White Teeth

by Okot p'Bitek

First published in Acoli as Lak Tar, this novel from the late Ugandan author of Song of Lawino, Song of Ocol and other major works, is the story of society on the threshold of change. A young Acoli man wishes to marry but cannot raise the bridewealth. He travels to Kampala to find work, and the author humorously relates his efforts.

Genres: Africa, Fiction, Uganda, Literature

108 pages, Paperback

First published December 29, 1989

About the author

Okot p'Bitek (7 June 1931 – 20 July 1982) was a Ugandan poet, who achieved wide international recognition for Song of Lawino, a long poem dealing with the tribulations of a rural African wife whose husband has taken up urban life and wishes everything to be westernised.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Cody · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a proper companion to Things Fall Apart. Here is a similar heart-rending tale of colonialistic consequences, but here told from a Ugandan, Acholi, perspective.

I wish that every young person in Uganda could read this as the push to go find fortune in strange land continues to destroy so many.

I am unsure whether author Okot p'Bitek knew how he was forshadowing what Kampala would become or how the Indian-owned sugar plantations would cut up peoples and wilderness. But, it almost reads like a prequel to what I experience in Uganda today.

Always the poet first, it is the mwok which serves as a refrain throughout a story of chaos and change which makes us want to grasp for something past and better. Or perhaps the mwok just is there to say, things are not as they should be. There is no more timeless message than that.

[Varyanne S. · Rating 3 out of 5]

The cover of the edition of 'White Teeth' I read (which was unavailable on goodreads) is an illustration of a girl dolefully looking at a herd of cows approaching her, she could also be longing for a herd of cows to be brought to her, so immediately I know the book is about dowry since I judged by its cover which was begging me to judge it anyway.

I was half right. The story is about dowry inflation, but it is largely about poverty. A series of unfortunate events take place to an unsuspecting, unprepared and undeserving poor man who leaves his home village to look for money in the city to pay dowry for a wife.

"Do not go there and listen to other people's bad advice. It is poverty taking you away from your home, mother and sister. You are poor, your mother is poor, your sister is poor and you come from a poor home. Do not go to Bananaland and start behaving like some rich man's brother." p.31

"This was the undoing by poverty, for it was poverty that had driven me away from home. This was the undoing by Acholi marriage. It was the undoing by the white man; he brought money to us: it was the undoing by the money: it was too sweet..." p.69

I could not bear it.

In this village and country, as most African countries before the 90s, (although I feel not much has changed, at least where I'm from), women are bought and owned and considered sources of wealth, widows are inherited by relatives and unmarried women who are past a certain age are prostitutes.

"Ladwong, get up immediately! You are a mere wife! I bought you with my own money." p.48

"Ladwong! Do you think it was your parents who gave me money to marry you with? Listen, the money for marrying you came from our home. Sweep and tidy up the room, and arrange the seats! I don't want laziness and clumsiness in this house. Did your mother not bring you up properly?" p.50

"You have no right to speak in my house. Women have no voice in the family or in clan matters, because they are brought home by money or are married outside the clan." p.53

"I bought the items for my little sister because she was my future wealth. Therefore, money spent on her was invested. I wanted to make her attractive and desirable to young men. Her bridewealth could fetch me a wife in future." p.83

The narrator likens this investment to an investment in crop and cattle,

"Wealth must be looked after: even crops in the field must be weeded if they were to yield much; goats, sheep, chickens and cattle must be husbanded before they could increase in number. if animals are not tended well, they get ruined and perish altogether. That was why I was buying all these good things for Aciro: to make her beautiful and attractive to young men.." p.83

Well.
But where else was a man of no education and no inherited wealth from his dead father to get wealth with which to buy himself a wife. The man with many beautiful daughters was the wealthiest man in the village.
Of course the poor man gets chewed up and spat out by the city with very little to show for his 4 years there.

The poor get poorer.

[Dora Okeyo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okot writes with such authenticity you cannot help but find yourself immersed in the characters in White Teeth.

[Jeanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Small Ugandan story of change from the old ways, dealing with money and brideprice. Interesting.

[Bwesigye bwa Mwesigire]

Written in his twenties, this novel proves that Okot P'Bitek was a fully-made writer before he wrote Song of Lawino.