buraimoh, till we found their price. Alhaja How do they come into this? Superintendent We bought them. But the peasants captured them and almost put them to death. During the evacuation, they seized the chance to escape. And then got shot by mistake, by my boys. You see the irony. That’s war for you. Alhaja And my daughter? Superintendent This recurring question. ‘My daughter! My daughter!’ It’s like a scene in a play. Do you like the theatre, Alhaja? Me, I’m simply crazy about it. Ask Corple, he’s our Secretary in the Police Drama Club. I’m President. Alhaja Look here, Salami – Superintendent And its funny too, when you think that I first met your daughter in a theatre, where, permit me to say, she was making a fool of herself. But she gave us an idea. Our next play at the Club’s going to be based on the legend of Moremi, and … you know, a scene like this, me and you, this could be a scene from the play! I can just picture it! Note this, Corple. Alhaja is Moremi’s mother, the Yeye Oba. It’s, er, let’s say three years. Yes, three years since your daughter left. I am Oronmiyon. You come furious to the royal chamber to confront me. Your eyes are on fire. Like an Amazon’s. You stamp your foot and you scream – Alhaja (Beside herself, hitting the table.) WHERE IS MY DAUGHTER, YOU MADMAN? Superintendent Corple, your cue. You’re Kabiyesi’s bodyguard, and see,

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234  Femi Osofisan his royal person is being assaulted. Corporal (Stepping forward into the game.) Stand back, my Queen Mother. Stand back. The King’s person is sacred. No one must foul it. Alhaja Ah, Titu! Titu! Superintendent Titu? Did I hear someone call Moremi? (To CORPORAL.) Leave her Majesty, Aresa. (Going to her.) Calm yourself, dear mother. This fury becomes common slaves, not the Queen Mother. We understand your distress. Your daughter Moremi was our favourite, and her absence hurts us. (The CORPORAL controls his laughter with difficulty.) But we always remember she took the pledge by Esinmirin, our river goddess, and we are reassured. She will return. Alhaja Take me back to the hotel, please. I accept my fate. Superintendent You lament your daughter. We lament the land. We weep for the lack of peace, for the violence in the air. We weep that rebels beyond our power fall upon us at will and make mockery of our manhood. Our towns are unsafe. Food no longer reaches the markets, taxes are unpaid. All over – Alhaja WILL YOU STOP THE FOOLISHNESS! (Long silence.) Superintendent Suppose she returns? Alhaja What? Superintendent Suppose she has already returned? Alhaja Titu? When? Superintendent The game is ended, Alhaja. Now I’m asking questions. Suppose your daughter returns, and for some reason she does not want to see us, whom is she likely to go to first? Alhaja I don’t know what you mean. Superintendent Where are you hiding your daughter, Alhaja Kabirat? Alhaja Me, hiding her? Superintendent I told you the game’s over. Where is she? Alhaja But that’s what I want to know. Superintendent Don’t play tricks with me. Alhaja I should be saying that! Superintendent A complete ambush. Carefully laid at the exact spot. No one could have escaped. But my men recognised your daughter and naturally spared her life, thinking she was coming to us. And then, what do you think happened? Alhaja Yes? Superintendent When the shooting was over, and prisoners were being taken, zero! Your daughter was not to be found anywhere. Now Alhaja, there may be such talismen; able to make men vanish into the air; but I don’t believe in them. Alhaja So you think … I … I am hiding her somewhere? Superintendent With the collusion of my men, yes. Not all of them are above the temptation your money can offer. Alhaja But why would I want to do such a thing?

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Morountodun  235 Superintendent Tell me. Alhaja I know nothing about it, I swear. Superintendent Think again. I am a patient man. (Holding it up.) See? This is the file on your activities since this thing started. This is your protest letter to the governor. Of course he hasn’t even seen it. So. And these? Both Isaac and Buraimoh were in your pay. These are copies of your cheques to them in the past few weeks. What were you paying them for, Alhaja? Alhaja It is legitimate to try to save one’s daughter from ruin. Superintendent That’s not what you said, that day it began. Why didn’t you let me know you had changed your mind? Alhaja You’re an officer of the state. Superintendent Protecting your wealth, or mine? Alhaja Well, where is my daughter? Superintendent Things will begin to turn rough soon, madam, if you don’t tell me. Alhaja But I don’t know. I’m telling the truth. Superintendent Where is Titu? Titubi (Appearing.) Here, Superintendent. (They whirl round in surprise. TITUBI has MARSHAL covered with a gun, his hands in the air. The bandage is still on her.) Superintendent Titu! And – Alhaja (Her arms open, but not daring to approach.) My… my … Titubi I said I would do it, didn’t I? Alhaja My daughter! (She bursts out crying.) Superintendent You did it! By God! You’re Moremi! Titubi (To MARSHAL.) Sit down. But don’t try anything. Superintendent So this is the Marshal! Titubi I went, and I returned, triumphant. Like a legend. You didn’t believe me, did you? But mother, I did it! Alhaja My daughter! (Still sobbing.) Titubi But I am not the same as I went away. A lot has happened. And I have a long story to tell you. Superintendent I am dying to hear it. Titubi Then sit down. For it will be long. I lived among the farmers, just as you sent me. And this is what happened…

Eleven (Lights come up abruptly on another scene, by a streamside. Some peasant women, very shabbily dressed, but quite gay, are washing clothes, rinsing some, etc. The sense of their high spirits must be immediate with the lighting of the scene. TITUBI walks forward and picks up a bucket.)

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236  Femi Osofisan Titubi I’ll go down again to the stream. Mosun What for? Better don’t kill yourself woman. You’ve been climbing up and down those slippery steps all morning. Titubi It doesn’t matter. My legs can take it. Molade Take a rest. We’ve almost finished anyway. We don’t need more water. Mama Kayode Yes, it’s true, Titu. You work too hard. All night you’re up, nursing the wounded. And then you have to come down with us again to wash their clothes in the morning. Don’t you get tired at all? Wura She’s trying to pay us for her upkeep, as they do in their hotels there in the town. If you haven’t the cash, you wash the plates … (Laughter.) Titubi But really, I’m not tired. Mosun Okay, but put down your bucket. We’ve said we don’t need more water. Abi, Mama Kayode? Mama Kayode I have finished. If I dare to rinse these pants just once more, Ba Kayode won’t have a pair of knickers any more, he’ll have a fishing net! Molade But are they clean enough to satisfy our husband, the sanitary inspector? (Laughter.) Wura Ah, the sanitary inspector, with his one leg. How I miss him! Molade He’s a lucky man. He had advance warning before the men put fire to the Health Office that day. He fled to the city. Otherwise, what your husband would have done to him! Mosun Remember the episode of the umbrella? Mama Kayode That day he stopped Titus in the rain! (She turns to MOLADE, and they begin to play-act.) Come here! Molade Sah? Mama Kayode I say come here, and you are saying sah, sah! Molade Sorry, sah. Mama Kayode Sorry, sah. Where are you going? Molade To Mama Laide, sah. Mama Kayode In this rain? Molade It’s my wife. She’s in labour. She needs help. Mama Kayode And you wait till it’s raining before you remember the way to Mama Laide’s place, you cunning man! Molade Sah? Can I go now, sah? Mama Kayode Nonsense and subordination! I am talking to you and you tell me can I go? Molade Sorry, sah. But my wife – Mama Kayode Shorrop! Concobility! My wife my wife! Do you ever hear government mention his wife? I mean, if the governor were to talk of his wives, private, personal, official and confidential, do you think they will have time to run government? But you, bush man with your only wife, it’s always my wife my wife! Molade Please sah.

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Morountodun  237 Mama Kayode Open your mouth. You see? Black gums. Wider! Hen- hen. Moro. Beriberi. Yellow comatose. Is this a mouth or an outpatient’s clinic? My dear bush man, I am hereby issuing your mouth with warrant. Eight o’clock sharp on Tuesday, you are ordered to present it for prosecution. Molade But … sah … sah. Mama Kayode Case dismissed, God’s case no appeal! I advise you not to open that mouth again. It’s an offence under the bye-law to foul a public place, section dee chapter six, bracket roman letter two … hey, what’s that in your hand self? Molade You mean this umbrella, sah? Mama Kayode Hen-hen that’s what you call it, this dirty, smoky, cobinfested jagbajantis! I bet it’s got lice in it too. Molade But it’s brand new! Alabi just sent it to me from the city last week – Mama Kayode Well, it’s under arrest. You’re lucky. I can’t ask you to detach your mouth, which is exhibit one, Queen versus Baba Alabi, alias Titus, nineteen gbongbonrongbon. But I will certainly not allow this umbrella to go on soiling the rain, which is a public property under the bye-law. So hand it over at … yeee-pah! Ori mi o! (For TITUS has whacked him on the head with the umbrella. He hobbles after him, and then tumbles.) … you will see! (Picking himself up.) You will see! Are you laughing? Titus spent the next two weeks in jail. Titubi What! Because he wouldn’t give up his property? Mosun All our properties were public property while the inspector was here. If you argued, you went to work free of charge for the government in the white college. Titubi And you didn’t protest? Molade What are we doing now? Our men are killing them man for man. Titubi I mean before. Before the bloodshed. Wura We hired a letter-writer. Everyone contributed to pay him. First petition nothing. Second petition, nothing again. Mosun A third. A fourth. Another one. Wura Grievances upon grievances. The letters multiplied, the letter-writer grew pregnant. Molade But not even a note of acknowledgement. Titubi Nothing at all? Mosun Oh yes! The council officials grew more daring and more ruthless. Mama Kayode To punish us for all those petitions. Bribery rates went up. Wura Kickback and kickforward hit inflation. Molade Tax assessments began to gallop like antelopes. Mosun One day we went and burnt down the Council Office. That was the first time in months I slept soundly. Wura Eh the governor! Don’t forget the visit of the governor! Molade Yes! First they sent policemen to kill us, but we ran away. Mama Kayode They sent soldiers, and we ambushed them. Mosun Then one day, one man called governor came down from a giant

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238  Femi Osofisan iron hawk, from the sky. Mama Kayode He stood there. His cheeks were shining. My God, I remember, he was so handsome I was afraid to look. Molade It was Baba who replied him. After the governor had spoken, Baba stepped forward. I was hiding behind my husband. Mama Kayode The governor’s voice was sweet, you could almost drink it. And at first it was difficult to follow his words. They seemed to come from a church organ. (Mimicking.) Ladies and gentlemen, I know you have some grievances. But I have come to speak to you as the father of all the people in this state. This killing must stop. It is senseless for anybody to shoot guns against the government. That person will be crushed. So I am appealing to you. Think of your wives and children. Lay down your arms now and let us talk. All the people who have been misleading you till now, you must hand them over to the government, for they are your enemies, who don’t want you to have peace and progress. We shall deal with them. Arid above all, you must pay your tax, it’s the only way we can help you … Pay your tax! Pay your tax!’ Wura (Laughing.) Ah you remember everything, everything. Mama Kayode And then Baba stepped forward. He bowed. Like this, very low. He said ‘Your Excellency, my son, we have listened carefully to your fatherly appeal. Our roads have been so bad for years now that we can no longer reach the markets to sell our crops. Even your excellency had to make your trip here by helicopter. Your council officials and the akodas harass us minute to minute and collect bribes from us. Then they go and build mansions in the city. Sanitary inspectors like Mister Bamsun are bloodsuckers. Your Marketing Board seizes our cocoa, and pays us only one third of what it sells it to the oyinbo. We have no electric, and we still drink tanwiji from the stream. Many of our children are in jail for what your people call smuggling. We protested and your police mounted expeditions to maim us and reduce our houses to ashes. But all these do not matter anymore. Now that we have listened to your kind and fatherly appeal, we shall forget all our sufferings and pay our taxes. I promise we shall now send in the money promptly, through the same route your appeal has come to us – by helicopter!’ (General laughter.) Oh, you should have seen the governor’s face! Titubi So what did he do? Wura What else, do you still ask? You nurse the casualties every night. Titubi You know… before this … I could never have believed that life was so unkind to anybody. Molade It’s unkind, only till you begin to fight back. After that – Titubi Yes? Tell me. Teach me. Molade You should teach us, good woman. Where you find your strength. Titubi Me? What strength – Wura Remember the song she taught us yesterday? Mama Kayode Let’s sing it. Enough of the talking.

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Morountodun  239 Mosun I agree. Start it, you’re Olohun-iyo. (They sing the song Iyawo nfo’so. As they pick up the song again, singing softly, lights go up on the DEPUTY SUPERINTENDENT’S office. The characters are still in the same postures. TITUBI walks back into the office with the gun to address them.)

Twelve Titubi That was when I began to ask questions. Questions. I saw myself growing up, knowing no such sufferings as these. With always so much to eat, even servants feed their dogs.Yet here, farmers cannot eat their own products, for they need the money from the market. They tend the yams but dare not taste. They raise chickens but must be content with wind in their stomach. And then, when they return weary from the market, the tax man is waiting with his bill. It could not be just. In our house, Mama, we wake to the chorus of jingling coins. And when we sleep, coiled springs, soft foam and felt receive our bodies gently. But I have lived in the forest among simple folk, sharing their pain and anguish … and I chose… Alhaja Kabirat What do you mean? Titubi Wait! I have not finished. Listen to the rest. For without knowing it, the shame of my past had come flooding into my eyes. (Tears are falling freely from her eyes. Lights transfer back to the streamside.)

Thirteen (MAMA KAYODE goes to TITUBI.) Mama Kayode My dear, do not cry, or don’t you understand? We’re fighting to live. Mosun Our men fall, but we do not mourn. Wura Water fertilises the earth, blood the spirit of the race. Molade We struggle, our dirges wash us clean. Mama Kayode We’re older than pain and betrayal. Wura Older than your politicians and your rulers. Mama Kayode We own the earth, we are the earth itself. Molade And the future is ours. Is for our children. Mama Kayode So come, my daughter, wipe your tears. Wura Tell us about your wedding song. Titubi What? What wedding song? Molade Will it be as sweet as the song you taught us? Titubi But, what do you mean? (The women laugh.) Wura Ehn-ehn! Is it because I’ve not broken your head for stealing him

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240  Femi Osofisan from me? Molade She thinks we haven’t noticed. Titubi Noticed what? Wura Nothing, nothing-o! But if I were to talk! Mosun Don’t mind her. The way her eyes devour him. Titubi Who? Whom are you talking about? Mama Kayode A riddle! Shall I tell it? Woman Yes! Tell it! Mama Kayode Listen: Oruku tindi tindi Oruku tindi tindi – Woman Oruku gba gbo! Mama Kayode I say Oruku is in my hands: Catch it! I launch a riddle-o! Mosun Oruku bi gba omo A thousand kernals Nestle in a thousand nuts. We await your riddle-o! Mama Kayode Oruku tindi tindi I launch a riddle-o! Molade May your riddle ripen well! As it falls! May oruku Swell our mouths with succulence! Wura I catch your riddle-o! Mama Kayode Oruku tindi tindi… (Pause.) Molade Hen-hen you see now? Titu is silent! Mosun Titu, the riddle hangs in the air. Won’t you speak? Wura Or is she afraid of something about to be disclosed? Titubi OK, I catch it! I have nothing to hide. May your riddle ripen well – Mama Kayode Oruku is growing: A thousand baby seeds In your fingers – Titubi Seek me: I turn your words To costly beads… Woman We adorn ourselves in the jungle: And grown is the riddle. Mama Kayode Listen: The he-goat wears a beard. The she-goat wears a beard: Oba Lailo! Mosun I know that one! Molade Me too, but I won’t say! Not yet!

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Morountodun  241 Wura Titu, do you care to enlighten us? Titubi Why me? This is a trap, isn’t it? I withdraw from the game. Wura All right, I’ll solve the riddle. Love! Someone’s in love! Tinrin tintin! Mosun What an understatement! When the she-goat also grows a beard that means – Molade An inferno! The love all-consuming! Titubi So who is in love now? Wura Why the panic? Has anyone mentioned your name? Mama Kayode Listen: Ruku ruku yekete The carrier of the corpse is bow-legged, The corpse itself is also bow-legged, Oba Lailo! Wura Now we’re getting nearer to target. Who knows that one? Mosun There is a horse, and there is a rider, both keeping the same secret. That’s all I’m going to say. Molade But who are they? I’m sure Titu wouldn’t know anything about this either? Titubi I’ve told you, I’m out of it. Mama Kayode Listen: Oruku is going home to roost: Firewood is gathered In a hundred places, But the bundle is tied up In a single spot, Oba Lailo! Mosun I know the man! Molade I too can guess. Titu, can you tell us? Titubi I am not in love with any man! Molade She denies it again! Mosun She thinks we’ve not been seeing them together! Mama Kayode Anyway I must congratulate you. I didn’t know any­ body could ever bring him back again to what he was before the war began. Mosun She’s a good nurse. Titubi Am I? You know, he still frightens me – Molade Who? I thought you swore there is no man? Titubi Stop teasing me… Mama Kayode Lucky Marshal,…and look! See who is coming! Mosun My friends, pack your things, our presence is needed at home! (Laughing they begin to pack their things together.) (Laughs die out on the streamside scene as TITUBI walks back to the DEPUTY SUPER­INTENDENT’s office.)

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242  Femi Osofisan

Fourteen Titubi And that was it. I knew at last that I had won. I knew I had to kill the ghost of Moremi in my belly. I am not Moremi! Moremi served the State, was the State, was the spirit of the ruling class. But it is not true that the State is always right. Superintendent (Who has been watching her with increasing alarm, leaps up.) By God, you bitch,you – ! (But she is alert and keeps him covered.) Titubi Keep still Salami. My hands are jittery on the trigger, and I won’t like to kill you in error. Superintendent (Raising his hands quickly.) All right, all right, girl, just keep calm. Alhaja (Trembling with shock.) Titu! Titu! Please don’t do it. You’re my only daughter. They’ll kill you. Titubi (Laughs, but shrilly, she’s overstretched.) Mama, our life itself is not important. Nor all these glittering tinsels we use to decorate it. Ask your friend Salami. He knows the truth now. In another week he’ll be asking to negotiate. He won’t be in such a hurry to order the massacre of children, for there’s no way you can win a war against people whose cause is just. As long… (She’s beginning to falter now.) … as … long as the law remains … the privilege of a handful of powerful men … ah, I am tired … Marshal! … You didn’t believe in me, did you? You never believed I was sincere? Marshal Titu, I – Titubi Take the gun. (She hands it to him.) Let a new life begin. (Blackout.)

Fifteen (As at the beginning of Scene Eight, dancing silhouettes celebrate harvest and gradually disappear. Lights now come up. It is a fortnight later. The peasant women again, by the streamside. They have finished their washing, the clothes piled up in the calabashes. Now they are relaxing, singing, washing their feet in the stream, etc. Someone is putting the finishing touches to the plaiting of TITUBI’s hair.) Mosun So tomorrow we negotiate. Molade Yes. And the war will be ended. Wura Titu! I don’t know how you found the courage to do it. Titubi Don’t ask me. Mama Kayode God will reward you my daughter. Wura What’s that song of hers again? Molade (Starts to sing.) Be always like this day, beside me. Wear hope like a jewel, it never fades. (The others join the song.) Wura (Looking up suddenly.) Didn’t I say it? Now look who is coming!

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Morountodun  243 Woman What! What are we seeing! Eeeh-oh, Titu-Titu! Titubi Tell me, what should I do? Molade See how she’s trembling! Titubi He warned me yesterday that he would be telling me something important this morning. Something important! Mama Kayode All right, let me handle this. Form a circle round her and leave all the talking to me. (They do so, arranging themselves in a circle, with TITUBI in the middle. They pretend to be very busy as MARSHAL enters, accompanied by BOGUNDE and KOKONDI.) Marshal Good morning to our mothers. I am happy to find you here, all together. (Silence. MARSHAL looks at his companions in amazement.) Bogunde Dear women, we salute you. (Silence.) Kokondi We come with a great joy. And we wish you to be witnesses of a memorable event. (Silence.) Bogunde Mama Kayode! Toun! Mama Iyabo! All of you, Marshal is greeting you! Marshal Bogunde, can it be that the war has done something to the ears of our women? Kokondi Titu, Marshal is here. (Pause.) Strange disease. It must have come in the night. Bogunde It’s the Monster Majengboron! It has an appetite for female ears. Marshal Women, have we done something to wrong you? (Silence.) Bogunde, there’s a cure for this. I learnt it from my great grandfather, that indomitable hunter of spirits. (He takes his gun from KOKONDI.) Bogunde, I want you to go among them. Start with Mama Kayode in particular. This is what you’ll do. (Whispers in his ear.) Good. Go on. And the first person who utters even the faintest sound will have her head blown off. (BOGUNDE steps forward. The women look up, watching apprehensive. He goes to MAMA KAYODE, walks round her, and then suddenly bends to tickle her. She stiffens, tries to resist, but finally collapses in laughter.) Mama Kayode Please … please, I beg you. Marshal What is that I hear? Give way, let me shoot at her! (She flees behind another woman, who also runs, till finally they form a circle by linking hands and dancing round TITUBI, so that she’s still inaccessible to BOGUNDE. They improvise a short song.) Marshal (Dropping his gun.) We surrender, sweet women. Tell us now. Why may I not speak with her? (The circle comes to a stop, but does not break up.) Mama Kayode Shall we pity them? Women Yes. Answer him. Mama Kayode She does not want to speak to you. Marshal Me? But why? Mosun You’re too brutal, she says.

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244  Femi Osofisan Marshal I’m a commander of war – Molade And you are too cruel. Marshal Not to friends. Never to friends. Wura But can you tell friend from foe? Marshal I confess, sometimes it’s hard – Mama Kayode Your face often fills her with fright. Marshal A mask only. A commander’s make-up. Plead for me. Tell her, my face shall soften in the breeze of her caresses. Mosun Hear that! He’s talking of caresses already. Molade Without winning her first. Marshal Tell her, I bring her a priceless gift. Mama Kayode Show us. Marshal I want her to hold it herself, in her fingers. Mama Kayode Give it to me. Marshal No, into her fingers only. Mama Kayode All right, go away. She won’t take it. Marshal No? Mama Kayode No. Bogunde Let’s go, Marshal. Marshal (Retrieving his gun.) Right, let’s go. (They make to go.) Titubi (Running through the circle.) I’ll take it! Women Traitor! Mama Kayode Now he’ll have you for cheap! Marshal Don’t be so sure. Let her open this packet. (Takes it from KOKONDI and gives her. She opens it to general exclamations of surprise. There are two coral necklaces, which TITUBI holds up in surprise.) Marshal You see? They are from my mother’s long-forgotten casket. Wear them. Titubi But … but I… I can’t. I c(The women snatch them from her, force her to kneel and wear the beads round her neck. MARSHAL takes his gun, touches her forehead, the ground, then his forehead. The crowd hails.) Marshal This is a moment of delight, and I have chosen it to be among you all, in this place, where the journey of our ancestors ended. Titubi, I am going to dress you in a new name, so that, from this moment, the whole world knows how precious you are to me. Mama Kayode May the name last her. Women Ase. Mama Kayode As long as the long length of a ripe life. Marshal We have met your parents. We have been to the house from which your manners were furnished. We know the stream of blood along whose banks your family spreads its seeds. We have seen you in our midst, different from how you came. And we have grown to cherish you, and that is enough. Now, I call on this earth I am standing on. (Takes gourd from KOKONDI and pours libation. BOGUNDE softly chants

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Morountodun  245 an incantation, beating a rhythm on his weapon.) I call on you trees and animals which people our forests and are our kinsmen. I summon the seeing eyes our ancestors. And you, my very dear friends, standing in this charged embrace of sunlight and wind, bear witness. I give her, not a gun, nor a matchet, but costly beads of iyun. For her war is not to kill, but to heal. Her battlefield among the wounded and stricken. Therefore I pluck her name like this, all ripe and golden, not from the laden shelf of our violent heroes, but from the storehouse of beauty and tenderness. I name her – MOROUNTODUN! (Ovation! The women begin to sing the praise-song, Morountodun eja oson. They beat out the rhythm on their hands and feet. MARSHAL drinks from the gourd, and hands it to TITUBI who also drinks. She rises and embraces him. KOKONDI sings a love song. The dance and merriment are at a peak when BABA enters. Everything freezes.) Baba I heard the sound of singing … Molade Yes! We were dancing. Wura Marshal has just finished a naming ceremony. Baba A new child, and not to my knowledge? (The crowd laughs.) Titubi Baba, look at my beads! Baba Ah I see. Mama Kayode He named her Morountodun! Baba Eja oson! A beautiful name! Marshal She’s the goddess of beauty herself. Baba I am happy to hear such words from your lips again, Marshal. Bogunde Baba, women are cunning. Kokondi And dangerous. Baba And sweet. Morountodun! I should have been invited. We have all gained from her sweetness. My daughter, I give you my blessings. May the name last you – Women Ase! Baba As long as the long eye of the sky. Titubi (At BABA’s feet.) I’m so happy, Baba. If only I could open my heart, like a book – Baba I couldn’t read it, my daughter. But I know you are happy. Alas. Titubi Alas? Baba These sounds should lead to a wedding, but – Women Yes, Baba? Go on. Baba When is it that we have carried weapons to a wedding? Marshal, is it true what I hear? Marshal What do you hear? Baba That you have summoned all the commanders to the grove? Marshal Yes. (Women exclaim in alarm.) Baba Why? Marshal What other reason? To continue the struggle. Baba Even when there’s no longer need for armed confrontation?

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246  Femi Osofisan Marshal It is you who say so. Baba And the Committee? Tomorrow – Marshal The other side merely wishes to buy time, to rebuild their spent forces. And to divide us. Baba How shall we know their intentions if we don’t give the truce a chance? Marshal Are we to argue this out in front of the women? Women We want to hear this too, Marshal. Marshal Of what use is knowledge gained in the grave? Baba Tomorrow, Marshal. Only a day. Why not give tomorrow a chance? Marshal Tomorrow is too important for me to gamble with. Baba And so, behind my back, you’re preparing for an attack? Marshal Can we do so in front of you? Baba We declared a truce with the police. On our honour. Tomorrow we’re supposed to hang our weapons. Marshal Words! I am tired of words! Baba I’m still the leader here. Marshal Here, in the village. Not at the battlefront. Baba So you’re disobeying me! Marshal We cannot follow you into a pit. Baba And Bogunde, Kokondi? You’re with him on this? (They look away.) Titubi Marshal! Marshal … you’re not going away? You’re not going to fight again? (She’s heartbroken.) Marshal I have been given no other choice … Morountodun. I was born poor … You understand? Look, it is well calculated. Tomorrow, when they think we are idling here, washing our wounds and hanging out our shredded hopes to dry, we are going to appear there, suddenly out of the air, and hit them. Now that we have the ammunition. Bang! Right where their heart is. The very building which houses their Commander and his odious officers. There can be no better time than this! Baba Tell me again you mean you’re going to attack the Central Police Station? Marshal We’ll destroy the place. Reduce it to rubble, for ever. Let all prisons fall! Bogunde and Kokondi Let all prisons fall! Baba You’re insane all of you! That place is almost a fortress! You’ll never get in! Marshal You said the same thing when we were going to raid the prison. But we did it. Baba I know. But that was just lucky. The Central Police Station is extremely fortified. You’ll all be killed. Marshal How do you know? Baba How do I know? Haven’t I slept there before? Marshal Nobody will sleep there again, after tomorrow. All the filthy cells and dungeons in which our people groan their life out. And fine young men are broken, beyond recognition, into blabbering idiots. The torture

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Morountodun  247 chambers and solitary confinements where men are changed to rat and roach. Every thing will go down in one huge conflagration. And then true freedom can begin at last … Baba He named you Morountodun. Speak to him. Titubi Marshal… what about me? Marshal (As if unaware of the interruption.) And who knows, maybe it will be time then to rest our weapons and let them grow to rust… at least until the next cry of desperation. And maybe afterwards our own children will have a decent chance to grow up like human beings, not like animals having to scrounge for left-overs in the sewer of history …I am dreaming, and so much still to do! Bogunde! Kokondi! Kick me awake! Let me hear a song of fire to rouse my spirit! (KOKONDI starts a war song, which they all pick up.) That’s better! Now I am a man again … Morountodun, I have clothed you in a name of honour. My fists to a superb woman! I shall not see you again before the men and I depart early in the dawn tomorrow. But when we return … let’s go quickly, men. (They salute BABA, and go out, chanting their song. There is a short pause, while BABA and his people look in the direction of the men’s departure.) Baba (Sighing.) They will not come back. (All action freezes. A long pause. Short Blackout.)

Sixteen (The actors begin to re-emerge to change their costumes. We are back in their changing room. The DIRECTOR, walking quickly from the audience, is going towards his actors, when he seems to check himself, and turns to the audience.) Director Oh, you’re still there? I suppose you’d like to know how the story ended? (He walks back a bit. The actors go on about their business, unconcerned.) Well, the old man was right. Marshal and his men did not come back. It was, you’ll admit, a suicidal mission? … In the end, peace came, but from the negotiating table, after each side had burned itself out. Yes, that’s History for you … But still, you must not imagine that what we presented here tonight was the truth. This is a theatre, don’t forget, a house of dream and phantom struggles. The real struggle, the real truth, is out there, among you, on the street, in your homes; in your daily living and dying … . We are actors, and whatever we present here is mere artifice, assembled for your entertainment. Tomorrow the play may even be different. It depends. Some of the scenes for instance seemed to be … (A shout of irritation from the actors interrupts him. Then two or three of them overpower him, clamp their hands over his mouth.) Mama Kayode (begins the song in which they all join, clapping.) Be always like this day

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248  Femi Osofisan Beside me. Wear hope like a jewel: It never fades It never fades It never – (The song cuts off in a general freeze. Lights come on in the auditorium. On stage, on opposing platforms, MOREMI and TITUBI are caught in harsh spotlights, looking at each other.) (Blackout.)

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Morountodun A retrospective commentary

BIODUN JEYIFO

I From the beginning to the end, the dramatic action of Morountodun moves swiftly, indeed almost relentlessly, as if everything to be encountered or staged is predetermined. The play’s young protagonist, Titubi, like the eponymous heroine of George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan, is seemingly unstoppable in the manner in which she successfully engages every obstacle placed in her way; that is until the play’s denouement. We first meet her as the over-pampered and decadent daughter of a wealthy, doting mother. But then with little understanding of the structural basis of her social status, Titubi transforms into a militant defender of the status quo who rapidly comes to an awareness of the threats to her privileged existence. On the cusp of this new awareness, she volunteers to infiltrate the community of rural peasants in revolt against the state, the purpose being to bring about the crushing of their rebellion. But in yet another transformation, Titubi becomes a partisan of the peasants whose cause she makes her own, having come to an understanding of the social and human costs of the oppression of the rural community. But that is not the end of the transformations in the action of the play as Titubi eventually joins others in hopes of bringing about a truce between the state and the revolting peasants, only to have her hopes for a life of personal fulfilment and social progress dashed. This occurs in the shattering denouement of the play as the leader of the revolt with whom Titubi falls in love and marries (who renames her Morountodun) is killed, together with the entire military leadership of the revolt. Thus, the sense of relentlessness or even predetermination is strong in the action of the play and it is against the structural background of this relentlessness that we are confronted by the fact that Osofisan does everything he can as a playwright to undermine and complicate this impression. This is important because, in the opinion of this critic, this is the source of the considerable artistic achievement of the play.

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250  Biodun Jeyifo Aspects of Morountodun that illustrate this claim that its artistic power derives from a juxtaposition of sweeping, relentless action with expressive and performative idioms that both slow down and complicate the action are diverse. Perhaps the most significant of these is the pervasive use that Osofisan makes in the play of the technique through which, in the received tradition of the reflexivity of much of modern, avant-garde theatricalism, constant attention is drawn to the fact that what the audience is watching is ‘only’ or ‘merely’ a play and not reality itself. As a consequence of this, the action of Morountodun is constantly stalled as the actors negotiate both among themselves and with the audience how a scene or a development in the action ought to be staged. Indeed, at the very beginning of the play, this question turns on whether the play ought to be allowed to be staged at all! This is enacted as placard-carrying protesters – who are members of the cast – urge the audience to go home and not allow themselves to be seduced into watching a ‘subversive’ play that is full of outrageous lies against the wealthy, together with the state that is organized to protect their interests. From this deliberately fomented, inauspicious and highly theatricalized beginning, we very quickly perceive that the reflexive dimension of the play is considerable in its elaborateness. The list includes story-telling sequences; neo-traditional drum music, songs and dances; riddling parables; re-enactment of myths and legends; and dramatized allusions to actual historical personages and events. Since the play is a serious work of drama that is based on social and political turbulence in ancient and recent Yoruba and Nigerian history, it cannot escape our notice that there is a deliberativeness, a purposiveness behind this elaborate playfulness of Morountodun. Indeed, there seems to be an intriguing relationship between, on the one hand, the extensive and artful playfulness of technique and style in the drama and, on the other hand, the underlying bleakness of its dramatic action. It is as if defeat does not – or ought not to – necessarily conduce to inevitable or preordained tragedy. After all, the play deals with the betrayed and defeated Agbekoya uprising of 1968-69, a peasant rebellion about which the Nigerian Left, both at the time and now, remains in deep moroseness concerning its defeat. Athwart this general trend, Osofisan in Morountodun seems to opt for a dialectic of a tragic past and open-ended future. Thus, it is significant that in his author’s note to the play, Osofisan says of Morountodun that it ‘is a play based on the legend of Moremi of Ile-Ife’ (Osofisan, 1982a). This is somewhat baffling because, of the sixteen scenes or episodes of the dramatic action of the play, Moremi appears only in two scenes, 5 and 6, both being flashbacks away from the temporal present of the action of the play that deals, overwhelmingly, with Titubi-Morountodun. Significantly, all references to Moremi in the rest of the play highlight the fact that the heroism for which she has become legendary was enacted in the service of a decadent, effete and doomed ruling class. In contrast, though Titubi’s heroism ends in defeat, it is exercised in the interests of the exploited, the marginalized. How else could this greatly layered palimpsest of a heroism

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Morountodun: A Retrospective Commentary  251 that succeeds but is compromised and one that fails but is exemplary in its nobility be consummated if not by a dialectic of serious, high-minded themes and joyously playful techniques and styles of performance? This dialectic is what I wish to explore as a central plank of my reinterpretation of this relatively early play in Osofisan’s career as a dramatist. As we shall see, while this tension is undoubtedly the source of the play’s many delights as an expression of modern or contemporary Nigerian drama, it also throws up many critical issues pertaining to the early phase of Osofisan’s self-fashioning as an engaged, committed African dramatist. In the light of these issues, I take the constancy with which Osofisan, in Morountodun in particular and other plays in his early dramas in general, makes extensive use of reflexive, meta-theatrical techniques and styles as, compositely, something to be explained and not be regarded as something substantively there in its own right – as most critics of Osofisan’s dramaturgy have assumed. The axis of explanation for this dialectic, I argue, is provided by the kind of ideological and political commitment driving Osofisan’s plays in this early phase of his career. As we shall see, there are cues of technique and theme in the play that strongly but subtly suggest that Osofisan was anxious to indicate, through themes and idioms and styles of performance, which kind of radical commitment, which kind of socialism, he was committed to as a playwright and a public intellectual. It so happens that in the period when the play was produced and published, I and others on the Nigerian Left, together with Osofisan himself, were engaged in vigorous debates over this issue of exactly what commitment meant to us, meant for our praxis as dramatists and critics. In the light of this historical and ideological background, I argue that in Morountodun, Osofisan, at this stage of his career as a self-identified radical playwright of the Left was rather ambiguous about his identification with established or doctrinaire formations of the Left in Africa and other parts of the world – an issue that I have explored in a major article ( Jeyifo, 2006). In the concluding section of this commentary, I focus on intimations that I have so far in this discussion been giving that Morountodun is perhaps the most important of a group of plays written and staged in the mid to late 1970s that constitute what we can now describe as an early phase in Osofisan’s career. This is a phase that is not exactly discontinuous with what I designate a later stage, but it is quite clearly distinguishable from it. Because there are many dimensions through which this issue could be explored, I focus on only two, these being plot and character as vehicles of the playwright’s most pressing thematic concerns in the play. The return to traditional Aristotelian concepts that this entails is quite deliberate because, paradoxically, the radical intent of the playwright impels him back to what we might describe as the roots of both Western and African drama and performance. Since I also explore African roots and matrices in this commentary, the return to Aristotle in this particular issue might seem to be a balancing act. This may be so, but there are deeper reasons for this than a politically correct nudge to

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252  Biodun Jeyifo post-colonial multiculturalism and liberal cultural relativism. This is because ultimately, the issue turns on the fact that attentiveness to improbabilities of plot and character – rigid Aristotelian conceptions – that Osofisan ignores in his early plays are engaged in his later works. This idea will be explored in a brief comparative discussion of representative plays from each of these two periods of the Nigerian playwright’s career. Before we move to the next stage of the discussion, a caveat: the issues that I engage in this commentary are closely interconnected and, moreover, they are not peculiar to only Osofisan’s plays. Indeed, the relevance of this observation will be apparent in the following section of the discussion in which the choices made and strategies adopted in techniques and styles of dramaturgy and stagecraft are discussed in close connection with brief comments on intricacies and controversies pertaining to Osofisan’s commitment, his socialism. Also worthy of note is the fact that as much as this commentary takes its point of departure from Osofisan’s uniqueness as an African playwright, there is also a deliberate intention to locate him in the broader framework of dramatists and playwrights who both came before and after him. Particularly, I have deliberately strayed into comparative remarks on Osofisan in relation to Hubert Ogunde and Wole Soyinka with regard to controversies over didacticism as an aspect of commitment, itself a central issue in this commentary.

II In what he describes as ‘Playwright’s note’ to the first stage production of Morountodun in 1979, Osofisan, in the published version of the play, makes the following remarks on the irreducible Yoruba cultural location of the play: Directors need not feel bound to use the same songs, especially where the linguistic circumstances call for other substitutions, although it should be remembered that songs in Yoruba help to preserve the Yoruba locale of the action. (Osofisan, 1982a: 80) Unless one reads the word ‘locale’ here not in a physical but cultural sense, this note seems baffling. The play is an English-language drama and though the ‘locale’ is Yorubaland and the contents are derived from ancient and modern Yoruba history, it could be staged in any locale in the Englishspeaking world – as the classic works of English drama are. Moreover, the songs of the play are entirely in Yoruba and perhaps for this reason are absent in the published text of the drama proper since Morountodun is in English and belongs to the tradition of Anglophone African drama. These songs are included in a glossary at the end of the text, but the glossary proffers no translations for the songs. From this one could conclude that while the Yoruba linguistic and cultural provenance of the songs – and other

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Morountodun: A Retrospective Commentary  253 idioms of performance like drum music and riddling tales – matters greatly, the playwright obviously intends that the play should be staged in other places on the African continent and the world at large. In this, Osofisan was following in the footsteps of other playwrights who had engaged the same challenge of rooting their dramatic works in a very specific and at the same time substantially ethno-cultural cultural and performative matrix, but with the awareness that their actual and potential audience base was national, continent-wide or indeed global. More specifically, Osofisan, consciously or intuitively, was aware, had to have been aware of the patterns or methods of the engagement of this challenge by two particular dramatists, these being Hubert Ogunde and Wole Soyinka. More than any of his other early plays, Morountodun stands out as the most eloquent instantiation of this claim. Given the fact that Morountodun deals with a peasants’ and farmers’ revolt in Western Nigeria, during the Nigeria-Biafra civil war, that has gone down in history as the Agbekoya rebellion, the gaiety, the extensive artfulness and deliberate playfulness of the play’s dramatic action is nothing short of astounding. This is even more remarkable against the background of the defeat of the rebellion, a defeat that Nigerian leftists, including Osofisan himself, still mourn to this day. As a matter of fact, in the last scene in Morountodun the playwright, in the voice and mask of a character, Director, allusively registers this mourning in the following words: In the end, peace came, but from the negotiating table, after each side had burned itself out. Yes, that’s History for you … But still, you must not imagine that what we presented here tonight was the truth. This is a theatre, don’t forget, a house of dreams and phantom struggles. The real struggle is out there among you, on the street, in your homes; in your daily living and dying. … We are actors, and whatever we present here is mere artifice, assembled for your entertainment. Tomorrow, the play may even be different. (p. 247 above) Earlier in this commentary, I drew attention to the fact that Morountodun starts with a disruption in the action of the play in which the usefulness or necessity of staging the play at all is raised. In that instance, this ironic, tongue-in-cheek interrogation of theatre’s usefulness is also made against a supposition, also ironic, that there is a ‘reality’ or ‘history’ out there in the country and the world that is more urgent, more important than theatre and its ‘phantom struggles’. Interestingly, this same interrogation of theatre pervades the texts of two plays that respectively came before and after Morountodun, these being The Chattering and the Song (1976) and The Oriki of a Grasshopper (1982c [1980]). Osofisan’s dramaturgy has been justly celebrated as being the most Brechtian, the most reflexive in modern or post-colonial African drama. These three early plays mark the first steps in what would later come to be recognized as the Nigerian playwright’s propensity for extended meta-theatrical reflection, within his dramas, on the phenomenon of theatre, on its usefulness. For instance, all three plays extensively deploy

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254  Biodun Jeyifo techniques that deliberately draw attention to the play’s constitution as, precisely, a play: the play-within-the-play; extended role-playing in which characters play other ‘characters’; and a sort of ‘call-and-response’ technique of direct addresses by the actors to the audience to intervene and advise the players what to do at critical moments in the performance. If these three early plays all have these features, Morountodun is remarkable among the trio for taking these meta-theatrical techniques and idioms to their furthest limits in Osofisan’s early plays. As we have seen, this play starts and ends with a questioning of theatre’s usefulness measured against the claims of ‘reality’ and ‘history’. Throughout the play, the transformations that the protagonist, Titubi, undergoes are effected through highly theatricalized, highly staged enactments. Moreover, some of the songs of the play, in Brechtian fashion, slow down the action and make critical comments on what is going on in the dramatic action. Thus, there is no question whatsoever that in this particular play Osofisan was bringing to a sort of summative climax the things he had begun in Kolera Kolej and continued in The Chattering and the Song and returned to later in Oriki of a Grasshopper. This calls for a crucial contextual explanation the like of which is not common in the study of Osofisan’s stagecraft as a director. The intra-textual interrogations of theatre and its usefulness in these early plays of Osofisan did not take place in a vacuum. Indeed, we have ample evidence within the plays themselves and in the critical discussions that they generated that our playwright was highly conscious of this fact. Among the clear indications that we have of the veracity of this claim is the fact that, at the time that these plays were staged, fierce critical debates were taking place about precisely what use the theatre ought to serve in the face of the mounting and intensifying political, economic and social crises of post-colonial or neo-colonial Africa. Osofisan and this writer were active participants in these debates. Some of my essays and ‘manifestos’ in the debates were later published in the book, The Truthful Lie ( Jeyifo, 1985). Central in this debate was an essay-manifesto that Osofisan initially circulated in 1980 titled ‘Ritual and the Revolutionary Ethos’ (Osofisan, 2001). In the passionate polemics of this essay, Osofisan drew a sharp line between the concerns and perspectives shaping his own work in particular and the work of his generational cohort of dramatists, critics and theorists in general, this in comparison with the things that had shaped the work of the older generation, especially Soyinka and Clark. Significantly, socialism and class politics had been keywords in the line that Osofisan drew in that signal act of separation between himself and his generation on one side, and Soyinka and Clark on the other side. So far, so good. However, Osofisan’s personal situation in these debates was considerably complicated by the fact that he was flanked by dramatists and critics on the ‘hard Left’ who queried the nature of his commitment, indeed of his socialism. Interestingly, no explicit critiques of Osofisan from this quarter were ever expressed in print but the fact that they were being made in the

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Morountodun: A Retrospective Commentary  255 grapevine was never in doubt. The closest to an evidence that this debate did take place within the Left itself over Osofisan’s place in the movement came from two sources. One was the series of so-called ‘internal memos’ that Osofisan, Kole Omotoso and I wrote to one another in a fierce threecornered contestation over our respective personal visions of socialism and what responsibilities and obligations it placed on us as dramatists, critics and theorists. The other evidence is encountered as internal textual details in Osofisan’s plays themselves. As I have elaborated in another discursive context, both the plot structure and the two major characters of The Oriki of a Grasshopper are composite creations based on the ‘internal memos’ that Osofisan, Omotoso and I had exchanged at the time ( Jeyifo, 2006). Caught between a soft and a hard Left, Osofisan did not hedge his bets with regard to which formation was right or would prevail over the other; rather he stuck to his guns and weighed all the options available to him between revolutionary hope and realistic pessimism, and between ‘cowards’ and ‘quixotes’, as he famously put the matter in the dedication to me of one of his plays from the period, Once Upon Four Robbers (Osofisan, 1982b). Where other playwrights on the Left like Kole Omotoso, Tunde Fatunde and Olu Obafemi mostly wrote agit-prop plays emphasizing the inevitable victory of the oppressed, Osofisan’s plays, of which Morountodun is a prime example, explored struggles and heroism side by side with defeats, betrayals and uncertainties, but always with the jouissance for which he has become internationally famous. Above all else is the fact that, as a playwright and theatre director who had to think and act concretely in terms of what was and wasn’t there to work with, the bottom line was, compositely, the means of artistic production available to him. It is at this point that Ogunde and Soyinka both directly and indirectly, come into the discussion, if only very briefly.

III Remarkably, there has been little or no critical discussion of the theatrical groups with which Osofisan worked at various times in his career, especially with regard to how this factor might have exercised an influence, no matter how tangential, on what and how he wrote in this period. This is because, like Ogunde and Soyinka before him, he had had to found the companies that he worked with. Later in his career, he would work with all kinds of groups that were already there fully active, from professional companies either based in a university or a state institution (like the National Troupe in Lagos), to a mix of semi-professionals and amateurs in makeshift companies cobbled together for a specific production. But in the early phase that is the focus of this commentary on Morountodun, Osofisan worked almost exclusively with companies that he himself founded that were overwhelmingly made

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256  Biodun Jeyifo up of young student actors, with a sprinkling of enthusiasts among junior and middle-level technical staff of the university. The first of these, called ‘Komfes Artists’, did not last long. It gave way to the ‘Kakaun Sela Kompany’ that proved more durable even if its membership followed the logic of the high turnover caused by the limited number of years attached to university studentship. This was the company with which Morountodun’s first stage outing was consummated as, indeed, was the case respectively with The Chartering and the Song and Oriki of a Grasshopper. What is the significance of this factor? I do not think that it was merely fortuitous that, like the members of the Kakaun Sela Kompany, virtually all the characters of The Chattering and the Song, Morountodun and Oriki of a Grasshopper are young adults whose crises and dilemmas precisely reflected those faced by all young, aware and progressive people at the time. True enough, there are a few old, senescent women and men in the dramatis personae of these plays. But they are in the minority. Moreover, on account of the pervasiveness in these plays of techniques and styles like the play-within-the-play and role-playing, Osofisan apparently opened up representational spaces in his dramaturgy so as to enable young actors/characters to play old people. Above all else is the fact that the members of the Kakaun Sela Kompany would almost certainly, in their dormitories, student assemblies, and protest marches and demonstrations, have been participating in similar events and episodes to those that we encounter in these early plays of Osofisan. Significantly, of the three early plays that I cite here, Morountodun bears the marks of this foreshortened and interchangeable space between drama and reality far more than the other two plays. On this point, the bungling haplessness of the character, Director, in the play seems an ironic but poignant homage to the challenge that the playwright faced in shuttling back and forth between the real-life social and political situations of members of his cast and the illusionary world of the characters in the play. There is of course also the additional factor, already alluded to in this discussion, of Osofisan being himself at the time a young, activist playwright, critic and occasional newspaper columnist who was vigorously debating the same issues raised in these plays in his non-fictional writings and activities. Obviously, we need the interpretive and speculative space of a whole monograph to compare these aspects of the early dramaturgy and stagecraft of Osofisan with patterns discoverable in the work of Ogunde and Soyinka, especially at similar founding moments in their respective careers. In the present context of a commentary on only one play of Osofisan, I think it prudent to limit the discussion to the question of what impact commitment had, together with its moral and ideological challenges, on the strategies and choices adopted by each of our three dramatists. On this point, we have seen that in the early plays of Osofisan of which Morountodun was a sort of capstone, he was pushed more and more to problematize, if often playfully and ironically, the relationship between theatre and reality. Ogunde and

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Morountodun: A Retrospective Commentary  257 Soyinka respectively and instructively provide patterns very different from Osofisan’s reflexive interrogation of theatre within the theatre itself. With Osofisan, the time posed radical questions to the theatre; in response, the theatre returned the favour by posing radical, alienating questions to the times. What do we find in Ogunde and Soyinka respectively? In essence, theatre and reality were two indissociable aspects of the same practice for Ogunde, a practice over which he felt supremely in control, even if he improvised a lot in the beginning period of his career. This was because what we can call the Ogunde prototype was based on a complete identification of theatre company, dramatic writing, performance routines and normative didacticism with the sole proprietorship, the unchallenged stellar dominance of Ogunde himself. He owned the company; he wrote the plays; he played the lead role in every single title in the dramas; he was completely responsible for the stagecraft and the scenography; and he it was that composed the songs and music. Above all other aspects of this complete integration of theatre troupe, playwriting and stagecraft with the personality of the producer-maestro, the point I would like to highlight is the fact that Ogunde also sang virtually all of the long, moralizing monologues that normatively carried the burden of the strong didactic element for which he was justifiably celebrated. Thus, the pedagogical weight of the anti-colonial plays of the 1940s and 1950s like Bread and Bullet and Strike and Hunger, and the overtly political plays of the post-colonial era like Yoruba Ronu and Otitokoro, all ultimately rested on the centrality of these moralizing songmonologues rendered by the maestro himself. It is incontestable that had Ogunde not been so totally in control of every aspect of his theatre, the song-monologues would not have had the impact they had on his audiences. Although his work was resolutely non-commercial in an opposite direction to the ultimate in ultra-commercialism in African popular and professional theatre marked by Ogunde’s theatre, Soyinka exercised a dominance comparable to Ogunde over the companies that he founded and ran in the early stage of his career. These were the ‘1960 Masks’ and ‘Orisun Theatre’. But Soyinka’s dominance over these companies was intellectual, not proprietorial, not even directorial. This issue entails considerable subtlety. The key members of these companies that Soyinka founded were, like himself, scions of the social and intellectual elite; some were his close personal friends. Thus, the authority that Soyinka had over them derived from the reputation he rapidly gained at the start of his career for an outsize, radically non-conformist talent. As a playwright and theatre director, he had very original and powerful ideas about the heritage of theatre in Africa and how it could combine with other traditions of theatre in the world to create a vibrant and relevant modern Africa theatre. He wrote short and long pieces of manifestos and reflections on the topic, some of them collected in the volume of his essays on literature and culture edited by this writer, Art, Dialogue and Outrage (Soyinka, 1988). But regardless of all these indicators of uncompromising intellectual distinctiveness and authority, Soyinka was

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258  Biodun Jeyifo resolutely non-controlling, indeed positively laissez faire in his methods as a director. With only the minimum of guidance he deemed necessary to aid his actors, he pretty much left performers in his productions to their own devices, their own inspirations. This is all the more surprising given the fact that some of the early plays of Soyinka were so unprecedented in form, themes and idioms of performance that they dazzled and confounded actors and performers in his companies as much as they did critics and audiences. For instance, of his first major play, A Dance of the Forests, the Nobel Literature Prize Committee said in its citation for naming Soyinka as the laureate for 1986: ‘A kind of African Midsummer Night’s Dream with spirits, ghosts and gods. There is a distinct link here to indigenous ritual drama and the Elizabethan drama.’ Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that no theatre companies existed in Africa at the time that were preadapted in training and experience to take up the challenge of mounting those early Soyinka plays, A Dance of the Forests, The Road and Kongi’s Harvest. Soyinka did as much as he could to provide minimal guidelines, but for the most part he allowed his actors and performers to depend on their own creative inspiration. There was a lot of talk about ‘difficulties’ and ‘obscurities’ in Soyinka’s dramas, a lot of critical fireworks over alleged ‘mystification’ of reality in his dramaturgy, but this, apparently, did not bother Soyinka. He seemed satisfied that everyone, his actors and performers included, knew that his was, in form and themes, a theatre that got everyone talking, everyone aware that they were being presented something new, vibrant and memorable, especially in The Road, a play which, within the framework of the issues under discussion here, occupies the same place in Soyinka’s early plays as Morountodun does in the early plays of Osofisan.

IV It is worthy of note that until fairly late in his career in the post-independence period, all the titles of Ogunde’s dramas were in English although Yoruba was the language used almost exclusively in the dialogue and songs of his plays. Indeed, when play titles in the repertoire of Ogunde’s dramas began to have a Yoruba designation, this denoted no changes of any significance, only that it was now acceptable, as other groups in the Yoruba Travelling Theatre movement beside the Ogunde Theatre were doing, to have Yoruba titles in plays that were, after all, deeply Yoruba in their linguistic and performative roots. This in fact is the core element of Ogunde’s landmark influence: yes, the titles of his plays were in English as was the name of his theatre company, and yes, he was deeply influenced by Western Christian and secular performance idioms like cantatas and music hall cabaret, but he increasingly made African/Yoruba folk, ritual and cultic performance forms

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Morountodun: A Retrospective Commentary  259 dominant in his theatre and thereby forever changed the course of Nigerian and African drama history. There is no doubt that he had a profound influence on all who came after him, like Soyinka and Osofisan both of whose dramas, in play titles and language of expression, are in English, not Yoruba. In my concluding observations in this commentary on Morountodun, I would like to focus on one particular aspect of the Ogunde influence that has not been given adequate critical exploration, this being the strong didactic element that he brought from Yoruba/African performance traditions to his dramas and passed on to those who came after him, in our case, Soyinka and Osofisan. This, I suggest, is heuristically a vantage point from which to clarify some basic aesthetic and thematic features of Morountodun and other early plays of Osofisan that pertain to socio-political activism. Many critics have justifiably commented on the influence of Brechtian epic theatre techniques and styles on Osofisan’s dramaturgy, with special reference to his use of parables for ideological and ethical lessons consistent with his leftist politics. How does this square with the fact that the didactic element is much stronger in Osofisan than in Brecht, especially in the early plays of which Morountodun is, as I have argued in this commentary, the most aesthetically accomplished? Unlike Brecht, Osofisan’s plays of the early period, Morountodun in particular, are very plot-driven. This is such a prominent structural feature of the play that character is subordinated to and emerges from plot mechanics – as in the Aristotelian dramaturgic framework. This is driven, it seems, by the pressure of didactic or pedagogical imperatives that Osofisan, as an engaged dramatist, a committed playwright of the Left, places on himself. The rapid, even relentless transformations of Titubi-Morountodun that I alluded to at the beginning of this commentary are predicated on the assumption that her change from a willing, militant advocate of the interests of the oppressive ruling class to a passionate partisan of the rural poor is a change from evil to righteousness, from social wrong to public good. This is all the more remarkable given the fact that the reallife, historical personage upon whom the character of Titubi-Morountodun is based did infiltrate the ranks of the Agbekoya rebellion as a spy who betrayed the cause of the peasants, leading to their defeat. Since this factual detail would have been inconvenient for the parable that Osofisan intended in Morountodun, it is completely excluded from the dramatic action of the play. At any rate, in Morountodun as in all the other early plays, Osofisan pays scant attention to improbabilities of plot and character; significantly, it is in plays of the later period, in which Osofisan deals with the lives and contradictions of historical figures like Kwame Nkrumah, Amilcar Cabral, Sekou Toure and Ajayi Crowther, that plot structure and complexity of characterization are given sharper articulation and depth. To the influence of Brechtian epic and parabolic techniques on his dramaturgy must be added Osofisan’s extensive use of intricate forms and idioms from Yoruba and African performative matrices to add flavour and nuance to the strong didactic element of his early plays. I have alluded to

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260  Biodun Jeyifo some of these in this discussion: riddling narratives; songs that slow down or complicate the plot in order to comment on the ongoing action; and calland-response segments that address the audience directly, inviting them to make an impact on the resolution of the conflicts in the dramatic action of the play. In another commentary, I have ascribed this last item that invites audience participation through a sort of call-and-response technique to the profound influence on Osofisan’s practice as a dramatist and director of the classic outline of the African dilemma tale ( Jeyifo, 2009). As scholars of this folkloric narrative form have taught us, the dilemma tale considerably opens up the space of moral choices beyond a simple division between good and evil. In the African dilemma tale, we are not in the Nietzschean moral dystopia of beyond good and evil; rather, we are in a moral minefield where we cannot not choose, together with the certainty that the choice we make will be portentous. Osofisan has made this a constant feature of the great majority of his plays. It is time to recall that among his early plays, it was in Morountodun that he first gave the most consummate articulation of this technique, this unique slant on the didactic imperative that he inherited from Ogunde and Yoruba/African performance traditions. It is tempting to end with a brief contrast between Osofisan and Soyinka on this issue of didacticism if, as I have urged in this commentary, both playwrights manifest Ogunde’s influence in the issue, no matter how indirectly and complexly. On the surface, didacticism seems totally inapplicable to Soyinka, just as, also in contrast with Osofisan, his early plays could be said to be headily plotless compared with Osofisan’s where plot is the main vehicle for the playwright’s didactic purposes. Additionally, Soyinka’s early major plays like A Dance of the Forests and The Road, seem more obsessively character-driven than anything in Osofisan’s early plays. For this reason, it does seem that, freed from the externalities of dramatic action driven by discernible plots, Soyinka’s characters in these plays are loosened from the burden of being considered as moral agents capable of imparting conventional or normative moral lessons. One thinks here of Forest Head in A Dance of the Forests or of Professor in The Road, both of whom seem so inscrutable in the meaning of their moral agencies that critics have long questioned the value of any ‘lessons’ to be gleaned from their towering dominance in each of these two Soyinka plays. Does the didactic element disappear completely from these plays? I do not think so at all. I would argue that it has only been made more complex, more aleatory. Osofisan is in this respect closer to the Ogunde prototype, but we have seen that, through the extensive use that he makes of techniques and idioms that interrogate theatre’s relationship to reality and ‘history’, he too considerably complicates the unambiguous separation of good and evil in the otherwise incontestable dramatization of the need for public good in his plays. Thus, it would be interesting to compare the ways in which Soyinka and Osofisan take up but significantly transform the didactic imperative taken over from Ogunde and Yoruba/African performance traditions.

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Morountodun: A Retrospective Commentary  261 But that project belongs in another article – in which Morountodun would undoubtedly provide us with a richly suggestive starting point.

Works cited Jeyifo, Biodun (1985), The Truthful Lie: Essays in a Sociology of African Drama. ­London: New Beacon. —— (2006), ‘Friendship and the Revolutionary Ethos’, Public Lecture, Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan, June 16. —— (2009), ‘Femi Osofisan in the Wilderness of our Generation’s Dilemmas’, in Emerging Perspectives on Femi Osofisan. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 19-32. —— (2015), ‘Sango N’Bugo: Wole Soyinka and the Nigerian/African Left’, Savannah Review, No 4, November, 57-74. Osofisan, Femi (1977), The Chattering and the Song. Ibadan: Ibadan University Press. —— (1982a), Morountodun and Other Plays, Ibadan: Longman Nigeria. —— (1982b), Once Upon Four Robbers. Ibadan: BIO Educational Services (2nd ­Edition). —— (1982c), The Oriki of a Grasshopper. Ibadan: University of Ibadan Theatre (2nd Edition). —— (2001), ‘Ritual and the Revolutionary Ethos: the Humanistic Dilemma in Contemporary Nigerian Theatre’, in The Nostalgic Drum: Essays on Literature, ­Drama and Culture. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 91-103. Shaw, George Bernard (1924), Saint Joan: A Chronicle Play in Six Scenes and an ­Epilogue. New York: Brentano’s. Soyinka, Wole (1963), A Dance of the Forests. London: Oxford University Press (Three Crowns). —— (1965) The Road. London: Oxford University Press (Three Crowns). —— (1967), Kongi’s Harvest. London: Oxford University Press (Three Crowns). —— (1988), Art, Dialogue and Outrage: Essays on Literature and Culture. Ibadan: New Horn Press.

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The Legend of Wagadu as Seen by Sia Yatabere

MOUSSA DIAGANA Translated by Richard Miller CAST Sia Yatabere Kaya Maghan Wakhane Sakho Mamadi the Silent Kerfa the Fool First Priest Second Priest Third Priest Sia Yatebere’s Father Sia Yatabere’s Mother Kaya Maghan’s Griot Chief Assistant Chief Flunky The Masked Chorus Shackled Chorus Blind Chorus Mute Chorus Kaya Maghan’s Court (When speaking as the MASKED CHORUS, the CHIEF, the ASSISTANT CHIEF and the FLUNKY don masks.)

262

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The Legend of Wagadu as Seen by Sia Yatabere  263

The Prologue MASKED CHORUS Chief Night is falling over Kumbi. Here and there, perhaps, curtains go up, life goes on … Assistant Chief The whole panorama of life, the actors coming and going, perspiring and aspiring. Flunky … and eventually expiring … Chief … and you’re becoming boring, Flunky, with all those unsuitable puns. We’re here to talk about beginnings, not endings. I turn it over to you, Assistant Chief. Assistant Chief We have actors appearing on the stage of life. Great and not-so-great, good and bad, famous and unknown. There are Kaya Maghan, Wakhane Sakho, as well as Mamadi the Silent, and Sia Yatabere … they need no introduction. Chief And then there are others, the nameless horde, those who drift along on the waves of that great river known as Time, which endures for eternity while they float on … Assistant Chief … as colourless as indifference … Flunky … as transparent as poverty … Chief As odourless as pain. Assistant Chief As well as being barely presentable. Flunky Because of all the flies on their eyes and buzzing around them. Chief Their hands misshapen as their feet. Flunky And their tongues – they say that they’re deadly poison. Chief In short, they’re not really quite presentable … but present them we must. When the time comes, they’ll make an appearance! And of course, as always, the usual precautions have been taken. Assistant Chief Look, there, on the left, the Shackled Chorus. As their name indicates, their hands are shackled, but only at night. In the morning, it’s their feet. (The SHACKLED CHORUS slowly crosses the stage.) Chief That’s to avoid any unpleasant complications. If they were unchained, they could walk on their hands and salute with their feet. Ladies and gentlemen, you don’t seem to believe me! Show them, Flunky! Flunky Just the other day, Chief, they toed their noses at me. Chief Is that the best example you can give us, Flunky? You should be shackled too, since you do as much to me, whenever my back is turned. Flunky Wait, Chief, here’s another one. Day-before-yesterday I disguised myself as a woman so as to get closer to them and hear what they were saying. Well, instead of trying to touch me you-know-where, they kicked me instead. You know where. Chief Bravo, Flunky! You’re on the way to a promotion! Back to you, Assistant Chief. Continue with your introduction.

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264  Moussa Diagana Assistant Chief Here, coming on from the right, we have the Blind Chorus. As their name would indicate, their eyes are blindfolded. (The BLIND CHORUS slowly crosses the stage.) Chief Because of the flies that crawl around their eyes and buzz around them. Flunky Any back-up information needed here, Chief? Chief No. Go on, Assistant Chief. Assistant Chief And last we have the Mute Chorus, who – as you will note – are wearing gags. (The MUTE CHORUS slowly crosses the stage.) Flunky (To the audience.) Beware their tongues. Cut out their tongue, and it grows right back. The only solution is to gag them. Chief Yours will get the same treatment if you interrupt again when it’s my turn to speak. The human refuse you have just seen pass by can be either good or evil, just as the waters of a river can be calm or rough. Assistant Chief When the river’s waters are calm, we call this human refuse “The Common Folk,” for then they are well-behaved, they sing and dance in the moonlight. You can approach them, but not too closely, of course, because of all the flies and everything. Chief And when the river’s waters are rough, there are those who call them “The Mob.” Those are the days when it’s best not to get your feet wet. Assistant Chief For if you do, you can be carried away like a piece of straw. Hold tight to the top of the tallest baobab tree, the one that stands farthest from the stream. Keep dry and wait for the waters to subside. Chief But for a while now, we haven’t seen any human refuse float by. They’re all waiting for something. Why are they waiting, Flunky? Why aren’t they floating by on the stream as usual? Flunky (Wisely.) Because the river is refusing to flow, Chief. Chief Not the river, you fool! History! Time! History has stopped advanc­ ing. It has stopped because the river has dried up. And do you know why the river has dried up, Flunky? Flunky (Hesitantly.) Uh … because it’s got holes in its bed, Chief …? Chief Double fool! The holes you see in the riverbed are the wells the women have dug trying to find water. Yes, water, because it’s been three years since a single drop of rain has fallen on Wagadu. The river has dried up. As a result, the human refuse is all backed up. Assistant Chief As long as the river was flowing in its bed, as long as they could float along, good and evil, we could cope with things. But what can we do with refuse that doesn’t float along, that just waits? Chief And, what’s more, refuse that waits for news of flood or of fire, whichever, for either the refuse is consumed and the fire spreads or they are drowned and the river overflows its banks. Flunky In either case, Chief, the human refuse won’t lose out, because soon they won’t be refuse any longer and we may turn into it. Chief Well said, Flunky! You’re beginning to make progress. (To the

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The Legend of Wagadu as Seen by Sia Yatabere  265 audience.) So they wait and they hope. Flunky And what about us, Chief? Chief It’s different with us. We’re the masked chorus, the anonymous chorus. Assistant Chief The faceless chorus. Flunky The coreless chorus. Chief Stop making those ridiculous puns, Flunky. Here, as everywhere; we have come among the people to listen to them, to learn what they’re talking about, what they’re thinking, what they’re hiding, what they’re plotting, and without anyone’s knowing who we really are. Flunky You mean like spies. Chief Another unpleasant word! We are the Master’s noble ears, his breath, his intuition. The moment is at hand. I can already hear the dogs barking. Come! To work. Assistant Chief, you go that way, and don’t miss a word of what they say. You, Flunky, go over there, hide in that bush and try to find out what they’re thinking. And don’t forget, we’ll meet at dawn back at the Master’s to report.

ACT I SCENE 1 THE FOOL (Kumbi Sale, capital of the Empire of Ghana. Night. In the darkness we can make out a winding street lined with old native houses. The silence is broken by the barking of dogs, some of which break into loud howling when the FOOL appears at the back of the alley. His hair is braided and filthy. He carries a shepherd’s crook and has a chain on one ankle. The barking dies down gradually as he begins to speak. He is nervous, his eyes are hollow and vacant, and as he speaks he paces constantly back and forth.) Fool I greet you, people of Kumbi. Hail to thee, city of Kumbi, city of a thousand lights! Hail to your opulence and your poverty, hail to your men and women, noble and slave, dead and alive, I salute you! Hail to you, Kaya Maghan. Master of the Universe. Hear again the voice of Kerfa the Fool. The night belongs to men’s minds, the daytime to their deeds. Awake, people of Kumbi, and hear me! I am called Kerfa the Fool, but in truth I have neither name nor age, and if anyone should ask you my purpose, tell them that I am only passing through and that my years are as many as the stones of the old city, as the stones that the children of Kumbi cast at me as I go by – my curses upon them and upon those who gave them birth. For in truth I am the fiery word that burns; in truth I am the gushing word that purifies, the water that bears away. Awake then, people of Kumbi, and you Priests of the Sacred Forest, dignitaries of the kingdom, and you too, Kaya Maghan! This world is

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266  Moussa Diagana not ruled by sleep, and what good is dying if we do not one day awake! Awake, if you would escape my words of fire and the waters that will bear you away. See how red the sky of Kumbi glows – the forecast is for showers of blood and tears. Kaya Maghan! It is said that your kingdom knows no bounds, that it stretches from pole to pole, from the earth up to the heavens, from the rising to the setting sun. But I, Kerfa the Fool, I stand on the threshold of your words. People of Kumbi! I am the thousand gusts of wind on the ocean of your orphan hopes, and my name is the ageless undertow that erodes the cliffs of the earth and then melts into the sea. If they ask you who I am, tell them that I am he who sees lightning and storms, he who hears the laughter of the starving hyena and the sobs of the thirsty jackal as they feed on the shaved skulls of your priests and the rounded flesh of your seven-fold accursed courtesans, and that my words of fire consume them and their waters bear them away. Kaya Maghan! I am he who sees the empty bellies and the swarming flies in the vast cemetery where the corpses themselves dig their graves amid the whirling dust – dust of gold, gold and more gold! The walls of your palace gleam with gold, the spears of your warriors are tipped with gold, the bits of your horses are golden and they are shod with gold. A curse upon your gold, Kaya Maghan; and a curse upon your reign; may the sands of the desert bury your kingdom and may the blood of the thousand virgins sacrificed on the altar of the Wagadu-Bida rain upon your head. Ah, Wagadu-Bida, the god that devours his children, appear to me! I shall make you spit out your venom! Slimy and shapeless monster lurking in your fetid pit, what can you know of the sky and the stars, of the laughter of our maidens and the tears of our mothers? People of Kumbi! The rain, the gold, the crops and the flocks of Wagadu are stained with blood. The ghoulish and stinking priests have chosen the loveliest daughter of Wagadu, but what do they know of beauty? All the daughters of Wagadu are beautiful, as are its sons, as are its trees. And its wind. But the ghoul is drawn to the charnel house like the hyena to its feast. Go then, master-chefs of the Sacred Forest, and you, Kaya Maghan, high master of ceremonies, let the incestuous feast begin! There they are, like lovely frightened antelopes, silently grazing in the flickering shadows cast by the fires of your feast. Away! Away with the black sheep, away with the wild goats who have escaped the shepherd, who tear at our roots – away with them all! – so that your crops may grow and your lovely does may graze in peace, Kaya Maghan. People of Kumbi, if they ask me who I am, tell them I am called Kerfa the Fool, but that I have neither name nor age. And tell them too, people of Kumbi, that I await below! At the edge of the great world, beyond the eternal city. There, I await you, not to sing your songs or keep time for

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The Legend of Wagadu as Seen by Sia Yatabere  267 your dances, but to accompany the deaf anger that suffuses your beings. Yes, I have awaited you below since the beginning, but even yesterday you still preferred the incestuous feast of Kaya Maghan, where you are made to sing loudly in order to drown out your own voices, where you are made to dance to still the impatience of your feet. (The distant sounds of a drum are heard and gradually come nearer.) Now the day is rising over Wagadu. I want deeds, not this imbecile sound of your evil drums. A curse upon you, people of Kumbi, with your sagging buttocks and your wobbly legs. I hate your songs and dances, but I tell you that the hyena does not dance and the vulture does not sing, and the wild dogs howl for death on Kumbi’s hills. So beat away, you drums, with skin stretched tight as corpses in the sun, blind drums, deaf drums, shackled and forgetful. Beat on, silent drums! (The drums beat more and more loudly and drown out the FOOL’S voice as he covers his ears and goes off down the street, gesticulating.) SCENE 2 KAYA MAGHAN (The light gradually comes up on the stage as the drums continue to beat even more loudly. Male and female dancers set up the throne, lay the carpet and erect a canopy. One group of dancers takes up positions on either side of the throne as pages, while a second group becomes warriors bearing spears who form a guard of honour through whose ranks the dignitaries of the kingdom and priests of the Sacred Forest file to the foot of the throne. The priests wear white and have shaven heads; they stand opposite the dignitaries, who are dressed in luxurious bubus with gold bracelets and necklaces; some have braided hair. KAYA MAGHAN’s GRIOT stands at the side of the stage on which the priests, dignitaries, and later, KAYA MAGHAN, enter.) Voice (Offstage.) The Emperor of Wagadu! Kaya Maghan! (The drums stop and a traditional guitar melody is heard. The VOICE announcing KAYA MAGHAN’s arrival draws nearer. Two girls enter, each bearing a vase containing burning incense. They take up positions on either side of the throne and silently to the back. KAYA MAGHAN enters. His hair is braided and he is simply dressed. While the procession slowly advances to the throne and the honour guard take up positions in front of the two entrances to the stage, the GRIOT speaks.) The Griot The sun rises, the sun appears. The light is with us. Kaya Maghan, Master of Gold, Tunka of Wagadu, may the evil eye be shut and the wicked tongue fall silent. Kaya Maghan yesterday, Kaya Maghan today, Kaya Maghan tomorrow. Thus goes the world. Oh Master of the Universe, the sun is your vestment and the rainbow your crown. Oh today’s refuge, you are the memory of age-old yesterdays and of the eternal tomorrow. Shepherd of a thousand stars, you are the Keeper of the Word and the Master of Silence, you are the Eagle of the Skies. Your

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268  Moussa Diagana eye is the zenith and your splendour is over all. You are the Baobab of the Plain, the Shadow of the Spring and the Assuager of our Thirst. You are the Elephant of the Savannah, your gait is serene and your step is sure. N’Deysane! Master of the Heavens! Your are the Man of Twelve-Thousand Clouds, Kaya Maghan yesterday, Kaya Maghan today, Kaya Maghan tomorrow: thus goes the world. Through your will I am but borrowed words, by the will of Wagadu-Bida, you are the Word itself. People of Wagadu! The great day is come. Today calls forth all who remember yesterday and all who think of the morrow. It calls forth those bound by the Pact, by blood and water, by navel and milk. The sun rises, the sun is come, the sun is here. Kaya Maghan yesterday, Kaya Maghan today, Kaya Maghan tomorrow, thus goes the world, like gold dust, but dust no less, dust blown away on the wind. (As the GRIOT speaks the last words he strews gold dust in KAYA MAGHAN’s path. When the latter is seated on the throne, the GRIOT comes to stand on his right.) The Griot People of Kumbi! Kaya Maghan speaks. I, the Griot, son and grandson of the Griots of Kaya Maghan, am but a man of borrowed words. May my tongue be slit if it speaks other than what my ears shall hear, and let my ears be cut off if they hear other than the words of Kaya Maghan. (KAYA MAGHAN speaks. His voice is inaudible. His lips barely move. The GRIOT, in a loud voice, transmits his words to THE COURT.) The Griot People of Kumbi, hearken to the words of Kaya Maghan: People of Wagadu, I salute you. I salute the seven priests of the Sacred Forest and their three envoys among us. I salute the dignitaries of my empire, the governors of my provinces and the war-chiefs of my armies … I salute the men and women of Kumbi, our living and our dead. Know ye that the great day is now come and that I swear upon my reign and upon my shroud that the Blood Pact will be respected so that Wagadu may live. Priests of the Sacred Forest, beseech Wagidu-Bida, our Snake-God, to help us to conquer our enemies … to protect us against ourselves, against man’s selfishness, covetousness and neglect. May he impart to us the water from on high and the gold from beneath the earth, may he grant to us long life, and to our children, and may our grandchildren bury us. May he unite us daily more closely by navel and by milk. (Aside.) By navel and milk! Thus goes the world! Now, Priests of the Sacred Forest, speak by the will of Kaya Maghan! First Priest By Din’ga, the ancestor that has fixed our path. Second Priest By the vulture and the hyena who have guided our steps. Third Priest By Wagadu-Bida who has given us shelter. First Priest Remembrance is the root of the world. Second Priest Memory is its seed. Third Priest The sworn word is its fruit.

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The Legend of Wagadu as Seen by Sia Yatabere  269 First Priest Bitter or sweet, the fruit is the fruit. It must be harvested and its seed sown so that the tree may spring up again and the seasons continue to turn. The Three Priests (In unison.) Thus goes the world! Second Priest Kaya Maghan, the fruit is ripe. Second Priest And this world is not ours. Third Priest You have sown, we are but the harvesters. First Priest We are but the messengers of the primal word. Second Priest Wagadu-Bida spake thus. She must be the most beautiful, and it must be so. Third Priest Wagadu-Bida spake thus. She must have noble blood, and it must be so. First Priest Wagadu-Bida spake thus. She must be free from any stain, and it must be so. Second Priest Faithful to our given word, fate this year has chosen Sia of the clan of Yatabere. The Griot Honour to their house and honour to the mother of Sia Yatabere! Blood does not perish, milk does not lie! Thus goes the world. Third Priest When the shadows of the night fall over Wagadu … First Priest We shall come to seek Sia, daughter of Yatabere. Second Priest We shall lead her deep into the Sacred Forest. Third Priest She will wait by the cavern of Wagadu-Bida. First Priest So that at dawn what has been spoken may be accomplished. Priests (In unison.) Thus goes the world. Speak now the borrowed words. By the shadows that guide us and in which we are lost, speak them, Kaya Maghan. The Griot Kaya Maghan speaks: Harken to the borrowed words. By my reign and my shroud, keep them, Priests of the Sacred Forest. Priests (In unison.) We have heard the borrowed words. By Wagadu-Bida, our Snake God, who protects us from the world of the living, speak them, Kaya Maghan. The Griot Kaya Maghan speak: Harken to the borrowed words. By Wagadu-Bida, our Snake-God, who protects us from the world of the dead, I speak them. People of Wagadu! Hearken to the words of Kaya Maghan: What has been spoken will be accomplished. I, Kaya Maghan, will give to the father of Sia Yatabere the equal of his daughter’s weight in gold. To Sia’s mother will I give seven slaves of eighteen winters. Wakhane Sakho, inform your nephew, Mamadi the Silent, betrothed of Sia, that there are in Kumbi many other virgins of noble blood. Let him choose one of them, and I myself will tomorrow join them in marriage. Thus speaks Kaya Maghan, oh people of Kumbi. Now let us hear you, Yatabere, father of Sia. Yatabere My blood and the blood of my blood will flow with greater honour if such may give life to Wagadu. The Court (Approvingly.) Ahan!

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270  Moussa Diagana The Griot Thus goes the world! And now speak to us, Wakhane Sakho, Chief of the Armies and Police, uncle of Sia’s fiancé. Wakhane Sakho Oh Kaya Maghan, my nephew, Mamadi Sefedan Kote, will be proud of the honour you have done him, even if it takes many winters to extinguish his burning passion for Sia Yatabere. At the moment he is leading his men in battle against the Almoravida on the cliffs of Awdaghost. I shall see that he returns this very evening to Kumbi to gaze upon Sia once again. The Griot Kaya Maghan speaks: Is the return of Mamadi the Silent really necessary? Is his presence on the battlefield not more important? What is the mind of the leader of my armies? Wakhane Sakho I do not believe that we can tear the betrothed of Mamadi the Silent from him without allowing him to … First Priest Who speaks of “tearing from him”? This man blasphemes, Kaya Maghan! He must retract his words! We are not beggars, we seek no benefit, we are merely seeking our due. To whom does beauty, nobility and purity belong, if not to the Master of the Primal Word? The Court (Approvingly.) Ahan! Wakhane Sakho I cannot retract what I have said, for I have not blasphemed, and you seem to have forgotten that eighteen winters ago my own daughter was sacrificed to the Snake God. The Court (In approval of WAKHANE SAKHO’s speech.) Ahan! Second Priest You are right, we had forgotten. And why should we remember it? Here we see man’s selfishness, this man’s selfishness! We only take what we have lent; for that, we give him prosperity and peace, and he is asking us to be grateful to him! Oh Kaya Maghan, Sia, daughter of Yatabere, now belongs to the Wagadu-Bida, and no man has the right to look upon her. The Court (Approving his words.) Ahan! Wakhane Sakho Sia is still in Kumbi and Kumbi is not the Sacred Forest; so long as she is not within the Sacred Forest, the living still have a right to look upon her. The Court (Approving.) Ahan! Third Priest Sacrilege! The Sacred Forest, Kumbi, all Wagadu and you yourself – all belong to the Snake God. This man insults us, oh Kaya Maghan, he insults the Wagadu-Bida, he insults all the people of Wagadu, our people! Wakhane Sakho And what of the people! What do you know about them, you who do not dwell among us, who are not of our world? First Priest Nor are the souls of man of this world, and Wakhane Sakho is forgetting that we are the souls of the people. Wakhane Sakho And you are forgetting that the people have more than one soul. They have a stomach that grows hungrier each day, they have feet that grow more and more tired of following you, they have hearts that no longer beat with love for you.

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The Legend of Wagadu as Seen by Sia Yatabere  271 Second Priest Because men like you are slowly working away to undermine us and to corrupt the people’s hearts and soil their souls. Wakhane Sakho Let Kaya Maghan be my judge. I am the Leader of his armies and police, and it is my duty to report to him what I know of his people. I speak only what is, even if the truth may cause you pain. No one is in a better position to know, what the people think or what they mutter amongst themselves than am I. Oh Kaya Maghan, it has been three years since a drop of rain has fallen in Wagadu. Your rivers are dry, your pastures have turned to sand and your flocks are decimated. Even your army fights without conviction against the advancing Almoravida. The sons of Wagadu are perishing by the hundreds on the cliffs of Awdaghost, and your people are beginning to wonder what all those sacrifices have achieved. First Priest They will have been to no avail for you perform them grudgingly, with angry hearts! Oh Kaya Maghan, some of your subjects here within the Court have betrayed our faith and gone over to Islam. They conspire day and night against the sun of the Snake God. They desire our deaths, and yours as well. They are the cause of the wrath of the Snake God and of the misfortunes that have befallen Wagadu. Wakhane Sakho I do not keep the people’s soul, but I know that the people are not going over to Islam, even though their anger is growing by the day. Soon, I shall bring you proof. Oh Kaya Maghan, they are tired of waiting in vain for water from the heavens. They want to leave, they want to move south to the green plains of the Bambuk … Second Priest All lies! The people believe in us, we know it. But some of your subjects present here are urging them to emigrate to the Bambuk to make them forget their gods. We will never leave here, not even if Kumbi should be destroyed utterly. The sanctuary of the Wagadu-Bida is here, this is the resting place of Din’ga and of all our ancestors. To leave would mean abandoning our memory, to leave would destroy our seed and deprive us of any resting place at our deaths. Wakhane Sakho I am only reporting what the people are thinking, and whatever may happen, I will be the last to leave Kumbi. But having said that, Mamadi the Silent has been at the front for two years now, and I still think that, as we take from him today what we … lent him yesterday, we have a duty to allow him to look upon her for one last time. A messenger stands ready to take him the news. I ask for your decision, oh Kaya Maghan. The Griot Kaya Maghan speaks: As for what the people are saying and thinking, all in good time. As for the Pact that brings us together at this place today, Sia, daughter of Yatabere, belongs to the Wagadu-Bida, for the mouths of the priests speak truth. As for Wakhane Sakho, his words too are just, even though he has spoken more as the uncle of Mamadi the Silent then as the Leader of my armies. Let Mamadi the Silent remain where he is. He will be informed after the sacrifice has been made.

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272  Moussa Diagana The Court (Approving.) Ahan! Wakhane Sakho Thy will be done, oh Kaya Maghan! The Griot What has been spoken shall be accomplished. Thus goes the world. Now, Wakhane Sakho, speak to us again on the other subject for today. (At a signal from WAKHANE, two warriors enter escorting the FOOL, his hands bound.) Wakhane Sakho Behold the man, oh Kaya Maghan, he whose words have disturbed all Kumbi. He claims to be speaking on behalf of some unknown power. He drags all of Wagadu in the mud – the people of Kumbi, the high officials of the Empire, Kaya Maghan himself and even the Wagadu-Bida, (Addressing the priests, ironically.) and even, alas, upon the priests of the Sacred Forest, whom he calls old hyenas with stinking breath. All Kumbi listens to him because he also claims to be the people’s shepherd and saviour, and all look forward to his nightly appearances. Unrest grows among your people, and this man is partly responsible. (Shoving the FOOL forward.) On your knees before the justice of Kaya Maghan! Fool (Rising.) They hate my words and so they whip my back to bloody ribbons. They are afraid of my words and so they bind my hands. Is this your justice, oh Kaya Maghan! Is it so base that I must put myself on its level by kneeling? Wakhane Sakho (To the warriors.) Strike him! Strike this man who insults the justice of Kaya Maghan! Break his feet! On your knees … force him to kneel! (KAYA MAGHAN raises his hand and stops them as they are about to obey.) The Griot Kaya Maghan speaks: Stop, do not touch this man. Kaya Maghan speaks: My justice is great enough to control this man. Let him stand. My justice has leveled more than one baobab. Let him stand and let him speak. Fool Domination is not victory, oh Kaya Maghan, and baobabs have never withstood the wind for long. And that is what your justice is; wind! (KAYA MAGHAN again makes a gesture and stops the warriors who are preparing to strike the FOOL on orders from WAKHANE SAKHO.) Fool So let me be judged! What a pitiful group of men you have here, pretending to control the fate of a whole people while from dawn to dusk they spend their time calmly plotting to send a young girl to her death. I have travelled as far as the borders of the Bambuk, and to the Boure, and wherever I have gone, water has come from the sky, gold has come from the water, hearts have been filled with peace and all the treasures of the world are not worth the life of one young girl. So let me be judged! Death? What are you waiting for? Inflict it upon me! What else do you know how to do, you and the accursed creature you call your Snake God? The Three Priests (Trembling with indignation.) Enough! Enough! He goes

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The Legend of Wagadu as Seen by Sia Yatabere  273 too far! He blasphemes and insults us! First Priest Oh Kaya Maghan, this is due to you! We no longer have any place here! We have allowed this man to speak and night after night to insult the Wagadu-Bida throughout Kumbi and even in the midst of your court! (Looking at WAKHANE SAKHO.) You allow those who are secret Moslems to sow discord amongst your people and to conspire against your power and to question our faith. Beware the wrath of the Snake God, oh Kaya Maghan, – and beware the apocalypse that awaits your kingdom. Fool Let the apocalypse come, then, and let it destroy you all, your crimes, your greed and the shameful business you call the Blood Pact. If the religion you call Islam can wipe you out, then let it do so, and welcome to it! One day the truth will prevail over your eight hundred years of lies! Wakhane Sakho Now you know this man, this vermin who is corrupting the souls and the hearts of your people by preaching revolt. We await your judgment, oh Kaya Maghan. The Griot Kaya Maghan speaks: I have heard this man’s words. If words are fire, it is the mouth that utters them that will burn, not the ear that hears them. People of Wagadu, no blood will be spilled today but the blood of sacrifice. Thus, I, Kaya Maghan, decree that tonight this man will speak as usual to the people of Kumbi, to urge them to repent and to ask forgiveness from the Snake God. Should he fail to do so, I will deliver him into the hands of the priests of the Sacred Forest so that tomorrow what has been spoken may be accomplished. People of Kumbi, Kaya Maghan asks forgiveness for your pain. He thanks you and he asks that Wakhane Sakho remain behind. To the rest of you, Kaya Maghan bids you to share with him this evening, beneath the thousand lanterns of his palace, the repose of peace in navel and in milk. Thus goes the world! (The drums beat. As the stage empties, WAKHANE SAKHO approaches KAYA MAGHAN and speaks to him. As soon as the two men are alone, WAKHANE SAKHO appears to be upset and begins to pace up and down.) Wakhane Sakho Without wishing to disobey you, oh Kaya Maghan, what you ask is impossible. You and this man! You don’t know the danger you are risking! You must have seen that he’s a raving lunatic! He might make some move against your person, or worse; who can tell? If you wish him to repent, leave that up to me. I have many ways of making him do that! But believe me, your person is too precious for us to risk … And I am responsible for your safety. What would I say to the Wagadu should anything happen to you? Or let me be present at your meeting. Think on it, oh Kaya Maghan. Kaya Maghan Wakhane Sakho, do you imply that I take decisions without thinking? Bring this man to me and leave us alone. (WAKHANE SAKHO hesitates for a moment and then goes to the exit and calls in the two warriors escorting the FOOL.)

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274  Moussa Diagana Kaya Maghan Untie this man and go. (WAKHANE SAKHO hesitates again, opens his mouth as if to speak, restrains himself and then exits with the two warriors, leaving KAYA MAGHAN alone with the FOOL. The latter stands at the far left of the stage with a blank stare and does not seem aware of KAYA MAGHAN’s presence. KAYA MAGHAN observes him for a long moment.) Kaya Maghan I will call you Kerfa since that is what the people of Kumbi call you. I have had you brought here because I want to save your life. Fool By asking me to croak louder than the frogs when darkness falls that Kaya Maghan is great and that the Wagadu-Bida is our generous benefactor? What will you be saving me from? The wrath of the hyenas? The venom of your subjects? Kaya Maghan On the contrary, I want you to speak as you spoke yesterday and the day before that, as you have always spoken, but I want you to do so in the full light of day. Fool You have made yourself the sun, Kaya Maghan, and when your rays burn men’s words where can they hide save in the shadows? I do not want your sun, Kaya Maghan, my words will illuminate even those eyes blinded by your daylight. Kaya Maghan As you say, Kerfa. I have been made into a sun, and the glare of my own rays blinds me as well. A blind sun seeking a ray of light imprisoned in the night. Such am I. Speak for me too, Kerfa. Fool Never, Kaya Maghan! I shall speak, but against you, for there is no place for your sun in my darkness. Rise in the east, set in the west, but know that you cannot enter the realm of darkness. Kaya Maghan Kerfa, the rays of my sun cannot even light its own way, or perhaps they have blinded me and I cannot see it – what does it matter. You alone can shed new light on the truth of things, the truth of everyday. Speak so that together we can voice the truth about my people. Fool Do you seek a voice? Two thousand voices are raised each day at the foot of your throne. The voices of the griots, the voices of priests, the voices of warriors, the voices of councillors, all are raised beneath your sun. What do you have to complain about? Kaya Maghan About the sea of complacency that drowns me. You have said it the laughter of the starving hyenas, the venom of snakes, the shrieking of thirsty jackals, the ceremonial words. I pay, and in return I am given two thousand honeyed words. I chastise, and as many tongues lick my feet. I am tired of it, Kerfa. I am tired of the ever-more worldly priests of the Sacred Forest. I am tired of all the squabbling and petty backbiting of my chameleon-like officials with their multi-hued ambitions, of the bad advice of ignorant councillors who seek only to curry favour. I am tired of the sound of my own voice, even of my silences, and of the echoes of my words in the speeches of the griots, of all the Kaya Maghans of yesterday, today and tomorrow, tired of this world that I would like to

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The Legend of Wagadu as Seen by Sia Yatabere  275 see different. Would that it might finally change, and that our hopes might be realized. I want to drive away all the pecking, clucking fowl that deafen me so that I hear the voice of my people. Am I not king? I am Kaya Maghan! So return my people to me! I want to meet them, Kerfa, and you are the only one who can show me the way. Fool Listen carefully, Kaya Maghan. Can you not hear the muffled sound that rises from the depths of Kumbi into the very heart of your palace? Listen .. Kaya Maghan I have listened so often, Kerfa, but I can hear no sound, no complaint. You know how thick the walls of my palace are. Fool Then open wide the doors and let in the howling mob. Kaya Maghan No! I want to go to my people before they come to me. Where are my people, Kerfa? Who are they, what are they saying? Fool Ha! Ha! Ha! Kaya Maghan is looking for his people! The brave shepherd seeks his sheep! You want to know where your people are? Well then, Kaya Maghan they are wherever you are not. You want to know who your people are? Your people are no more. They have become what you have made them, a spell in the mouth of the Griot. You want to know what they are saying? Ha! Ha! Ha! The words of the people! They’re like a king’s fart, everyone can smell it, but everyone must pretend not to have heard it! The delicate odour of a king’s fart! Ha! Ha! Ha! Kaya Maghan (Raising his voice.) And you, then – where are your people hiding, and who are you to speak on their behalf, when you heap insults upon them? Fool I dream dreams for others. My people? I have no people – or, at least, not yet. So why should I respect yours, the howling mob, out for its own blood? Today they dance in your sunlight, tomorrow they’ll trample you in the dust to praise a different tyrant, following the insane beat of their accursed drums with empty bellies, yet still laughing hysterically – those are your people, Kaya Maghan! Your people are accursed, and I am tired, Kaya Maghan. Innocence has even vanished from the souls of the children. They cast stones at me and mock my madness. And yet they know I have no name and that I am as old as the stones of this ancient city. I shun sleep, Kaya Maghan, and yet their dreams seek me out, they overwhelm me and assail the defenses of my madness. I am tired of dying with each dawn, since life is a tempting poison. I am afraid, Kaya Maghan, afraid of the cold intelligence that sometimes pierces through my folly. Kaya Maghan! You seek your people and I seek myself. Where is he who has nor name nor age? At what crossroads will my dreams come to fruition? (He falls to his knees, sobbing.) Kaya Maghan (Approaching the FOOL, he takes him by the shoulders and lifts him.) I cannot see my people, and yours do not hear you. Can we not

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276  Moussa Diagana join forces? Let us join day and night. You will lend me your eyes and I will raise a thousand monuments for your words. Join your shepherd’s crook to my sceptre, your tresses to my crown, and we will cleave the wind and free the light that lies below the shadows. (He releases the FOOL and moves downstage.) I have commanded a thousand brushfires to keep my people wakeful and to dispel the shadows from my kingdom. I want men to dream beneath my sun, Kerfa, and I appoint you Grand Master of Waking Dreams and Minister of Hope. This year shall be the year of dream – let it be spoken throughout Wagadu! Let a thousand schools be created and let all our children be taught hope! Order the treasurer of my kingdom to raise a monument to the glory of dreams, a monument that will rest upon the rainbow of my crown! I want streams of honey for all the orphans of Wagadu, I want milk to rain down upon them. For each woman of Wagadu I want a name, and their symbol to be the turtle dove, mistress of the wind. Soldiers, turn your spears into torches to light our future defeats. Let them beat the djouboure and dance the worosso at the gates of our cemeteries. (Taking the FOOL by the hand.) Sit upon my throne, Kerfa, and dream! I will raise up the wind, I will travel faster then time and I will bring your words to the seven borders of Wagadu! Drums! (The drums begin to beat.) Fool (Coming to himself suddenly, with anger.) No! Never, Kaya Maghan! Never, do you hear? My dreams cannot be confined and penned up by your blind geometry. I reject your bargain. I’ve told you your kingdom is not mine. Keep your sun for yourself. (Suddenly struck with an idea, he thinks a moment and then speaks sarcastically.) Or no – we will make a deal … we’ll hold an auction, and all of Wagadu will be present. (Gesturing, as if addressing a large crowd.) Step right up, my good people, step right up! We’re going to have an auction! For three empty stomachs, Kaya Maghan is offering a courtier’s paunch! What am I bid? Going… going … there, on the left, did I hear someone offer a tubercular cough? Bravo! That’s three empty stomachs and a tubercular cough for a courtier’s fat gut. Going, going … There, on the right, a nubile young girl’s body? Wonderful! For a courtier’s gut … there, the blood of one virgin! Kaya Maghan Enough! Your madness is not for sale, I know. I want to give it meaning. Fool Ah! So that’s what it is … a meaning to my madness. Why not start with giving some meaning to your power? Kaya Maghan Now we’re talking. A meaning to my power? What power has meaning in the eyes of the people? And what do you know about power, Kerfa? You talk about it night and day, and your words are fine words, but I live it. I act, and there’s no salvation in acts. When I raise armies to defend our homes I’m called a vampire, a killer of children! When I store up today’s harvest for tomorrow’s crops, I am starving the people. When I open wide the doors of light, I am nothing but an enlightened despot. If I am the noonday sun, I burn your eyes, if I begin

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The Legend of Wagadu as Seen by Sia Yatabere  277 to set, I do not shed enough light to light your cottages. And what do people whisper to each other when I feed my subjects with my own hands? “Ah,” they say, “Kaya Maghan is trying to ration every mouthful of food we eat!” Were I to wash their feet they would mutter that I’m afraid they’ll soil the carpets in my palace. Kerfa, give me the everyday, you take time itself, and together we will have an eternity. Why do you refuse to act with me? Fool When the children of Kumbi throw their stones, Sia binds my wounds, when I’ve walked, all night she offers me a place to rest my tired feet, and when I lose hope she is there to dry my tears. But you, Kaya Maghan, you not only feed Sia to the Snake God, but you bid all the people dance and sing at the gates of your palace. That is your everyday. And my time is the bitter taste of the blood of all the murdered Sias that I must drink down to the dregs. Kaya Maghan That everyday will cease to be, and you must forget those days. Together, we must forge a new eternity. One that will give meaning to our deeds, to our impatient nights, to the anxiety with which we awaken. I know … that the sun of the Snake God is slowly setting in the ocean of our sufferings. I am a shepherd too, Kerfa, and I can sense the impending storm. I want to collect our flock as quickly as I can and keep them safe for another sun, for other pastures, for less bloody sacrifices. Only you can help me do this. Fool If the sun of Wagadu-Bida is setting, so much the better! Men say that the new sun of Islam is about to rise in the East. Why not embrace that religion and use it to create the new eternity you seek? Kaya Maghan Because our people will not follow me. At any rate not today, for they have not heard the new message. But they do know yours. I know that at my court there are those who have converted to Islam and who are plotting against my crown. The enemies of Wagadu are rallying to it. My conversion would only bring me down more quickly and distance me still farther from my people. Time passes so quickly, Kerfa, and a people who no longer believe in their own eternity are a dead people. Fool Go then! Go deep into the Sacred Forest and dig your grave, Kaya Maghan, for this vile world holds nothing more for you. Kaya Maghan I still have you, Kerfa, your dreams, your madness, the last, the true refuge of our eternity, the one that comes from the people, since you are another us. You are the people’s broken heart, its tired legs, its stifled voice. I am only Kaya Maghan alone in my power. Give me your hand, Kerfa, let us go down together into the old city and speak. Tell them Kaya Maghan has answered your call and let us all set out together on the final voyage. If you wish Sia to live, let us travel up the river to its source to find the spring, the pure water of our eternity. Fool All the Sias of Wagadu are dead and the waters of the primal spring are scarlet with their blood. Lift your head, Kaya Maghan, and look

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278  Moussa Diagana at the moon. That is the people you seek. For you, the visible smiling face, singing and dancing; for me, the side with the hidden face, the one you will never see, the one that moans, distorted, a thorn in its limping foot. My people are not your people, Kaya Maghan, and I want to lead mine along other paths and toward future horizons without you, Kaya Maghan, for you are already dead. Dead in the breast of every murdered virgin, dead in every mother’s womb. (Still speaking, he exits slowly.) Kaya Maghan has been dead from the beginning, extinguished by his own sun. Kaya Maghan is dead! Hear me, people of Kumbi! The king is dead, long live the fool!

ACT II SCENE 1 SIA YATABERE THE NOON-DAY QUEEN (The interior of the Yataberes’ house, with a courtyard. Sia, seated on a stool, is working at a spinning wheel. Kerfa enters, ignoring her, sits down with a calabash and begins to eat hungrily.) Sia (Without looking up.) Ah, so you’re back at last. Your dinner is probably cold by now. (There is a long pause.) Sia Kerfa, do you know I’m going to die at dawn? (Pause.) You must have heard by now, you know everything that happens in Kumbi. Doesn’t it spoil your appetite at all? You must be truly famished. You seem even hungrier than usual today. Fool (With his mouth full, in between bites, and without looking at her.) I’ve got to eat twice as much as usual today because if you’re going to die tomorrow evening there won’t be anyone to save some food for me. Sia (Half in jest, half in earnest.) So, enjoy it! You really ought to eat a lot more, as well, for the day after, and the day after that … Fool After tomorrow, I’ll be dead. Sia (Sarcastic.) Are you going to kill yourself because of me? Fool In a way … with the help of Kaya Maghan and his priests. Their Pact prevents them from spilling any blood but yours on the day of sacrifice. So your death gives me an extra day – for which I thank you. Sia You’d best take your time eating, then, because where we’re going everything must be eaten cold. (Long pause.) They say that Kaya Maghan received you all alone in his palace. What did he want? Fool To save us both from death. Sia Save us from death? What about the animal sacrifice? What about your sentence? Has he lost his mind? Fool Not yet, but he’s trying. Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as you might

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The Legend of Wagadu as Seen by Sia Yatabere  279 think. He’s a politician … he knows that the people are right but that the world can no longer be governed by right alone. And he’s a strategist – he’ll send us to die in order to use our lives as bargaining chips. He wants my madness and my dreams to govern. Sia So we’re saved! Fool (Not listening and continuing to eat.) He wants to turn things around and to get rid of his priests, his councillors, the whole bunch of them, as he says, and reach out to the people before the people come after him to throw him out. Sia Kerfa, answer me! Did you agree? Will our lives be spared? Fool (Not listening.) Kaya Maghan wants to travel up the river, but we’re nearing the falls, the current is strong, the winds are against us. Sia Kerfa! Answer me! What did you decide to do? Fool (Not listening.) Since he cannot travel against the current, Kaya Maghan would like to turn his people into a thousand hippopotamuses with their snouts stuck in the mud so that he can then walk across their backs to the river’s source. Sia If I understand what you’re saying, then, you refused his offer? Kerfa, answer me! Kerfa (Ignoring her.) He’s going to the river’s source to purify himself, not to save the people. Sia, the people’s safety is at stake, and Kaya Maghan wants to .. . Sia (Rising angrily.) What do I care what Kaya Maghan wants! I want to live, I don’t care how! Why did you refuse him, Kerfa? Why? I want to live, do you hear? Live! Fool (Beginning to laugh.) And here I thought that girls in Wagadu were so fond of compliments! I guess I’ll never understand women! You do one of them the honour of selecting her as the most beautiful girl in Wagadu and she gets all upset! Ha, ha, ha! Sia That’s one compliment I can do very well without, thank you! (KERFA continues to laugh.) And it’s nothing to laugh about, either! You’re heartless! Fool (Ignoring her.) And what have they always done? The men, I mean. They look for the most beautiful ewe in the flock – and they always manage to find one. The one with the softest fleece, the tenderest flesh. And then they take their sharpest knife and gently caress her throat with it, and the ewe’s throat turns red and her blood gushes out. Think of it – what an honour for a mere sheep, to know that on the day she’s sacrificed she’s the most beautiful one in the flock! Sia I’m not a sheep, Kerfa. I’m a woman. A woman who wants to live! Kerfa, look at me! I have a woman’s heart, a woman’s breasts … Save me from death! All you can think about is the people – think about me, too, me, Sia Yatabere. I don’t want to die! Fool (Not listening.) Beneath the soft, thick wool its tender flesh quivers at the man’s touch. The blade caresses her slowly before it makes it sudden slash. Her back stiffens, she struggles to free herself from the tight

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280  Moussa Diagana embrace in which he holds her, her eyes turn up, she goes into a final spasm and then her last gasp. And then death. Pleasure or plain – what does it matter? To die while the blood of her lost virginity still flows … (He falls to the ground face down with a hoarse cry and then begins to sob. SIA goes to him, kneels beside him and cradles his head in her arms.) Fool (Sobbing.) Tell me again that you’re not that sheep, Sia … that you’re a woman who wants to live, to go on living. Sia Let them call me Sia daughter of Yatabere if they like, but I am a woman of Wagadu, a woman without age, a woman without a name. Woman. A woman who bears their children, whose back is bent from carrying their burdens. But now, tonight, I want to stand upright and say No! No to my father! No to my mother! No to my man! From now on, my only offspring will be my repressed anger. I’ve been killed enough. Tonight, I want to live again! (Both rise and each speaks in soliloquy.) Fool They have arrayed you in gold from head to toe. Sia My steps are slow, my gestures weighty. Fool For you they have built a thousand castles. Sia Their walls were high and their dungeons deep. Fool They have set you upon a pedestal. Sia Merely a silent statue, impervious to time. Fool They have subjected you to their passions. Sia Passions that defile my heart. Fool A heart greater than their minds. Sia Their minds confined in a sheep’s brain. But the sheep is dead, long live the woman! Let Kaya Maghan and his gold be borne away on the raging flood, but I will live. Fool (Suddenly returning to reality.) Sia, do you know the legend? Sia What legend, Kerfa? Fool The legend of Wagadu. The one the griots will one day tell the children of Wagadu. Sia What does the legend say, Kerfa? Fool (As if addressing an imaginary audience, half serious, half in jest.) In that year the young virgin Sia of the clan of Yatabere was chosen from among the noblest and most beautiful maidens of Wagadu to be sacrificed to the Wagadu-Bida. When he heard the news, her betrothed, Mamadi the Silent, hastened to her dwelling, his heart filled with rage, and begged her to flee with him beyond the mountains of Boure to the green plains of Bambuk. Anywhere. Away. He wanted to remove her from the kingdom of the Snake God. Sia heard him out, standing tall and proud. In her veins flowed the blood of the Yatabere, and a Yatabere does not fear death. “I have always said yes to you, Mamadi,” she said, “but today I must say no. I will not run from death.” And Mamadi continued to plead with her, but to no avail. As night fell, the priests of the Sacred Forest came to fetch her and led her to the cavern of the Snake God.

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The Legend of Wagadu as Seen by Sia Yatabere  281 (He breaks off and turns slowly to SIA.) Sia And then? Go on! I want to know! What does the legend say? Fool You’ll find out in the last act. When all is accomplished – if you’re still alive. Sia Believe me, Kerfa, women have always been able to get around legends. I’ll be alive. But I still don’t see Mamadi the Silent. They say that the priests of the Sacred Forest have forbidden him to see me again. Will he come? I want to see him. Fool He’ll come. But in the meantime here are your parents. (Sia’s FATHER and MOTHER appear.) Sia (Speaking into KERFA’s ear.) And what does the beautiful legend of Wagadu have to say about my father and mother? Fool Oh, it leaves them out. What’s so important about a father and mother? A chance encounter … So you can do whatever you want with them, the story won’t contradict you. (Sia’s parents move toward her. Her MOTHER throws herself weeping into her daughter’s arms.) Father Dry your tears, woman! Our sorrow is great indeed, but we must feel pride in giving our blood so that Wagadu may live. (The MOTHER cries even harder.) Father (Angrily.) Stop crying, woman! Don’t you realize that you are making your daughter even more unhappy, that you’re making her lose courage? Mother What do I care about her courage, Yatabere? What do I care about the blood of the Yatabere when my daughter is about to die … Father You too will die. We will all die one day. But Sia’s death is not like the others. Mother I know, and my sorrow isn’t like other sorrows. I’m losing my daughter, my only hope, my only ray of light … Father For the grandeur of Wagadu, for the nobility of our blood! Mother I don’t understand all those things, Yatabere. But if that’s all it is, I’m going to see Kaya Maghan and his priests. Let them sacrifice me, but let them hear a mother’s prayer and let my child live … Father Silence, madwoman! You don’t know what you’re saying. Sia (Pushing her MOTHER away.) Yes, mother, you don’t know what you’re saying. Father is right. I’m the one who was chosen, not you. Look at yourself, with your wrinkled face, your dried up skin, your bent back. Look at your thin white hair, your bitter mouth, the few yellowed teeth the years have left you. You’re useless to them now. Even their death no longer needs you. I’m the one who was chosen, and do you know why? (She moves toward her FATHER suggestively.). Look at me, Father, and Mother will know why I’ve been chosen. (She rips the top of her blouse and reveals her breasts.) Look at these young breasts, firm and warm as corn cake. (She takes her FATHER’s hand and places it on her breast.) Touch them, caress them, feel how soft they are. Squeeze them in your hand! Am I not your blood, am I not yours, all yours? Take me!

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282  Moussa Diagana Mother (Horrified.) Sia, my daughter, what are you doing? Are you for­ getting that you’re speaking to your father? Sia And my smooth body, see how plump and juicy it is. (She spreads her legs.) Look at my slender, taut legs, my soft, voluptuous thighs, my body just waiting for my virginal blood to flow … Mother (Still weeping.) Sia! Sia Come on! I’m only a woman like all the rest, another sheep – even if I am the most beautiful! So come on, chief ram of the Yatabere, do with me as you have with that woman there you’ve squeezed dry like a lemon, bled dry, milked dry, emptied of sweat and tears. Isn’t it my turn now? Come! I long to feel your sharp blade cut through my fleece. (She falls sobbing to the ground.) I long to cry out in pleasure … or in pain! I want to die as I have lived; at your hand! (She falls silent and weeps silently.) Mother (Kneeling beside her and cradling her head in her arms.) Sia, my child … Sia (Rising and repulsing her MOTHER.) Don’t touch me! If that’s the man who fathered me, I don’t want to be anyone’s daughter. Father Kaya Maghan has done us the honour of agreeing to see us this evening, this woman and I. Since that’s your attitude, I shall tell him that you shun death and that I renounce you. Sia I am no longer your daughter, Yatabere, and any honour is mine! As for death, I do not shun it. I agree to be sacrificed, but on one condition. Father Speak. I will promise you anything you want. Sia Tell Kaya Maghan that in exchange for my body he has promised this woman who calls herself my mother seven eighteen-year-old slaves, and that that is too much I am worth no more than one. Tell him also that I thank him for the gift he has bestowed upon you of my weight in gold, and that my only regret is that you didn’t fatten me up a little more. Father (Shocked.) Sia! What are you trying to make me say! I could never speak to him like that! You’re trying to humiliate us … we’ll be the laughing-stock of Wagadu. Anyway, I don’t want the gold. Sia You’ll take it, I’m worth it. And you will also tell him what I told you, or I’ll withdraw my promise. Father (After a moment’s hesitation.) Very well! I’ll pass along your message, accept the gold and I’ll distribute it to the poor of Kumbi. Sia You can do what you want with it. Isn’t that what you’ve done with me? Father (Aside.) Great gods, what is this world coming to? Is it really my own blood speaking like this? (To SIA.) We must go now. But we will return to watch with you until the priests arrive. Sia I want to be alone. Mother Sia, my poor child. Let me hold you in my arms, let me hold you close, please, just one last time … Sia No. Go, both of you. I’ve told you, I no longer belong to anyone. Mother (Weeping.) No, I can’t leave you. But I must see Kaya Maghan. I must speak to him.

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The Legend of Wagadu as Seen by Sia Yatabere  283 Father (Pulling her away brutally.) Come away! We must not keep Kaya Maghan waiting. (They exit. The sound of the MOTHER’s sobs can be heard offstage.) Fool The poor mother, who has nothing but her own death to offer in exchange for her daughter’s life. Ha, ha! As if she lived … Sia (As if suddenly waking, rubbing her eyes and looking dazed.) Who said that? Is it you, Kerfa? And my parents – where are they? Why aren’t they here yet? Fool They were here, with you. They have left. Sia My mother and father were here? I can’t remember! I can’t remember anything … and why am I half naked? My clothes, why are they torn? Kerfa, I feel so tired…so… What has happened? Tell me, Kerfa. What happened? I can remember nothing. Fool Sia, no legend in the world would dare relate what has happened. Sia But what did I say? What did I do? I have this strange feeling of remorse … Did I blurt something out? What did I say? Fool You said that you would not shun death. Sia No, I will not, and my life depends on it, because I want to live. Fool Then it’s now or never, for here comes your brave and handsome fiancé. A man of silence, they say, but a man of action too. We shall see if he deserves his reputation. Sia (Going up to the FOOL and speaking into his ear.) And what does the legend of Wagadu have to say about Mamadi? What should I do? Fool The legend will say what it says no matter what you do. So do what­ ever you like. That’s the important thing. (MAMADI enters. He is dressed all in black, with riding boots and a sword in a scabbard at his side. SIA spontaneously moves toward him, arms outstretched, then stops and turns away from him with pretended coquetry, an attitude she maintains throughout their scene. During their dialogue the FOOL moves into the shadows and stands with his back to them.) Sia What do you want? What are you doing here? Mamadi Kaya Maghan and his priests have deceived me. For two years now I’ve been fighting in the north with my men against the Almoravida. If not for me, Kumbi would have fallen long ago. And now, today, they reward me by taking my fiancée. Sia So? Mamadi They’re traitors! I owe them nothing. They are men devoid of honour. I no longer owe them obedience. I will not permit this sacrifice to take place. Sia And you are right to do so, because you haven’t been offered my weight in gold – unlike my father. Mamadi Their gold means nothing to me. Sia But you can still find comfort for my loss, Mamadi, for Kaya Maghan, who thinks of everything, will soon marry you to any woman you want. And … from what I hear, you’re not as indifferent as you pretend to

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284  Moussa Diagana the charming Maya, of the Cisse clan … unless you’d rather have Setan Camara, the new budding beauty of the Kumbis – after me, naturally. Mamadi You insult my love for you, Sia, but never mind. Sia Ah, here it is at last, love! After betrayal and tainted honour, after the stamping of boots and the clashing of blades … But, as you say, never mind. Mamadi I said never mind because it’s more important now to live. We don’t have much time, and we must act quickly. Sia So, answer my question. What do you want? Mamadi Run away with me, I’ll carry you away from the kingdom of the Snake God. Run away with me. There’s not much time, Sia, and none to hesitate. Sia (Pretending to think hard.) Hesitate, you mean … between being in the belly of the Snake God or … pressed against yours? It’s not an easy choice, is it? I’m thinking about the difference, Mamadi … Mamadi Sia, have you lost your mind? Between that … you’re hesitating between that … that snake and me? Sia Oh, Mamadi, don’t you know that the serpent and women are old friends? He’s our closest confidant; he was our first accomplice. Now that he’s become a God, women are free to do whatever they please. I’d like just one last opportunity to enjoy certain little forbidden pleasures. Mamadi So, you don’t love me any more? Sia Unfortunately … I do. Mamadi What do you mean by that? Sia (Tenderly.) Mamadi, let me tell you a little secret: I’m proud of having been chosen to be sacrificed. Mamadi You’re proud to die for … Sia But if I don’t die, it means I’m no longer the most beautiful! Mamadi What difference does your beauty make … Sia What? Don’t you care about my beauty? Are you taking back all the compliments you used to pay me? Mamadi I’m not taking back anything. You’re beautiful, beautiful, beautiful! But I’d rather have you alive. Sia Oh, thanks for the concern! But if I don’t die, the judges of Kaya Maghan’s annual Miss Kumbi contest will manage to come up with some flaw in me before sunrise, and you can be sure there are plenty of other candidates for my crown. Mamadi A crown of thorns… Sia Which poses a thorny question, doesn’t it? I too have my honour to defend, Mamadi. Can you see Sia Yatabere reigning only one night and then cast aside for someone else in the morning? I can already hear what all the old cats would say … “Huh! Of course she was crowned at night, and the daylight revealed all her defects … ” No, Mamadi! I want to remain the most beautiful, and in the full light of day! Mamadi You will be the most beautiful, but somewhere else. Come away

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The Legend of Wagadu as Seen by Sia Yatabere  285 before it’s too late! Sia Me, let Kumbi down? You really don’t know me very well at all, Mamadi. I want to enjoy my triumph here, not somewhere else. Mamadi The triumph will lead to death, if you stay. Sia Oh, death! I’d forgotten it. Let’s talk about it for a moment, shall we? Isn’t it your second love? Isn’t it death you brush against, night and day on the cliffs of Awdaghost? Do you think your death is more honourable than the one that awaits me tonight? Mamadi Yes. More honourable because it’s more useful to Wagadu. Sia But I too am to die so that Wagadu may live. Mamadi No one need die for the sake of some priestly mumbo-jumbo. Yes, mumbo-jumbo – which only serves to buttress the faith of the enemies of Wagadu. Sia I’m glad to hear you say that. But if you save me from that mumbojumbo, as you call it, the death of the other virgin sacrificed in my stead … for mumbo-jumbo will still weigh on my mind. Beautiful virgins are like the seven heads of the Wagadu-Bida – as soon as one is struck off, another springs up in its place. So, my brave warrior, perhaps the only weapon is flight after all. Mamadi (Drawing his sword.) Now I know what I must do! Fool (Bursting into laughter.) You should have lived up to your reputation, Mamadi few words and a lot of action. But I see that your sword is ahead of you. Mamadi Who is this man who dares insult me? (He turns threateningly to the FOOL.) Sia (Intervening.) It’s Kerfa the Fool. He’s just saying what he thinks, and whatever he thinks is true. Mamadi I would have slain you for your words were you not in the house of the Yatabere. Fool Ha! Ha! Ha! You’re too late. My life now belongs to Kaya Maghan and his priests. And, after all, it’s more honour to you if I die at their hands, since I’ve – well, I’ve only got one head. And even that one’s not all it should be. Ha ha ha! Sia (As MAMADI leaves.) This man I love is stupidity itself. Fool No worse that any other real-life hero. Sia Do you think he understood what I was trying to say? Fool What difference does it make? The important thing is that his sword understood. He’ll act, and think later. Sia But what do you think will happen afterwards? Fool You’re the only one who will know that. Sia What about you? As a matter of fact, what happens to you in the story, Kerfa? You haven’t told me what the famous Wagadu legend has to say about you. Fool Ha ha ha! My dear Sia. Every tale has its fool, and he often turns out not to be the character you think. Just remember one thing, fools have

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286  Moussa Diagana no stories. Ha ha! Come, let’s go. My time has come, and maybe this evening they’ll finally listen to me. Sia And don’t forget … Fool I won’t forget, I’ll be at the cavern of the Snake God at dawn. Ha! Ha! Ha! Sia (As the FOOL exits.) Oh … I wanted to tell you that tomorrow your meal will be waiting, a warm one. (The FOOL exits. It gradually grows dark. The barking and howling of the dogs grows to a crescendo.) Fool (Offstage.) Hail, people of Kumbi! Hail, city of Kumbi, City of a thou­ sand lights! Hail to your opulence and your poverty, hail to your men and women. SCENE 2 WAKHANE SAKHO OR THE HORSE (WAKHANE SAKHO is alone on the stage, he paces back and forth, occasionally glancing toward the entrance. He tries to control his impatience. MAMADI the Silent appears.) Wakhane Sakho Ah, here you are at last! I’ve been expecting your visit. My spies told me you were in Kumbi. You realize you’re disobeying Kaya Maghan? You are forbidden to see Sia. You must stop at once. Who told you? Mamadi Who told me? But didn’t you, Uncle? A messenger arrived at a gallop saying you had sent him. He told me that Sia had been chosen for the sacrifice and then rode off again. I set forth at once, and here I am. Wakhane Sakho I didn’t send anyone. I must admit I intended to, but Kaya Maghan and his priests stopped me. You were not to be informed until after the sacrifice. Mamadi The traitors! Informed only after the sacrifice! So who sent that man? Wakhane Sakho (With concern.) I wonder too … My men are watching the entire town. No one can enter or leave without my knowledge … Unless … of course, why didn’t I think of it – he’s the only one who can come and go as he likes. My men stopped paying attention to him long ago. Ha ha ha! Kaya Maghan has really been had! And yet I warned him that the man is dangerous. Mamadi In any case, he’s a brave man. Wakhane Sakho He’s more than brave – he’s actually a fool. Kerfa the Fool. Do you know him? Mamadi Kerfa the Fool? I met him at Sia’s a little while ago. I thought I’d heard his voice somewhere before. He turned his back on me. Wakhane Sakho That’s sure to have been him. He’s Sia’s protector – or her protégé, who knows. He wanted to do something to help her, and she may have sent him. Mamadi I didn’t get the impression that he wanted to help her. He hates

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The Legend of Wagadu as Seen by Sia Yatabere  287 me and insulted me in the house of the Yatabere. Sia seemed to go along with everything he said. I wanted to escape from Wagadu with her. She wouldn’t come with me, and I’m certain that he’s the one who urged her to refuse. Wakhane Sakho It all gets more and more mysterious. But since Sia has refused to go with you, you must now return to the front. Mamadi I will not leave. I shall stay in Kumbi. Wakhane Sakho Listen to me, you romantic Fool. You’ve disobeyed Kaya Maghan by coming here and you are well aware what that means. And I won’t go along with you because no one will be able to convince him that I had nothing to do with your being here. And I’ve no wish to die. (He gestures to prevent MAMADI from interrupting.) Hear me well. I am the only one who can tell him of your presence here. I will not do so. You will leave the city at once – without being seen, without being recognized. As for my spies who may have seen you enter or leave, they will not speak tomorrow. So go! Mamadi Uncle, I will not go. Wakhane Sakho Well then, you sentimental imbecile, I’ll have to get really angry. The girl doesn’t want anything more to do with you. Mamadi She loves me. She told me so. She never lies. Wakhane Sakho Very well then, let’s admit that she loves you, but she doesn’t want to run away with you. She’d rather be sacrificed. And at dawn, she will be. Tomorrow, all of Kumbi will know that you were in my house and that you saw her before the sacrifice. If you want to commit suicide over Sia, well and good, but do it somewhere else, because I have no wish to die. Mamadi Uncle, I have made up my mind to kill the Wagadu-Bida. Wakhane Sakho What are you talking about? I can’t believe my ears. Repeat what you just said. Mamadi You heard me. I’ve made up my mind to kill the Wagadu-Bida to save Sia. Wakhane Sakho (Enunciating very clearly.) You have made up your mind to kill the Snake God of Wagadu … Kill the Snake God? And you tell that to me, the head of the army and chief of Kaya Maghan’s police? Mamadi Because I know you will take it like an uncle, not like a head of the army and chief of police. Wakhane Sakho Ha ha! It’s unbelievable, really unbe-lievable! Ha ha! That’s the second time today someone’s said that to me. And do you know who the first one was? Kaya Maghan himself. “Wakhane Sakho has spoken more as the uncle of Mamadi the Silent than as the Leader of my armies and my police.” Ha ha ha! I must be getting senile, because that’s no compliment to an old warrior like me! Mamadi That’s not what I meant, Uncle. Wakhane Sakho Forget it, my dear nephew … or rather, let’s not, it makes me proud. It proves that I’ve still got some heart left, and not just to

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288  Moussa Diagana pump blood. Do you know how I wanted to answer Kaya Maghan? I wanted to say that when the time came I’d remember his words. Thank you, Mamadi. Mamadi Why do you thank me, Uncle? I said I had decided to kill the … Wakhane Sakho I thank you for giving me a chance at last to listen to my heart. I’ve looked forward to this day for eighteen years. Eighteen years, to the day, since my own daughter (Stifling a sob.) was sacrificed to the Wagadu-Bida. Sacrificed in the flower of her youth, like Sia is today. And on that day I didn’t even have the courage to act as a father, bound as I was by the grandeur of my name, my blood, my honour. Ah! a coward, that’s what I was, just like that fool Yatabere who’s strutting with pride today like a barnyard rooster, her own father, as if he were losing just a drop of his own blood! Ha! In Wagadu there’s a word for illegitimate children – there should be one for illegitimate fathers too – like me. Mamadi Uncle … Wakhane Sakho (Stopping him with a gesture.) No, let me speak. I don’t deserve pity. Do you remember her? No, you were only a child … We called her “Little Mother” because of how loving she was, because of the way she liked to care for her younger brothers and sisters, and for me too, after the death of your aunt. A girl like no other before her. Little Mother had just passed her eighteenth winter. And on that day – I will never forget the look in her eyes, Mamadi. Her eyes like an antelope cornered by a blood-thirsty pack of dogs. And I, her father – what a father! A wolf among wolves, thirsting for blood, for fame, for honours! Oh, the folly of this world … And Little Mother only stared with her huge antelope’s eyes … And do you know what she said to me? (He weeps, pushing away MAMADI, who moves to him.) In her little girl’s voice, she said, “Father, blindfold me … Father, forgive me, but it’s not death I’m afraid of – you’ve always told me that death is invisible, didn’t you? It’s the snake … the sight of the snake has always made me tremble. Father, take this scarf you brought me from Awdaghost, take it and tie it over my eyes. Please. I’m afraid of snakes, Father. Please, Father, use that scarf, it’s mine …” And do you know, Mamadi, what I did that day? Do you know? (He cries out.) I refused to do it! Yes, I refused! Refused! And why? For honour and all its stupid cohorts! So that no one would say that a daughter of my blood had been afraid to look death in the face. (Weeping again.) And Little Mother’s huge eyes, still pleading with me … and her little girl’s body, already beginning to tremble … (He falls to his knees in tears.) And they forgot … they told me that they forgot … all those who say that memory is the world’s root – they all forgot Little Mother. Mamadi (Helping him to rise.) Come, Uncle, get up. For Little Mother and for Sia, I must go to rid us all forever of this monster. Wakhane Sakho Wait, Mamadi, it’s not yet time. He won’t leave his cavern until dawn. Before that, they will go with Sia to thank the twelve

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The Legend of Wagadu as Seen by Sia Yatabere  289 founding clans and then to the tomb of Din’ga the Ancestor to ask forgiveness for the living. When you hear the drums of Din’ga beat for the third time, that will be the moment. In the meantime, hear me for I have something very important to tell you. Mamadi Speak, Uncle, and I will obey you. Wakhane Sakho This will be the last time you will obey anyone, for tomorrow you will be Kaya Maghan! Mamadi I, Kaya Maghan! But that’s impossible, Uncle. Wakhane Sakho Indispensable, my nephew! And don’t bring up loyalty to the crown. You have broken the Pact and betrayed Kaya Maghan. There isn’t room enough for both of you. Mamadi I betrayed no one! They’re the traitors. Wakhane Sakho Ha ha ha! Listen to me, you fool! Eighteen years ago, I was a coward with Little Mother, and I’ve been a coward ever since with Kaya Maghan. That is my only reason for living, my revenge against myself. The day after Little Mother was sacrificed, Kaya Maghan made me head of his armies and his police. Probably to console me for my daughter’s loss. But what he doesn’t know is that for eighteen years I’ve worked against him … Mamadi You, Uncle! Wakhane Sakho Yes, me, Wakhane Sakho! For eighteen years I’ve conspired against the crown. I’ve been plotting in the shadows. Slowly, I’ve put out invisible tentacles over all of Wagadu. I’ve alienated the people from Kaya Maghan by hunting down and torturing and murdering innocent people, all in his name. I’ve forced those who were against him to dance to his tune. Islam has spread into his very palace, and I have let it happen, I’ve even encouraged it – not out of faith, but out of hatred, to bring about his fall, by whatever means! I have even had a hand in creating Kerfa himself. For eighteen years I’ve been controlling the shadows by making a false light of day shine around Kaya Maghan … But now we’re coming to the end. My end, perhaps, for they are beginning to suspect something. More than once, I’ve had the feeling I was being toyed with … during the priests’ council, even by Kaya Maghan himself. We must act quickly now, my nephew, for in politics there is no such thing as loyal combat, as there is on the battlefield. At the slightest scratch, you play dead and conceal your weapon. Let your adversary walk past you and then, when his back is turned, get up quickly and strike! Mamadi I shall strike at the Wagadu-Bida, Uncle, but do you really think that the people will make me Kaya Maghan for that? Wakhane Sakho No! The people will turn against you as long as Kaya Maghan and his priests lead them. They will pursue you to Bambuk if they have to, they will put you to death. The people will dance on your body, because they only back the man who holds the whip. Mamadi So I must kill Kaya Maghan and his priests? Wakhane Sakho Never! Then they would die sinless! The man who must

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290  Moussa Diagana die is the only truly pure man in Kumbi. Mamadi And who is this man, if he exists? Wakhane Sakho Kerfa the Fool. Mamadi But if he’s innocent … Wakhane Sakho All the more reason to kill him. Mamadi I thought Kaya Maghan and his priests were going to do that. Wakhane Sakho It’s not as simple as I thought. I wanted Kerfa the Fool dead, and I had planned it all very carefully. In politics you can’t afford to make mistakes, and Kaya Maghan is clever. He knows that Kerfa the Fool is the most popular man in Kumbi, the man most heeded by the people. He spoke to him. I tried to dissuade him, but he sent me packing. However, confidential sources have informed me that he tried to get Kerfa to come over to his side, against us. Mamadi You must really have spies everywhere! Wakhane Sakho Even in Kaya Maghan’s bed, and since there are so many of them, I defy anyone to uncover them! If he had succeeded in forging an alliance with Kerfa, I would now be a hunted man. But Kerfa the Fool has no friends. He despises everyone, and even Sia is nothing but the tool of his madness. After their meeting, Kaya Maghan summoned us, the three priests of the Sacred Forest and me. It was decided that Kerfa the Fool must have his tongue cut out. Mamadi His tongue cut – But why? It would have been simpler just to have him killed! Wakhane Sakho Ha! Ha! What a fool you are! You are good at fighting, but your political education is sadly deficient. I will see to that. Kerfa is more dangerous dead than alive. But he must be silenced, for his words make the people think, and a people who think … If Kerfa is murdered, he will become a martyr, and there’s nothing like a martyr to inspire an uprising among the people. Alive, they will go on listening to him, but dead, his words will be translated into deeds. If we silence him by cutting out his tongue, the people will have no guide. And you know what happens to those who are suddenly blinded.… If reason is to prevail, fools must be silenced. Mamadi Do you think people will stand idly by when they learn that Kaya Maghan has had the tongue of Kerfa the Fool cut out? Wakhane Sakho Who will tell them? Not Kerfa the Fool – he won’t be able to speak. The people will never know the truth. You see, nephew, people like mysteries, the whole art of governing rests upon that fact. Tomorrow, reason will tell them that Kerfa was subjected to the punishment of the Primal Word, that it deprived him of the powerof the borrowed word because he had blasphemed. And only Kaya Maghan, myself and the priests of the Sacred Forest will share the secret of the gods. Mamadi Let me get this straight, Uncle. You will have Kerfa killed and see that Kaya Maghan and his priests are blamed for it. Kerfa will become a

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The Legend of Wagadu as Seen by Sia Yatabere  291 martyr, unrest will grow, the people will rise up against Kaya Maghan. Wakhane Sakho With the help of my concealed agents … Mamadi And I will kill the Wagadu-Bida, save Sia, and the people will hail me as a hero and a liberator. Wakhane Sakho And we will lead them off to the green plains of Bambuk. Mamadi But why leave, since we will be the masters? Wakhane Sakho Because all must be accomplished. Kumbi must be razed to the last stone, and the Sacred Forest must be burned to the ground. Mamadi You will destroy Kumbi, Uncle? Wakhane Sakho The Almoravida will do that. I will withdraw the troops from the northern front, evacuate the city’s inhabitants and open wide the gates. Mamadi You’re mad, Uncle! I can never allow you to do that … After all, I am a warrior. Wakhane Sakho If you refuse, I shall have you arrested at once, and Sia will die at dawn, as planned. If you agree, you know my conditions. Take it or leave it. Mamadi But why … Why would you want Kumbi destroyed? Wakhane Sakho When one kills the gods, the world must be remade. Kumbi and the world of Din’ga, the world of the Wagadu-Bida, the world of the hyena and the vulture. A world steeped in the blood of the innocent, crushed beneath its luxuries, its gold and its palaces. I sound just like Kerfa. And he’s right. All that must die away, and Kerfa too; so that a new world can be born. And we will move to the plains of Bambuk to create it. We will all set out together, marching day and night if need be. Mamadi Uncle, we’ll march in vain, for the eyes of Little Mother will follow you, wherever we go. Wakhane Sakho (In terror.) No! Never say that again! Never! Do you understand? Mamadi They will follow you. Wakhane Sakho Silence! Be silent! We will leave, we will walk, we will go even farther than Bambuk if we must. (There is a roll of drums; he puts his hand on his sword.) So what is your decision? Speak! (A long pause. There is another roll of drums.) Mamadi Agreed. We will walk, and if the green plains of Bambuk do not exist, I will invent them for Sia. Wakhane Sakho Those who enter the Sacred Forest never emerge again. Take my horse and it will guide you. He knows the way. See that the point of your spear is sharp, and don’t forget that the Wagadu-Bida has seven heads. Mamadi Sia told me that – why seven heads, Uncle? Wakhane Sakho (Teasing.) Do you know the seven deadly sins, ninny? Mamadi No, Uncle, not yet. Wakhane Sakho Well, Sia will teach you about them, ninny.

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292  Moussa Diagana Mamadi Because this isn’t politics any longer? Is that it, uncle? Wakhane Sakho No, not at all. Politics is the eighth deadly sin. You’ve already tasted that one, and now may you enjoy it. (A third roll of drums. MAMADI exits. Blackout.)

ACT III SCENE 1 THE PAWNS (Day. The MASKED CHORUS; the CHIEF, the ASSISTANT CHIEF and the FLUNKY stand to one side, next to the entrance. The SHACKLED CHORUS, the BLIND CHORUS and the MUTE CHORUS, gagged, stand apart from them.) Chief The curtain is going up, let us announce that we are about to begin. Assistant Chief It’s daybreak here – and elsewhere too perhaps. Let us announce the good bad news. Flunky We were expecting water – and instead we got fire! Chief Rumours are beginning to spread. Assistant Chief They are spreading through the bush. The bush is dry. The fire is beginning to gather strength and spread. The bush is burning. Chief Rumours are beginning to spread. Assistant Chief The farms are beginning to burn. The fire is drawing nearer. It has reached the main street. Chief Rumours are beginning to spread. Flunky The flames are spreading. Ah! They are licking at the palace walls. Chief And rumours are beginning to spread. Have you heard the rumours, my brother? Kerfa the Fool died last night. Blind Chorus We didn’t see anything, but we heard all about it. Kerfa was murdered. May his murderers be accursed! Chief We saw and we heard. Kerfa the Fool was murdered by Kaya Maghan and his priests. Shackled Chorus Accursed be the murderers of Kerfa! Chief (Aside.) His remains are beginning to burn. Let us quench the flames. (The MASKED CHORUS mimes discovering KERFA’s imaginary body.) Assistant Chief Behold the body of Kerfa the Fool, or what’s left of it. Flunky The body of Kerfa the Fool is covered in blood. Chief They’ve put out his eyes. Blind Chorus We will be his eyes and see for him. Assistant Chief They’ve broken his legs. Shackled Chorus We will be his legs and walk for him. Flunky They’ve cut out his tongue. Shackled Chorus and Blind Chorus We will be his tongue and cry out for him. Death to Kaya Maghan and to his priests!

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The Legend of Wagadu as Seen by Sia Yatabere  293 Chief Kerfa dared insult the Kaya Maghan. Shackled Chorus Death to Kaya Maghan, who put us in chains! Assistant Chief Kerfa dared to insult the priests of the Sacred Forest. Blind Chorus Death to the priests of the Sacred Forest, who put out our eyes. Flunky Kerfa dared to insult the Snake God of Wagadu. Mute Chorus Death to the Snake God of Wagadu, who gagged us! (The FLUNKY dashes to the MUTE CHORUS and puts back the gag. They begin to weep.) Chief (Aside.) Perfect. The fire is spreading nicely. Let us now attack the big game. Assistant Chief The rumour is spreading. Have you heard the rumour, my brothers? Everyone is saying that the Snake God of Wagadu has been killed. Flunky Wagadu-Bida is dead, slain by Mamadi the Silent. Blind Chorus Hail Mamadi the Silent, avenger of Kerfa’s blood. Chief The Mute Chorus has stopped weeping. Look at their eyes … they’re smiling. Blind Chorus We cannot see it, but we can sense it. The Mute Chorus can smile again. Mamadi the Silent is a hero. Shackled Chorus We cannot feel it, but we can see it. The Mute Chorus can smile again. Mamadi the Silent is our saviour. Chief Wagadu-Bida is dead. Kaya Maghan has betrayed his people and the priests have been stripped of their power. We are now orphans. What is to become of us? Blind Chorus We have Mamadi the Silent, our beloved hero. Flunky And who will be our Kaya Maghan? Shackled Chorus Mamadi the Silent will be our new Kaya Maghan. Choruses (Together.) Kaya Maghan is dead! Long live Kaya Maghan! Chief (Aside.) It’s like a furnace, now. (Rubbing his hands.) And now we come to the hardest part – the master’s voice. Assistant Chief The rumour is spreading … have you heard the rumour, my brothers? Flunky Mamadi slew the Wagadu-Bida while mounted on the horse of Wakhane Sakho. Blind Chorus Long live the steed of Wakhane Sakho! Chief (Aside.) That didn’t work. Let’s try something else. Try going for the emotions. Assistant Chief Wakhane Sakho is the beloved uncle of Mamadi the Silent! Shackled Chorus Long live the beloved nephew of Wakhane Sakho! Chief Darn! That didn’t work either! The Master doesn’t seem to help feed the flames at all. Flunky You must admit, he was probably too much a part of the former regime! Would you like me to give it a try, Chief? Chief No thank you! You’d get him hanged on the spot. Let him look after

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294  Moussa Diagana himself. We’ve done what’s essential. We can be glad they’re not calling for his head. Right now, we’d better pay attention to the fire. Mute Chorus and Shackled Chorus (Walking around the MASKED CHORUS.) We want – to see – our hero! We want – to see – our new Kaya Maghan! Chief It’s time. Give the signal, Flunky. (The FLUNKY beats the drum. MAMADI and WAKHANE SAKHO enter.) Chief Behold – Flunky (Interrupting the CHIEF, who looks at him furiously.) Behold the hero of the day! A nobody at sunrise, Kaya Maghan at noon! With him is his beloved uncle, Wakhane Sakho, whose brave steed did not shrink from confronting the spirits of the Sacred Forest. – Long live nephew and uncle! Chief You could have waited your turn and not tried to hog all the glory! Blind Chorus and Shackled Chorus Long live our new Kaya Maghan! Honour to the nephew, honour to the uncle’s steed! Flunky (Aside.) We should do it again and seize the advantage, for if this works my promotion is a sure thing … I’ll be leader of the Masked Chorus, instead of that big dope there. (He moves behind the MUTE CHORUS and begins to egg them on.) Honour to Wakhane Sakho! Repeat after me Honour to the uncle! (Realizing his error.) Darn! Wrong chorus – trust me to pick the one that can’t talk! (He sheepishly returns to his place.) Mamadi (To WAKHANE SAKHO.) The gold on your armour is tarnished, uncle. Memories are hard to wipe away. Wakhane Sakho Don’t worry about me, and don’t mention gold. I am now your major domo and adviser. Leave things to me. (Addressing the CHORUSES.) People of Wagadu! The Snake God is dead, and all things are now possible. Shackled Chorus Since all things are possible, free us from our chains! And we will dance the worosso with our hero. Blind Chorus Give us back our sight, and we will dance the worosso with our new Kaya Maghan. (WAKHANE SAKHO goes to the CHORUSES to free them.) Flunky (Aside.) Let’s make a bet. If he frees them, it’s his grave they’ll dance on. Wakhane Sakho Just a minute. (He hesitates and then stops.) Hear me. You will all be freed. Are you not free already? But we must begin at the beginning. Do not forget, I am the major domo, the master of ceremonies and therefore the master of order! We must first immortalize the great words of our great philosopher, Kerfa the Fool. Choruses (Together.) We will honour the great words of Kerfa the Fool. We will do even more than that! But first, free us! Free us first! Free us first! Wakhane Sakho Order! I must have order first! Let us hear the great words of Kerfa the Fool as he was so basely interrupted by Kaya Maghan and his priests. (Aside.) What was he saying … Oh, yes, I’ve got it!

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The Legend of Wagadu as Seen by Sia Yatabere  295 (To the CHORUSES, in the tones of a public storyteller.) When the night was drawing to a close, the priests of the Sacred Forest came to seek Sia Yatabere and escort her to the cavern of the Snake God. In the meantime, Mamadi the Silent had gone to Wakhane Sakho, his uncle, who was chief of the armies and chief of the police of Kaya Maghan, and he said unto him “My uncle, I will kill the Wagadu-Bida to save Sia from death. You must chose between heart and mind.” And Wakhane Sakho replied unto him “Mamadi, I could have arrested you on the spot and turned you over to the justice of Kaya Maghan, his priests and his false god, but both the voice of the heart and the voice of the mind tell me that we must save all the people of Wagadu. Go then, slay the monster, and afterwards do us the honour of being our Kaya Maghan. I would go with you, were my arms not too old, but take my horse. He will guide you through the labyrinth of the Sacred Forest. And don’t forget the Wagadu-Bida has seven heads.” Blind Chorus Honour to Wakhane Sakho! Chief Oof! He finally managed to get through that all right! But that stupid Blind Chorus will probably manage to see through us. Wakhane Sakho Mamadi the Silent, our new Kaya Maghan, will continue the great words. Henceforth, he is their master and protector. Mamadi Once at the monster’s cave, I hid myself in the underbrush until the time was ripe. Sia stood before the cavern, beautiful and motionless, like a statue of ebony. At last the monster appeared. I flung myself upon it the battle was a fearsome one. The moon herself hid behind the treetops, the sun dared not rise, and the clouds fled from the sky, which began to turn red from the blood that gushed up to it. With one final blow of my sword I cut off the monster’s seventh head, which flew into the air with an awful curse. It cried out “For seven years, for seven months and for seven days no drop of water will fall upon Wagadu, and your gold will turn to sand.” (He falls silent. A long silence. The CHORUSES look at each other and seem to be unsure how to take the news.) Wakhane Sakho What difference does that make? We will set out for the green plains of Bambuk, where there is water in abundance, and we will have the gold of the Boure beneath our feet. Shackled Chorus To the green plains of Bambuk. But first, free us from our chains! (WAKHANE SAKHO removes their chains.) Blind Chorus Give us back our sight and we will dance the worosso all the way to the green plains of Bambuk. (WAKHANE Sakho removes the blindfold from their eyes.) Chief (To the other members of the MASKED CHORUS.) We will stay as we are, for anonymity is the best companion of freedom, Wakhane Sakho Now, people of Wagadu, let us dance the worosso with Mamadi the Silent all the way to the green plains of Bambuk. (The FLUNKY beats the drum. WAKHANE SAKHO notices the MUTE CHORUS.)

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296  Moussa Diagana Wakhane Sakho What about you – why aren’t you singing? Chief Master, can’t you see that they have not yet been freed? Wakhane Sakho I grant them their freedom now. Let them sing! Flunky I’ll be damned if anyone can sing with their mouth gagged! Wakhane Sakho Oh, yes – I forgot. (He goes to the MUTE CHORUS and removes the gag.) You could have asked me, like the others. They always have to be different, don’t they? Now, let’s be serious. Drums! (The FLUNKY starts to beat the drum and then stops.) Flunky Master, they’re still not singing. Wakhane Sakho What do you want now? You asked for speech and you have it. What more do you want? Do I still frighten you? Well, Flunky … you ask them what they want. , Flunky (Approaching the MUTE CHORUS.) Master, they say that they won’t sing until they’ve seen Sia Yatabere. Mamadi Sia? Oh yes … You know women, uncle … how they like ceremonies. She’s making herself beautiful before showing herself to her subjects. Sia (She appears wearing a white dress that is wrinkled and bloodstained.) I don’t need to make myself beautiful, Mamadi. I’ve always been so, and I always will be. But you’re forgetting that Kerfa the Fool loathed your songs and dances. Let the drums be silent, and then we will speak. Mamadi We’ve already said everything. There’s nothing more to say. Sia Even Wakhane Sakho? Wakhane Sakho (To MAMADI.) What’s going on? What are you two up to? (To SIA.) Why are you looking at me like that, Sia? Your eyes … Why do your eyes … Is it really you? Don’t come any closer! (He trembles.) Sia Sia’s body – with Little Mother’s Eyes. You tremble now, horseman, but you will tremble even more when you know the truth. Wakhane Sakho The truth? What truth? What are you hiding from me? Mamadi, I must know. Mamadi There’s nothing to say, I tell you; everything has been said. The girl has gone mad. Sia Then I will speak. Mamadi No, wait. I will speak. Master of ceremonies, have the people with­draw. Wakhane Sakho Did you hear? Your Kaya Maghan asks you to withdraw. Our meeting will be private, and I will give you a detailed report later. Go! This is how things are done in courts all over the world. (The CHORUSES exit.) We are alone. I am listening. Mamadi Wakhane Sakho, you’re the master of ceremonies. Announce the play. WAGADU-BIDA (SIA, WAKHANE SAKHO, MAMADI the Silent. The stage is dark. There are three drumrolls.)

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The Legend of Wagadu as Seen by Sia Yatabere  297 Wakhane Sakho (Offstage.) Let the play begin! Behold the sacrificial day, the twilight of the virgins of Kumbi. Mamadi the Silent alights from his horse. He advances, sword in hand, to the monster’s cave. (Light comes up on MAMADI the Silent.) In the sky, a curtain of clouds, revealing Sia Yatabere. (Light comes up on SIA.) Mamadi Sia, there you are at last. I thought I would never find you. Sia What do you want? Who are you? Mamadi Sia, it’s me, Mamadi. I’ve come to slay the monster. Sia Kerfa the Fool is the one I want to see. Go find him. Mamadi Kerfa the Fool can’t come. There’s not much time. The monster will soon emerge from his cave. Move out of the way so that I can strike him. Sia I won’t move until I’ve seen Kerfa the Fool. He promised me he’d be here at dawn. Mamadi Be reasonable, Sia. Move out of the way, unless you want to die. There’s not much time, and Kerfa will not be coming. Sia Then go! I’ll stay here and await my death. Mamadi But Sia, not long ago you wanted to live. I will slay the monster for you. Sia I’ve changed my mind now. I’d rather die, unless you find Kerfa the Fool. Mamadi I’d never have time to go look for him in Kumbi and come back here to kill the monster. You’d be dead by then. Listen to me, for God’s sake! Let me kill him first, and then I’ll find Kerfa the Fool for you. Sia It’s now or never! Go find him, Mamadi, I want to tell him something. Mamadi You haven’t got anything to tell him because he won’t be coming. Kerfa is dead, Sia – do you hear? He’s been murdered by Kaya Maghan and his priests. Sia You’re lying, Mamadi – you know as well as I do that no blood but mine is to be spilled on the day of the sacrifice. Kerfa is to die tomorrow, not today. Mamadi I swear to you on my honour that Kerfa has been murdered. Sia Murdered by you! You hated him. I was there when you threatened to kill him … Mamadi I didn’t kill Kerfa, swear it … Sia On your honour as a murderer and a liar. If Kaya Maghan and his priests had killed him, you would have told me right away, because you hate them too. Out of my sight, murderer! I’d rather die a thousand deaths than live at your hand. Out of my sight, murderer! – Mamadi Sia, don’t talk like that! It wasn’t me, I swear it! Let me slay, the beast, and then tell you who killed Kerfa. Wakhane Sakho (Offstage.) Tender hearted fool! And just when I had everything all planned. But the girl is a lot more intelligent than I thought. Sia (Putting on a seductive air.) Mamadi, my love, my lion of the cliffs of Awdaghost. I want to live, I want to live with you, I will be your slave

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298  Moussa Diagana if you wish. I hear the monster stirring behind me. I want to live, but if you don’t tell me the murderer’s name, I’ll throw myself into the cave! Mamadi No! Sia, don’t! It was my uncle, Wakhane Sakho, who had Kerfa the Fool murdered. Sia You’re still lying to me, Mamadi. Wakhane Sakho is only the arm of Kaya Maghan. And Kaya Maghan would not have had Kerfa killed today. Farewell. (She moves to throw herself into the Wagadu-Bida’s cave.) Mamadi No, wait! Wakhane Sakho was not acting on Kaya Maghan’s orders. He was acting alone. Sia How do you know? Wakhane Sakho is not the kind of man who shares his plans, not even with his own son. Unless you were in it together. Mamadi Sia, listen to me. You have to understand that we were acting in your interests, in the interests of Wagadu. It’s not enough just to slay the monster. Kaya Maghan and his priests would then have killed us all. Wakhane Sakho thought that we must arouse the wrath of the people against the crown and win them over by killing Kerfa the Fool and making them believe that he had been killed at Kaya Maghan’s orders. Something had to be done, and I wouldn’t have been able to save you from death because he would have had me arrested. Now you know everything. So stand aside and let me carry out our plan. Sia Yes – that’s it, carry out your plan. First Kerfa, then the monster and finally the throne of Kaya Maghan. Wipe everything out and start all over again. Mamadi We’ll discuss it later, Sia. Right now, stand, aside, because I must slay the monster before it’s too late. Sia (Casually.) Don’t trouble yourself. There is no monster. Mamadi What do you mean? Have you gone mad? Stand aside, Sia. Sia I said the Wagadu-Bida doesn’t exist. It never existed outside our imagination. Mamadi I don’t understand … or maybe I’m the one who’s going mad. Then why do the priests of the Sacred Forest, Kaya Maghan, and all those virgins sacrificed .. . Sia It’s been one long masquerade from the beginning. Just one big trick – and we were all taken in by it. Except for Kaya Maghan and his priests, of course they were running the whole thing. Mamadi But if there wasn’t a Wagadu-Bida, what did they do with all the virgins? Sia Their bleached bones are lying down there at the bottom of this well that is supposed to be the cave of the Snake God. Mamadi But why all this charade? Sia Kerfa the Fool may have known why … But if he knew, why did he let me descend into this hell? I remember his words “The one with the softest fleece, the tenderest flesh, the soft, thick wool quivering at the man’s touch. The blade caresses her slowly before it makes its sudden slash.

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The Legend of Wagadu as Seen by Sia Yatabere  299 Her back stiffens, she struggles to free herself from his tight embrace, her eyes roll up, she goes into a final spasm and then her last gasp … And then death. Pleasure or pain – what does it matter? To die while the blood of her lost virginity still flows … ” I remember Kerfa’s long hoarse cry before he fell sobbing at my feet. That cry that I heard seven times – do you hear, Mamadi? – seven times before dawn, in my arms. Mamadi Sia! What are you talking about? Sia You won’t understand Kerfa’s words either – his cry. Ah! Seven times I was taken, Mamadi, seven times I was raped, and at each cry my virgin blood… Mamadi (Trembling.) Sia, who did this? Sia Ah, now you’re trembling, Mamadi. As if that were more horrible than all the Snake Gods, right? Who but your seven priests of the Sacred Forest, who pretend to have abandoned all worldly things. Ah! You sow, they reap, after they’ve chosen the best seed. And how many virgins to perish for the Wagadu happy, sad, but always proud – have been humiliated here in their deepest being, in their souls, how many have fled down this path and been caught and killed in the traps set for them in this forest where no one gets out alive? How many have then thrown themselves headlong into the well for shame? But I, Sia Yatabere, I said no to death. I slaked my thirst with my virgin blood, it filled my entire body and I vomited it out, I spat it to the sky that it might fall down like a rain of blood on your green plains of Bambuk. Seven times, for seven years I cursed the water and the gold of the Wagadu, to the seventh day of the seventh month. (She rises and moves to the wings as the stage grow completely dark.) A curse upon you and your uncle, Mamadi. May the innocent blood that has been spilled be upon your heads! Sing! Dance! But know that I alone am the keeper of Kerfa’s word. Know that the Fool has no history. Nor does woman. I will witness yours. (The light comes up again. MAMADI is standing with WAKHANE SAKHO.) Mamadi You can guess what happened next. I killed the priests, I led Sia out of the Sacred Forest and then set fire to it. The fire spread to the old city and then to the palace. At this very moment Kaya Maghan and his last remaining followers are living through Kumbi’s final hour. Wakhane Sakho Why did you lie and say you had slain the Snake God? Mamadi First, because the people needed a hero. There hasn’t been one in this story. And then, you told me that mystery was an art by which one governed. I took the mystery of Kaya Maghan and his priests and became for the people a king who had dethroned a God. Wakhane Sakho But why didn’t you say anything to me? Mamadi Hadn’t Kaya Maghan and his priests told you that the WagaduBida didn’t exist? Wakhane Sakho No, I never knew. Mamadi Well, I only followed their example. The State needs continuity,

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300  Moussa Diagana Uncle! Wakhane Sakho You’re right. But I wonder if Kaya Maghan himself knew. Mamadi And Kerfa the Fool? Wakhane Sakho We’ll never know now. And after all, there has to be some mystery in the story, since it has no hero. Mamadi But it does have a victorious Power. Wakhane Sakho You mustn’t believe that, nephew. Indeed, you must not believe that, for that is what your predecessors believed. You see, no one could have suspected that the day would end as it has. Yesterday, you were not Kaya Maghan and today you are, but what do you know about tomorrow? The sun sinks below the horizon and the green plains of Bambuk are still far away … My poor Little Mother, who was so afraid of snakes …

EPILOGUE (The MASKED CHORUS, made up of the CHIEF, the ASSISTANT CHIEF; the BLIND CHORUS and the MUTE CHORUS) Chief Night falls on the crossroads that lead nowhere. The curtains fall. The spectacle is ending, life goes on. Assistant Chief The spectacle is life, with all its actors. (To audience.) Oh, don’t worry, they’re not the same ones. Chief Yesterday’s masters are not today’s. Flunky And today’s will certainly not be tomorrow’s. Chief Mind your tongue, idiot. (To audience.) The Master has demoted him from Flunky to Assistant Flunky … for his “disservices” to the people. Somebody had to take the blame. (To FLUNKY.) And everyone saw how you treated the Blind Chorus – idiot, coward, you dope. So mind your tongue. Assistant Chief! Assistant Chief Today’s people are not yesterday’s people. Chief They exchanged yesterday’s rags for today’s rags. Flunky New holiday clothes wear out quickly. They’re never worth much. Chief No personal remarks, Assistant Flunky, or you’ll be demoted again! Assistant Chief ! Assistant Chief We’re the only one’s who haven’t changed, because we’re the Master’s noble ears, his breath, his ability. We are the masked chorus, the faceless chorus. Chief (Aside, raising his fist to the FLUNKY.) If he says “the careless chorus” again this time, I’ll get him. I’ll rip off his mask and land him one right on the nose! Flunky You’ve got to admit, Chief, that wearing mask is great – the anonymity is very comforting. Chief Yes, it hides your ugly snout! Flunky My snout? Where does that big lug get off! Talking about my

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The Legend of Wagadu as Seen by Sia Yatabere  301 snout? Has he seen his own … Chief Quiet, Flunky! And get to work, it’s almost time. As for you, Assistant Chief, stand behind the tree and listen to what they say, and you, Flunky, hide behind that pile of garbage and try to find out what they’re thinking. And don’t forget, you are to report back at dawn. (They exit on either side while the SHACKLED CHORUS, BLIND CHORUS and MUTE CHORUS enter walking slowly in single file.) Blind Chorus Onward, onward. Night and day we march; year in, year out, and still we march. Shackled Chorus, you who have eyes to guide you, can you see the green plains of Bambuk? Shackled Chorus Brothers, our new chains are heavy ones. We stopped marching long ago. Blind Chorus They made us march night and day, year in, year out. And brothers, as far as we can see there is nothing but the unsetting sun that burns into our eyes. Can the Mute Chorus see the green plains of Bambuk? Shackled Chorus The eyes of the Mute Chorus are filled with tears. We would drink them to quench our thirst, but they are bitter tears. Blind Chorus Courage, brothers. We will be free as soon as the green plains of Bambuk come into view. Isn’t that what they promised us? In the meanwhile, it seems we must continue to be disciplined in all things, we must live by sweat and sacrifice. Shackled Chorus Don’t talk about sacrifice … we’ve had enough of that by now. And you’d have to be blind to believe in their green plains of Bambuk. Happy are those who have no eyes to see. But your ears, must be good for something, aren’t they, Blind Chorus? Blind Chorus Who can you believe? They even say that Sia is mad, that she even admits it. Shackled Chorus To all intents and purposes it’s true, isn’t it? Isn’t that the first decree they issued after their so-called private conference? (With emphasis.) Sia Yatabere has been found insane by the members of the Crown Council, made up of Mamadi the Silent, hero of the Sacred Forest, conqueror of the Bida and new Kaya Maghan, his uncle, councillor and master of ceremonies, the brave Wakhane Sakho – they really didn’t need to include his noble steed that boldly braved the pitfalls of the Sacred Forest and the Wagadu-Bida! Oof ! It didn’t take that many grand titles and attributes to declare that Kerfa was insane, and he admitted he was a fool. What difference does it make – truth has no age, my brothers, and no name. Blind Chorus Yes, my brother, you may be right. In any event, when she speaks it’s as though a ray of light pierces the blackness of eternal night. Shackled Chorus I feel that too, my brother: when she speaks, my chains become light as feathers. I dream I am a bird. And have you noticed that even the Mute Chorus stops weeping and begins to smile … Oh, excuse me, I keep forgetting you can’t see. And it’s about time for her arrival. I

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302  Moussa Diagana can hear the dogs barking. She will finally come. We must hide if we want to stay and listen to her, for their spies are everywhere. Let’s hide and listen … (They disappear upstage.) GLORIA VICTIS! (The stage is completely dark. SIA suddenly appears or a circle of light. The barking of the dogs grows louder, drowning out her voice. As she crosses the stage the spotlight blinks on and off, plunging the stage into darkness and, when lighted again, picks out SIA. She is naked. After she has exited, we see nothing but a harsh light on a silent stage.)

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Moussa Diagana & The Legend of Wagadu as Seen by Sia Yatabere Advocating Anarchy in Mauritania JANE PLASTOW

Moussa Diagana Moussa Diagana was born in 1946 in the small, relatively isolated town of M’Bout in southern Mauritania. On finishing school he first became a teacher in Nouadhibou, the country’s second largest city, before going on to study in the capital, at the University of Nouakchott. Diagana was an exceptional student who progressed to Tunisia for his master’s degree (1972-1976) before taking a doctorate in the sociology of development at the University of Paris 1 (1977-1980). An occasional playwright, who has been made Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres de la République française, Diagana from 1989 earned his living working for the United Nations Development Programme, mostly in Mali, before more recently moving to the UN Office for Project Services running programmes in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. La Légende du Wagadu vue par Sia Yatabéré (The Legend of Wagadu as Seen by Sia Yatabere) was Diagana’s second play – his first, the unpublished Le mariage contrarié (The Thwarted Marriage) dating back to 1968. La Légende was written at a time when amateur theatre was becoming enormously popular in the Mauritanian capital. Formal drama, as opposed to rich indigenous oral and performance forms, had been first brought to Mauritania, as to so many other European colonies, via colonial schools. The first Mauritanian play was written only in the 1950s, just a few years before the country voted for independence from France in 1960. Early plays focused on promoting communism and pan-Arab nationalism but, with little state support, theatre was slow to grow. However, in the 1980s and early 1990s a new crop of enthusiastic theatre makers and audiences emerged in the capital. More than a dozen new non-professional companies were established in this period, popular plays regularly sold out, the government built a national theatre and for the first time made a limited investment in theatre training (Rubin, 1999).

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304  Jane Plastow This was the context in which Moussa Diagana wrote his 1988 success, staged first by the Dijon-based Franco-Mauritanian company, Theatre de l’Espour, with help from the French Cultural Institute and directed by the French actor and director Patrick La Mauff. It also won first prize that year in the Radio France International Inter-African Theatre Competition, before being taken in 1989 to the 6th Festival of Francophonies in Limousin. Subsequently the play has had a rich publishing and performance history. Originally published in 1989 by l’Harmattan, it then came out in a Belgian imprint, Editions Lansman, in 1994. An English translation by Richard Miller, which this edition borrows, was published in 1991 by the American Ubu Repertory Theater Publications in the second volume of their Afrique series of translated French language plays. More recently l’Harmattan reissued La Légende in 2005. The play was revived in 1992 at the 11th Festival of Francophonies, before undertaking a tour of various French regional centres. In 2001 a movie adaptation, Sia, le rêve du python (Sia: The dream of the python) was made by the Burkina Faso director Dani Kouyaté. What is notable in this listing is that, like all too many of the great African plays written in French, it appears that it has been easier for the play to be seen and read in France than in the playwright’s own country – Mauritania in this case. Post-colonial French cultural policy has supported some excellent theatre, but only when it is written in French and often only for performance at French cultural festivals. This raises serious, on-going questions about the possibility of many francophone African playwrights being able to be seen or make an impact in their own cultures when domestic governments have shown little interest in investing in the arts. Diagana has subsequently written two more plays. Targuiya (2005), named for the play’s heroine, like La Légende evinces a strong pro-woman sensibility. The context here is not Soninke but Touareg. A victim of war – and Mauritania has experienced repeated wars, coups and periods of violent military repression – Targuiya has been impregnated by a deserting soldier, and is consequently rejected by her family and fiancé and left to wander the desert with only her mysterious nursemaid, Houriya. As the play progresses, dream, fantasy and reality mix and mingle, and we are left unclear as to whether the heroine and her baby ultimately reach safe haven in Timbuktu or if the child has been thrown down a well to die. Written in a lyrical, poetic style Targuiya speaks in non-realist and at times nightmarish mode of what happens to women and children in war. The playwright’s final short work also deals with the consequences of war. Un quart d’heure avant (2005) is set in Israel/Palestine with two speaking characters; ‘He’, an Israeli soldier, ‘She’, a Palestinian woman, and ‘a child of the Intifada’. Once more, reality is unbearable, and once more it is the woman who dares to challenge the status quo, creating, at least in her imagination, a place where love can live.

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Moussa Diagana: Advocating Anarchy in Mauritania  305

The Ghana Empire and the legend of Wagadu The story that Diagana’s The Legend of Wagadu re-views is both a foundational and a terminating myth for the Soninke people, the dominant ethnic group in present day Mauritania. Wagadu is a local name for what is more internationally known as the Ghana Empire – not to be confused with the present day nation state of Ghana which appropriated the name. The existence of Ghana Empire is a matter of historical fact. Situated in what is now south-eastern Mauritania and western Mali it was a powerful trading nation between 400 and 1200AD, its wealth built on cross-Sahara camel trains carrying salt and the gold mined in the area. At its height the empire could call on 200,000 fighting men. The court was also magnificent, described here by an eleventh-century Moorish visitor from Spain known as al-Bakri: He [the king] sits in audience or to hear grievances against officials in a domed pavilion around which stand ten horses covered with goldembroidered materials. Behind the king stand ten pages holding shields and swords decorated with gold, and on his right are the sons of the kings of his country wearing splendid garments and their hair plaited with gold. The governor of the city sits on the ground before the king and around him are ministers seated likewise. At the door of the pavilion are dogs of excellent pedigree that hardly ever leave the place where the king is, guarding him. Around their necks they wear collars of gold and silver studded with a number of balls of the same metals. (al-Bakri, 1067, in Levtzion and Hopkins, 1981, p. 80) Fading as desertification crept up on the region, local gold was mined out and new trade routes began to out-compete the Soninke, and by the thirteenth century Wagadu/Ghana was incorporated into the rising Mali Empire. But the myth tells a different kind of story. The legend, like so many, has alternate versions. They agree that the founder of the nation was one Dingha (or Din’ga) Cisse, but then diverge. One says that when Dingha died his two sons, Khine and Dyabe, could not agree about the succession. Their argument turned to violence. They fought and Khine won. The humiliated Dyabe would not accept defeat, so he made a pact with the seven-headed black snake, Bida. In return for the yearly sacrifice of a virgin Bida would ensure Dyabe’s victory over his brother. The pact was honoured on both sides. Dyabe became ruler and at the time of the yearly sacrifice the snake also provided rains of gold that made the nation rich. The other version, one Diagana quotes in his preface to his play, has nothing about brothers but simply says that the snake demanded an annual female virgin sacrifice in order to let the Soninke settle on his land. Both versions agree that in following generations, even after Islam became powerful in the land (the Almoravids in the play were invading

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306  Jane Plastow Muslims), the emperors of Wagadu held true to the faith of their fathers and honoured the bond with Bida. The nation flourished. All continued in the same way until the year the nobles chose Sia Yatabere as the virgin to be offered in sacrifice. Sia was prepared to follow what she saw as her destiny, believing she must do this to save the empire. Her family encouraged her. However, Sia had a fiancé, Maadi (or Mamedi), and he, who came from a family famed for never breaking an undertaking, swore that he would not let Bida take his beloved. He would listen to no pleas from his bride-to-be to let her go through with the ceremony. On the night of sacrifice Sia Yatabere was left to wait for the snake. What the priests did not know was that Maadi had hidden himself nearby. As one by one the snake’s heads emerged Maadi cut them off. The final head told the warrior that if he decapitated it the Empire of Wagadu would have neither rain nor gold for the following seven years. Maadi paid no heed. He killed the snake, saved his bride, and doomed Wagadu to extinction.

The play My play was inspired by the legend of Wagadu, and not the history written by historians nor the legend such as told by the Griots. The first is still incomplete and in its early stages, the second, like all myths, crumbles each day a little more. It remains for us to use the imagination in an attempt to bring them closer together and at the same time to listen to the men and women who, in all the stories and all the legends of the world, were given little voice. (Moussa Diagana, www.sialefilm.com/ en/authors.html) In this preamble to Kouyaté’s film version, Diagana makes a creative and a political point, and it is his interest in form and thought that makes The Legend of Wagadu such an interesting play. I begin with form because theatre, relying on the concept of ephemeral live performance, must initially delight an audience with the creative imagination of the playwright. To simply look at ideas or even at language, vital though they may be, is always going to run the risk of turning theatrical analysis into simply an inferior form of literary criticism. Diagana does not disappoint with the opening of his play. The Prologue immediately takes us into the realm of the extraordinary, where a masked chorus addresses us with an unsettling mixture of elevated speech, poetic language, mockery and back-biting. What are we to make of this nameless, masked, by turns sinister and comic, trio who usher on stage three further, silent, ‘choruses’; groups in turn shackled, blindfolded and gagged who, we are told, represent ‘the nameless horde’, The Common Folk’ and ‘The Mob’? The imagery is striking, fantastical and thought provoking in its representation

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Moussa Diagana: Advocating Anarchy in Mauritania  307 of us ‘common folk’ as reflected by the silent passers-by on stage. Scene One only adds to the disconcerting imagery. From darkness emerges a ‘filthy’ man, carrying shepherd’s crook, chained at one ankle, and chorused on stage by a cacophony of barking, howling dogs. This man immediately breaks any convention of a ‘fourth wall’ by directly addressing us as indeed part of the ‘common folk’, calling us ‘people of Kumbi’. Who is this man who says he is ‘called’ Kerfa the Fool, but then says that ‘in truth I have neither name nor age’? Is this a ‘fool’, a madman or maybe some manifestation of a spiritual being: ‘the fiery word that burns’, ‘the gushing word that purifies’? Then in Scene Two we have an evocation through music – drumming and guitars; dance; spectacle – fabulously dressed courtiers and a wonderful throne; and even smell – incense, of the richest of courts, where the deaths of both our heroine, Sia Yatabere, and Kerfa the Fool are planned. Such a rich sensory diet, such a challenging and diverse set of imageries, intrigue and engage even while leaving us baffled as to how they will ultimately inter-connect. This is not a play of much dramatic action. The key encounters connected with Sia Yatabere’s ‘sacrifice’ and rescue are never seen on stage. We are told much of Mamadi the Silent’s feats of arms but we never see them, and even the deaths of the king, Kaya Maghan, and of the Fool, are only reported. In this reported action convention – and in the use of the chorus – The Legend of Wagadu brings to mind the Greek drama that advanced students would have studied in francophone West Africa. The character of Kerfa the Fool cannot fail to bring to mind Lear’s fool for one trained in the anglophone tradition, but this is possibly a red herring since many other European and many African traditions also see the fool as at times divinely possessed and madness as a painful gift from the gods allowing tortured visions and fractured foresight. It is also important that the French classical tragedy tradition that influenced many francophone African playwrights tends to privilege ideas and language over action. So The Legend of Wagadu is quite a long and wordy piece – albeit with often wickedly witty dialogue. Its theatricality, I would argue, lies primarily in the striking and ever more extreme images Diagana imprints in our minds; a dramatic and powerful counterpoint to the radical, anarchic, ideas he promulgates. The most extreme of these relate to Sia Yatabere herself. Nudity is a very rare thing on the African stage, and public female nudity is a taboo for a whole host of sexual, reproductive and spiritual reasons, but Sia, in the first instance of her madness/possession, not only bares her breasts to the audience but appears to incite her father to incest (Act 2, Scene 1). Then the final image the playwright leaves us with, and for which we have been entirely unprepared, is the extraordinary vision of a naked Sia speaking to us, but with her voice drowned out by the barking of dogs. The imagery is often harsh, but that, I think is because Diagana, somewhat in the mode of Antonin Artaud and his Theatre of Cruelty (Artaud 1938), had a hard, harsh

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308  Jane Plastow message for his audience and felt the need to shock, to jolt them, into seeing the world in accordance with his own disturbing understanding. The Legend of Wagadu as Seen by Sia Yatabere is not informed by Marxist thought as were so many African playwrights in the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s. Growing up when he did, and as an intellectual operating in both African and European capitals, Diagana would certainly have encountered and been influenced by various kinds of socialist thought, but it seems to me that this play is the most truly anarchist dramatic text I have encountered coming out of Africa. In an insight analogous most closely to that of the South African/Botswanan novelist, Bessie Head, especially as shown in her 1973 masterpiece, A Question of Power, the target of Moussa Diagana’s reviewing of his culture’s central myth is nothing less than power itself. It is also crucial to his thought that we come to understand that all power is linked and inter-connectedly oppressive. This is what is difficult to convey, and why such striking imagery is invoked. It is easy enough to criticize an all-powerful king, and by analogy the contemporary political classes. In Wagadu, state and religious power are crucially inter-linked since the propitiation of the Snake God is the apparent key to national prosperity. The revelation that there is no snake and that state and crown mutually reinforce their power each year through a process of rape and murder is of course central to Diagana’s rewriting of the myth, but is also an important element in the playwright’s anti-power agenda that sees religious and political power as part of the same package controlling the people. The third plank of the power construction is patriarchy. This is where focusing the second part of the play on the perspective of Sia Yatabere is so important. Whether he would call himself so or not, Moussa Diagana is certainly an African feminist in the tradition of Molara Ogundipe’s Stiwanism that sees the liberation of women, and Africa, as dependent on men and women recognizing the necessity to work together for African human liberation (Ogundipe 1994). In the myth, Sia Yatabere is simply a good girl who wants to uphold the state by unquestioningly sacrificing herself. In this she is not unlike the mythical heroine Femi Osofisan similarly re-views in his Morountodun, also published in this volume. The Yoruba myth of Moremi invoked by Osofisan also gives us a woman willing to risk her life for the good of the status quo. Both playrights reject such a patriarchal sacrificial offering and allow their heroines the critical voice legend has denied them. Sia Yatabere offers herself to her father because she has to drive home the point that all women in this society are no more than objects men can use interchangeably for pleasure or sacrifice. Her father never really ‘gets’ it, and nor does her fiancé, Mamadi. For him she tries to explain how the concept of honour is also bound up in this power nexus. He can see that the woman he loves should not be sacrificed in the name of a sick and deathly religion but finds it impossible to accept that his potential sacrifice on the field of battle might be equally pointless. Even when Mamadi leaves, as Sia – wrongly – thinks, to carry out her plan to

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Moussa Diagana: Advocating Anarchy in Mauritania  309 discredit state and priesthood, he has not understood the need to challenge every aspect of the web of power; only she and the Fool have this insight: Sia (As Mamadi leaves.) This man I love is stupidity itself. Fool No worse than any other real-life hero. Sia Do you think he understood what I was trying to say? Fool What difference does it make? The important thing is that his sword understood. He’ll act, and think later. (Act 2, Scene 1) What is so difficult to accept is that according to Diagana’s vision no reform is possible. The king appears to offer Kerfa just about all he is asking for in the dismantling of the corrupt state. But the price is that Kaya Maghan ultimately retains his power. Similarly Mamadi will do all for love except give up the possibility of ultimate power, for this he will sacrifice Sia as readily as would the priests he has killed in the name of saving her. The only way to liberate the oppressed is to follow the ‘madness’ of Sia and Kerfa – interestingly a madness Bessie Head literally experienced as the price of her similar vision – and to imagine a society where power itself is overcome. The world of Wagadu is starkly divided between the powerful and the rest of us; blind, gagged, enchained sheep, voiceless and without name or personality, floating on the river of history (Prologue). The ‘us’ of the chorus and the audience encompasses all the poor, all the lower class and notably all women. But unlike a Marxist such as Senegalese novelist and film maker Sembene Ousmane in Les bouts de bois de Dieu (1960), or Kenyan playwright Ngugi wa Thiong’o in The Trial of Dedan Kimathi (1976), Moussa Diagana conjures up no heroic vision of the possibility of a people’s triumph. For years the silenced masses have listened to Kerfa’s words in the darkness of night and have cherished a dream of liberation; they certainly seem to have understood enough of his message to leave Kaya Maghan in deadly fear for his life and throne. Their dream of a new world order is encapsulated in the repeatedly invoked idea of ‘the green plains of Bambuk’. However we come to realize that Bambuk is a never-never land paradise held out as an endlessly deferred hope for a brighter future, always just round the corner or over the next hill. Ultimately, the powerful – the masked chorus and their courtier allies – use the dream as just another means for controlling the people, deflecting them from focusing on changing the place and state they actually inhabit. Diagana wants a voice for the silenced, but he repeatedly warns of state manipulation and lies. Even when they are freed in Act 3 the peoples’ choruses are unable to assert or capitalize on their freedom. They are only liberated once the propaganda of the new rulers has been poured in their ears, and when they demand to hear from Sia Yatabere she is declared mad and both literally and figuratively silenced. In the epilogue the choruses have resumed their bondage – and their illusory journey to Bambuk. The old order has resumed, simply attired in new clothes and names. Hope lies only in seeking to hear the words of a naked,

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310  Jane Plastow silenced ‘mad’ woman. Diagana has pity for the ‘people’, but he also appears exasperated by how easily they/we are manipulated, and how they/we fail time and time again to see through the self-serving lies of the powerful.

Works cited Artaud, Antonin (1938), The Theatre and its Double. Diagana, Moussa (1990), La Légende du Wagadu vue par Sia Yatabéré, Paris: l’Har­ mattan. —— (1991), trans Richard Miller, The Legend of Wagadu as Seen by Sia Yatabere, in New Plays. Afrique II, New York: Ubu Repertory Theater Productions. —— (2004), ‘Words From the Authors’, www.sialefilm.com/en/authors.html. —— (2005), Targuiya, Manage (Belgium): Editions Lansman. —— (2005), Un quart d’heure avant, in Cinq petites pièces africaines pour une comédie, Vol. 3, Manage (Belgium): Editions Lansman. Head, Bessie (1973), A Question of Power, London: Heinemann African Writers ­Series. Kouyaté, Dani (2001), Sia, le rêve du python, www.youtube.com/watch?v= ksWCfXiyl1I. Levtzion, Nehemia and J.F.P. Hopkins (eds) (1981), Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ogundipe, Molara (1994), Re-Creating Ourselves: African Women & Critical Transformations, Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. Ousmane, Sembene (1960), Les bouts de bois de Dieu, Paris: Le Livre Contemporain. Rubin, Don et al. (eds) (1999), The World Encyclopedia of Contemporary Theatre, ­Volume 4: The Arab World, London: Routledge. wa Thiong’o, Ngugi (1976), The Trial of Dedan Kimathi, Nairobi: African Publishing Group.

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Book Reviews

Robert Mshengu Kavanagh, A Contended Space – The Theatre of Gibson Mtutuzeli Kente Harare, Johannesburg, Cairo and London: Themba Books, 2016, 406 pp. ISBN 9781539803126 (np)

There are few people better qualified than Robert Kavanagh to navigate the contended space of South African theatre. He was the initial driving force behind the radical company Workshop 71 that emerged from his training work at the University of the Witwatersrand in 1971, as well as the politically driven theatre journal S’ketsh, founded in the following year. On top of creating and chairing Theatre Arts departments at the universities of Addis Ababa and Zimbabwe, he was also co-founder of the extraordinary Zimbabwean children’s theatre organization CHIPAWO, of which he was Executive Director until 2010. African Theatre 6: Youth includes a superb article by Kavanagh about CHIPAWO’s work. Kavanagh has also been known as ‘Robert McLaren’, as ‘RK’, and as ‘Mshengu’ – partly as a result of the need for anonymity in the charged atmosphere of the 1970s, and partly, I suspect, because a protean life and identity suit a theatre artist well. He moves with extraordinary ease from director and deviser to academic and critic, from administrator to activist, from professor to practitioner. This fluid interaction between performance and the academy is one of many aspects of African theatre that I hugely admire and envy. In British rehearsal rooms, the word ‘academic’ has come to mean ‘something I have chosen to ignore because it’s inconvenient to me’; as in ‘that’s a bit academic’. The academy, meanwhile, cloaks itself in impenetrable theoretical language that serves to maintain its elevated status at the cost of its accessibility. African theatre enjoys a much more open dialogue between an engaged and politically energized academy and an open, enquiring theatrical community. For people like Robert Kavanagh and myself, who have feet in both camps, the African approach makes so

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312  Book Reviews much more sense than the self-serving specialization of the West. However, the subject of Kavanagh’s new book, Gibson Kente, was anything but academic. The productions that he toured through black townships during the apartheid era were populist and sentimental, Christian and conservative in their morality, simplistic in their narrative, clownish in their comedy. As a result, academics and critics have tended to be very dismissive of his work. Aggrey Klaaste, writing about Kente’s play Too Late for S’ketsh in 1975, condemned it as a ‘spurious bubble of happiness’, while Andrew Horn talked of Kente’s ‘narrowed and absolutist melodramatic vision’. Kavanagh quotes his own acerbic words from S’ketsh in 1974/75: [Kente knows] that the audience doesn’t want to be taxed, made to think, listen too hard and, above all, self-criticise. All the hardships (and these must be heavy) must be blamed on someone else. And there must be a ray of hope – that all will be well one day, without our having to do anything about it. (p.86) Kavanagh, like many other intellectuals in South Africa and elsewhere, regarded Kente’s theatre as vapid and counter-productive in the context of the 1970s Black Consciousness Movement and the anti-apartheid struggle; because it did not explicitly commit itself to that struggle, and because Kente himself could even seem to be opposed to it. This book is a prolonged and profound act of public contrition for that sardonic gaze. In his Preface, Kavanagh recalls listening to a recording of the music from Kente’s How Long in 2010, some six years after Kente’s death. ‘I suddenly saw – felt, perhaps – that I and so many others who were his contemporaries, had failed to understand and fully appreciate the political effect of Kente’s theatre.’ It is striking that he came to this insight through the emotional experience of listening to music, rather than the intellectual one of script analysis, and that he ‘felt’, rather than comprehended, his previous failure of appreciation. Kente’s theatre – which drew on indigenous performance forms like the imbongi tradition and choral singing, American musicals and through them melodrama – was above all a theatre of feeling, which created meaning through the generation of emotional responses. In the context of a ferociously oppressive and segregated society, the importance of that should not be underestimated. The insidious power of institutionalized racism lies in its capacity to deny people their own humanity, suggesting to them that they are lesser beings because it suits the economic system to treat them as such. In such a social and political space, a theatre that affirms emotional commonality and serves to uplift the audience through joint experiences of pain, loss, hope and joy is every bit as politically charged as more intellectually nuanced or ‘committed’ performances. Certainly, the main focus of Kente’s drama was always on the emotional journeys of individuals (often women), and the moral failings of their family members (often men), with reconciliation achieved through an assertion of conservative and Christian values. However, his vivid portrayals of township life, often

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Book Reviews  313 caricatured through his popular clownish characters, gave a sense of a social (even political) milieu from which these personal tensions arose. While Kente did not pursue the Marxian logic that a system that generates human misery is a system that requires fundamental, revolutionary overthrow, he certainly allowed his audiences to sense the community of pain and to glimpse the light of hope, which are the beginnings of any call for change. In hugely successful productions like How Long (1973) and, above all, Too Late (1975), Kente captured the anxiety of the years before the Soweto uprising, through a series of striking vignettes that portrayed small acts of resistance, the agony of endurance, and a deep sense of impending crisis. The popularity of his work in the townships was not to do with escapism alone, but also recognition. Because Kente’s was a theatre of feeling it owed more to music and performance than it did to scripting. In fact, it seems that Kente’s scripts may have been little more than loose guides for his performers, in plays that evolved and grew over time, including spontaneously in performance. The musical numbers, particularly the songs, were the pillars that supported this unstable edifice. It was also the music that lent the plays their particular emotional power. Kavanagh acknowledges the difficulty of writing about music, stating that ‘it is beyond my power to do justice to the skill, the vocal and harmonic virtuosity, the orchestral brilliance and the intoxicating melodies of Kente’s compositions … though my efforts would be greatly surpassed by your actually listening to the music as recorded on an LP’ (p. 260). What he doesn’t do is enable the reader to do that, which is a great shame, as the recording of How Long is available on Spotify, and there are other songs that can be readily accessed online. Kavanagh’s discussions of songs like The Lord is My Shepherd and Help the Black Child are made much more vivid by listening to them sung by the original performers. I also wish the book paid more attention to the acting style of Kente’s company: it seems strange to emphasize the emotional, performative nature of his theatre, and then to discuss it largely in terms of text. Kente the director has been as much condemned by critics as Kente the playwright: in his influential essay Politics and the Theatre: Current Trends in South Africa (1996), Zakes Mda writes that Kente ‘is credited with the invention of a peculiar style of acting which is full of energy and is spectacularly over-theatrical. It is a style characterized by bulging eyes, wide-open mouths, heavily punctuated dialogue, and exaggerated movements.’ There is very little in Kavanagh’s book that deals with this question, and the only illustrations are those on the rear cover, which are uncaptioned and uncontextualized. They do suggest a theatrical, emotive approach to performance, but since Kente’s was a theatre about emotional sharing, that is to be expected. The performance style suggested by these images might be descended on one side from melodrama via the musical, and on the other from traditional indigenous forms. If that is the case, then perhaps the most prominent successor to Kente is the white South African writer-director Brett Bailey, whose anti-

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314  Book Reviews naturalistic, anti-psychological theatre veers between mad slapstick comedy and the invocation of deep spiritual longing. Kavanagh dismisses Bailey’s productions as ‘capers’ (p. 366), but it is unclear from his account whether he has actually seen this work, and he has undergone a volte-face in relation to a fellow theatre maker once before. A cornerstone of Kavanagh’s argument is that Kente was ‘a businessman’ as much as, maybe more than, he was an artist. He understood his audience, emotionally and culturally, and created a theatre that he knew they would pay to see. The fact that he could do this was, oddly enough, down to apartheid itself: in the absence of integrated cultural spaces, Kente offered populist, fun entertainment for township audiences. Kavanagh argues that Kente’s outspoken criticism of ‘protest theatre’ may have been necessary to distance himself from overtly political performance groups in the eyes of the authorities, so encouraging them to let him continue to run his production company. He also argues that this gave Kente a vested interest in the maintenance of the status quo. I suspect that this latter point may be coloured by hindsight. After all, when apartheid fell, Kente himself stated: ‘The hour has come for me to take my rightful place, celebrating our culture and art on stage’ (quoted p. 376). Kente did not know what Kavanagh now knows – that there would be no place for him in ‘The New South Africa’, and that he would die in poverty ten years after the first democratic elections. In the brilliantly argued final sections of the book, Kavanagh shows how the apparent liberation of the black majority in South Africa became simply a means to preserve the economic and cultural hegemony of the minority; and how the application of Western values to all cultural production made the specifically black space that had allowed Kente to thrive under apartheid no longer possible. It is a hideous irony that I’m sure is not lost on Robert Mshengu Kavanagh that the failure of modern South Africa to deliver genuine liberation for its majority should have destroyed Gibson Kente, at the same time as it permitted one of his former detractors to see him for the theatrical giant he truly was.

Michael Walling Artistic Director of Border Crossings and Visiting Professor at Rose Bruford College

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Book Reviews  315

Edward Wilson-Lee, Adventures with the Ever-Living Poet: Shakespeare in Swahililand London: William Collins, 2016, 320 pp. ISBN 9780008146191. Hb £20.

Edward Wilson-Lee was brought up in Kenya amongst conservationists and is now a Shakespeare scholar teaching at Cambridge. Shakespeare in Swahili­ land, a piece of popular scholarship telling stories of Shakespeare being read, adapted and performed across East Africa, is something of a bringing together of these two disparate worlds the author has inhabited. It is by no means an attempt at a comprehensive history, though it ranges in time from the 1850s and stories of Shakespeare-loving explorers, right up to a concluding discussion of the circumstances that led to newly independent South Sudan mounting a production of Cymbeline for the 2012 Globe to Globe festival in London – though strangely Wilson-Lee never actually tells us the year of that event. It is also not a piece of conventional scholarship in that, although he is of course dependent on literary sources for the Victorian period information, most of the time the book is more of a Shakespeareinflected travelogue, as Wilson-Lee tells us of his attempts to track down people and places involved with various Shakespearian productions. If you want to know about Shakespeare and East Africa this also means you have to plough through quite a lot of padding, with extensive musings on assorted Shakespeare characters, and descriptions of the places the author went to in the course of his research. Some of this is quite whimsical, and some definitely of tangential interest. I found myself skimming quite a lot of the flummery that brings the book up to 288 pages. In a ‘Prelude’ that made my post-colonial Africanist soul twitch uneasily at the mention of ‘tribe’ and ‘a land … braved by white travellers’ (xi), I was then, as one interested in the history of theatre in Africa, rendered queasy when Wilson-Lee said he was looking for ‘the Holy Grail of Shakespeare Studies: an understanding of Shakespeare’s universal appeal’ (xii). Surely scholarship has moved beyond ideas of a singular ‘universality’ in apprehending any cultural product. And surely Wilson-Lee must recognize that colonialism imposed the idea of Shakespearean exceptionality, and that the continued teaching of Shakespeare in certain African states says at least as much about colonized minds (See Ngugi’s 1981 Decolonising the Mind) as it does about an Elizabethan playwright. Chapter 1, ‘The Lake Regions: Shakespeare and the Explorers’ serves well enough as an example of the way this book operates. Imagine, not an epic journey through Africa, but a Sunday stroll down a pretty-enough country lane, full of small features of some interest, but irritatingly winding so that after a while you wonder if you are ever going to arrive anywhere in particular. Then, after one of numerous small diversions that are really beginning to make you think you will give up on the walk, there is suddenly in front of you a gem; a fabulous tree, a really interesting old mill, or a

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316  Book Reviews splendid view. Such is the perambulatory equivalent of reading Shakespeare in Swahililand. Why should I be interested in the fact that Roosevelt covered his travelling library in pigskin covers? What role does a couple of pages on the inundatory habit of the Nile play in this book? And why on earth do I need to be told about the history of a hovercraft that once took the author to Zanzibar? But then, and in amongst the verbiage, I was genuinely fascinated to realize just how ubiquitous appears to have been the habit, at least amongst educated Victorians, of carrying small copies of the Collected Works on their explorations. So we are told of Burton and Speke regularly reading Shakespeare together on their 1857 expedition to the East African interior, as the leaders of a list a gentlemen wandering around the region in coming years, all with their pockets stuffed with plays. Americans apparently followed the fashion. Stanley made up a story about wild natives demanding the sacrifice of his Shakespeare because they feared the magical powers of writing (23-4), while Roosevelt, who spent two years hunting in East Africa, describes his three-volume Collected Works as ‘the literary equivalent of a soldier’s ration – “the largest amount of sustenance in the smallest possible space”’ (15). We even have mentions of Germans and women reading the Bard! At the end of this chapter Wilson-Lee makes one of his most interesting analyses. Using in particular the example of the Stanley episode, he posits very convincingly the idea that Shakespeare becomes for these explorers a talisman, a symbol of their superior civilization in relation to all Africans because ‘[i]f Shakespeare is the universal genius of man, and his worth is evident to all humans, then those who do not appreciate him are, by extrapolation, in some sense not human’ (25 – original italics). It is just a shame that this insight is not carried forward in later chapters where admiration for Shakespeare amongst Africans is seen in a far less subtly problematized manner. Chapter 2, about the 1867 printing of a KiSwahili school book Hadithi za Kiingereza (Tales from the English), which continued to be reprinted until 1972, discusses the engagement with Shakespeare and East Africa that first caught Wilson-Lee’s interest. This is because the book consists of four translations of stories from Shakespeare as published in the Lambs’ Tales from Shakespeare. Such a nugget is indeed fascinating and tantalizing when one considers its possible impact on generations of young African pupils; but tantalizing it remains because there is only the most slender record of the book’s role in over a hundred years of education – so the author is perforce led into more mullings, musings and diversionary storytelling. Chapter 3 however, remains the triumph of spinning nearly thirty pages out of the merest sniff of a story. A single – possibly forged – diary entry speaks of a 1608 performance of Hamlet somewhere off the coast of Madagascar by a bored ships’ company. This is the entire substance of ‘Interlude: the Swahili Coast’. Enough said.

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Book Reviews  317 Matters do improve. There are chapters looking at the teaching of Shakespeare at East Africa’s pre-eminent university, Makerere, in Uganda, and at the work of Makerere alumnus and the first president of Tanzania, Julius Nyerere, as he chose to translate two Shakespeare plays to demonstrate the linguistic richness of the national language he promoted, KiSwahili. The political potency of invoking Shakespeare in the immediate post-colonial period in Anglophone East Africa is made clear with reference to a parade of 1960s, 1970s and 1980s leaders who all acted, interpreted and quoted from the WS canon. We also get taken on a side trip to Ethiopia to discuss the work of the nation’s most famous playwright, Tsegaye Gebre-Medhin, who translated various Shakespeare plays into Amharic. My own favourite chapter is definitely number 4, ‘Mombasa: Shakespeare, Bard of the Railroad’, both because I had never heard about this industry in Shakespeare-derived productions mounted, in various languages, by the community of Indian workers brought over initially to work on railroad construction in the 1890s, and because of the sheer vigour and invention the chapter describes. So in the eighteen-month period from February 1915 the community put on a total of forty-seven productions, no less than fifteen of which were based on Shakespeare (95). These included translations and wonderfully radical adaptations that combined elements from multiple play scripts or rewrote stories quite as radically as Shakespeare himself had ever done with his source materials. I also love that this subaltern theatre was operating under British noses but completely outside the aegis of those who had introduced Shakespeare as an elite project of cultural superiority to both India and Africa. Overall, I’m glad I read Shakespeare in Swahililand. I learned a bit, though I don’t understand why Wilson-Lee didn’t bother to read some of the preexisting scholarship on Shakespeare and Africa that would have definitely aided his understanding at times. I also don’t understand why I had to plough through 288 pages when a hundred would have more than sufficed for all that is pertinent that the author has to say.

Jane Plastow University of Leeds

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318  Book Reviews

Francis Nii-Yartey, African Dance in Ghana: Contemporary Transformations London: Mot Juste, 2015, 136 pp. ISBN 9780956967022. Pb. £16.

In the introduction to his book African Dance in Ghana: Contemporary Trans­ formations, Francis Nii-Yartey says he hoped that both the student of dance and the general reader would enjoy the edition. The book achieves its aims. It is a highly informative, though not academic book, written by an academic-artist. He draws on his life in dance, as a performer, choreographer and a participant in the development of dance as a profession and academic subject in Ghana. His experience is of one who was trained by leaders who were involved in developing the infrastructure of newly independent Africa. Artists were very much involved in the politics of adapting Western-style institutions to serve Africa needs and vice-versa. We had Sédar Senghor as poet-president, Sékou Touré launching the first national dance company in Africa and Kwame Nkrumah commissioning Professors Nketia and Opoku to start the national performing arts companies. Nii-Yartey was one of Professor Opoku’s first batch of students. He quotes mainly Professor Opoku who was the first artistic director of the Ghana Dance Ensemble. Other than that he conveys in a straightforward manner his knowledge of traditional dance as a practice in Africa and the emergence of ‘The New Paradigm’ – theatrical dance otherwise known as concert dance, in the early 1960s. The foreword by Professor Emeritus, Kwabena Nketia, frames NiiYartey’s story historically in the heady days of ‘national awakening’ when pan-Africanism was our hope. After a short introduction to Ghana as a country the book provides us with an overview of traditional dance in Ghana. This is not a list of tradi­tional dances but a description of features and characteristics which are found in a wide range of forms. Most overviews of this kind focus on physical attributes such as the use of flat foot, bent knee and supple spine. This overview reveals some less discussed information such as how traditional dances are formed through dialogue between individuals and the community, the idea of choreography and improvisation, though not described with those terms, in traditional contexts, and how the same dance might appear in different contexts performed to display different qualities depending on whether it is for a funeral or a celebration. Not only does this provide background knowledge that will aid a visitor to Ghana (or an urban Ghanaian) in viewing and appreciating traditional dancing, this information provides priceless starting points for the dance researcher – offering great ideas for academic research. Nii-Yartey also discusses hairstyles, costume and make-up for traditional occasions. All of this is fetchingly and insightfully illustrated with drawings by David Amoo. In discussing the development of theatrical dance at the University of Ghana, Nii-Yartey is careful to explain the policies and philosophies behind this initiative. He then describes the

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Book Reviews  319 two genres that the Ghanaian National Dance Company were first famous for: neo-traditional dance (sometimes called dance display) and dance theatre or dance drama. He discusses the basic approaches to creating within these genres. The first focuses on adapting participatory traditional dances to suit an audience’s gaze and the second draws on the structures of written drama to tell a story using dances and mime. Lastly Nii-Yartey tells of his own intervention into the genre of contemporary African dance. His approach draws on symbolism and movements from African dances to create phrases of choreography. Philosophically his work feeds from the same framework as neo-traditional dance and dance drama but is orientated to address the performance interests of a younger generation and increasingly global audience. He calls his approach to contemporary dance Noyam, which means ‘moving on’, and he has established an institute by the same name in Ghana’s capital. A major contribution of this book to academic study is the description of dance productions that Nii-Yartey includes. He provides selected descriptions of the repertoire created by himself and Professor Opoku starting from 1965. They are detailed enough to give the reader a sense of the productions and how they were made. Most are illustrated with photographs. Not only are they are treasures in themselves; they provide examples for further documentation. Secondly Nii-Yartey discusses the circumstances in which he decided to establish a company at the National Theatre, leaving the Ghanaian Dance Ensemble at the university. This signalled a split between dance as a resource for research and teaching, and dance as a creative and performing art. There are overlaps no doubt. However the story illustrates the importance, for better or for worse, of the institutional environment needed to achieve goals. Histories of institutional development are much needed in the performing arts in Africa (and perhaps other disciplines), as this is one important way of understanding how African nations are developing. Sadly Francis Nii-Yartey died in India in 2015. He left us too soon. He had much to give and many of us poised to receive it. This book, however, is part of his legacy. Hopefully it will encourage the emergence of more practitioner-researchers like himself.

’Funmi Adewole De Montfort University

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320  Book Reviews

Olu Obafemi, Dark Times Are Over? Ibadan: University Press, 2005; Ilorin: Unilorin Press, 2015 (Special Edition), 52 pp. ISBN 978030956X. £16.

Running Dreams Ibadan: Kraft Books, 2015, 76 pp. ISBN 9789789183289. $20.

The emerging restive youth culture in Nigeria has been a critical subject in Nigerian writing recently, with Obafemi’s Dark Times Are Over? one of the pioneering plays. The play opens with a series of activities by university student associations, ranging from ‘Kegite’ (palm-wine club), to ‘Yepa’ (a religious cult group) and ‘Aristo Girls’ (campus ‘sex workers’). The groups, under the guise of freedom of association, constitute themselves into different forms of lethal nuisance on campus and, in the fight for supremacy, violence ensues. The emergence of ‘Man O’ War’ – a voluntary informal para-military group – provides hope for the restitution of the campus from the stranglehold of terror. The return of the campus to a conducive environment for learning is, however, short-lived. Obafemi berates the decay in the education and legal systems, two arms of national development. The young generation constitute the main focus of the play, which laments their vulnerability to the vices pervading tertiary institutions in Nigeria. Instead of being the fulcrum of the development of young people into industrious and patriotic citizens, he argues that the institutions have turned into breeding grounds of decadence and corruption – portrayed in the play as an extension of national life. The anti-social behaviour is attributed to maladministration and a debased judicial system. The play is a warning of the danger posed by unruly youths in a country overtaken by a youth explosion. The desperate need for political reform is viewed via historical antecedents in Running Dreams. The playwright decries the deep involvement of superpowers in steering the political affairs of African and other so-called Third World nations through their conglomerates. This, in his view, has allowed for mediocrity in the political system whereby unpatriotic citizens with international connections, or identified as instruments to fulfil foreign economic agendas, are sponsored. The plot revolves around Yohanna, a former diplomat and economic guru, who is caught in a conflict between the capitalists’ insatiable quest for wealth and the urgent need for national rejuvenation. A dream trope employed by the playwright gives him recourse to history and a mediation between the past and the present to navigate the future. Nationalists from various African countries constitute the realm of Yohanna’s dream. Their persistence in the dream enlivens the patriotic demand for self-appraisal and rejuvenation to initiate national reforms. Little or nothing is seen to be desirable in the current conduct of affairs by African leaders as, consequent upon their complacency and self-esteem, their nations have lost ideological

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Book Reviews  321 focus: instead of nurturing productive citizens they have bred militants, terrorists and vandals. The playwright appears nostalgic about the undaunted spirit of the founding fathers, who put their nations first. The selfish power-seeking attitudes of modern African politicians are seen in the light of history, to determine when and where things have gone wrong. The playwright refers to the divergent develop­mental needs of the three regions of Nigeria at inception as a source of healthy competition, a situation that has been replaced by discord and violent destruction. The play’s argument for an evolutionary rather than a revolu­ tionary approach echoes the emphasis in Obafemi’s earlier plays, Naira Has No Gender, Nights of a Mystical Beast and Suicide Syndrome where history is equally subverted.

Abdullahi S. Abubakar University of Ilorin

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AT16 26mm ppc TJI_B+B 12/10/2017 11:46 Page 1

16

EAST AFRICA: Majangwa: A Promise of Rains (Robert Serumaga) Mother Uganda & Her Children (Rose Mbowa) The Guest (Manyazewal Endeshaw) WEST AFRICA: Morountodun (Femi Osofisan) If: A Tragedy of the Ruled (Ola Rotimi) The Legend of Wagadu as Seen by Sia Yatabere (Moussa Diagana) Cover: Sia Yatabere (Fatoumata Diawara) on the set of Sia, le rêve du python, directed by Dani Kouyaté (2001) – film version of Moussa Diagana’s The Legend of Wagadu as Seen by Sia Yatabere (1988) (Photograph © Jean-Christophe Dupuy)

an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF (GB) and 668 Mt Hope Ave, Rochester NY 14620-2731 (US) www.boydellandbrewer.com www.jamescurrey.com

ISBN 978-1-84701-172-5

9 781847 011725

African Theatre

The selected plays represent the diversity and richness of two very different African regions, and include a new translation from Amharic, the English version of a play originally written in French, and a first transcription/translation of a key Ugandan play. Each play is accompanied by an essay on the work, the playwright, and the context in which the work was produced. The work of the two regions’ best-known playwrights Wole Soyinka and Ngu˜gı˜ wa Thiong’o was profiled separately in African Theatre 13.

Six Plays from East & West Africa

Makes available some of the most influential, imaginative and exciting plays to come out of East and West Africa from the 1970s to the present day.

Editors • Banham Gibbs • Hutchison Osofisan • Plastow

African Theatre provides a focus for research, critical discussion, information and creativity in the vigorous field of African theatre and performance. Each annual issue concentrates on a major topic, and through its resolutely pan-African coverage and accessible style, broadens the debates to all interested in drama and the many roles it plays in contemporary African life. The editors and editorial board bring together an impressive range of experience in African theatre.

Volume Editors • Jane Plastow & Martin Banham

African Theatre

Six Plays from East & West Africa