Oral Poetry from Africa
A Dinka song from South Sudan. It describes the plight of refugees who fled into Zaira in the 1960s from the war between the Khartoum government and the Anyanya nationalist movement in the south.
Gentlemen grind their grain in the land of the Congo;
The Dongolawi, the Arab, has remained at home…
A Dinka song from South Sudan. The singer can’t wait for morning so he can leave the town he abominates and return to his village and his cattle. The poem is a succinct catalogue of everything that is wrong with modern life from the perspective of an intelligent herdsman.
O morning, come soon,
My curve-horned Ox, Mading…
A Dinka song from South Sudan. The young men singing this song consider themselves as a special age-set, using their education to ‘change the land’. Their mothers must learn that, in the modern world, clothes and pens are more important than cattle as wealth.
Our junior age-set in white gathers at Abyei,
The school is convened…
A Dinka song from South Sudan. The singer complains of the breakdown of the marriage arrangements made when Ajok was a baby.
O Ajok!
Ajok whom I chose when she was carried in a sling…
Two versions of a Dinka poem from South Sudan. During the time of the Mahdi, the Dinka ruler was required to sacrifice his son as proof of his loyalty. Both versions are horrified by the demand.
The old are asked about the distant past:
Ask your father about the distant past…
A Dinka song from southern Sudan, commenting in satirical fashion on the vanity and greed of the gentleman in question.
I saw a gentleman the other day:
He had coils on his lower arm…
