15 Facts About Okot p'Bitek

Okot p'Bitek 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.

Okot p'Bitek was born in 1931 in Gulu, in the North Uganda grasslands.

Okot p'Bitek's father, Jebedayo Opi, was a schoolteacher, while his mother, Lacwaa Cerina, was a traditional singer, storyteller and dancer.

Okot p'Bitek was educated at Gulu High School, then at King's College, Budo, where he composed an opera based on traditional songs.

Okot p'Bitek went on to study at universities in the United Kingdom.

Okot p'Bitek travelled abroad first as a player with the Ugandan national football team, in 1958.

Okot p'Bitek gave up on football as a possible career, stayed in Britain, and studied education at the University of Bristol and then law at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth.

Okot p'Bitek then took a Bachelor of Letters degree in social anthropology at the University of Oxford, with a 1963 dissertation on Acholi and Lango traditional cultures.

Okot p'Bitek wrote an early novel, Lak Tar Miyo Kinyero Wi Lobo, in Lwo, later translated into English as White Teeth.

Okot p'Bitek organised an arts festival at Gulu, and then at Kisumu.

Okot p'Bitek became unpopular with the Ugandan government, and took teaching posts outside the country.

Okot p'Bitek took part in the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa in 1969.

Okot p'Bitek remained in exile during the regime of Idi Amin, returning in 1982 to Makerere University, to teach creative writing.

Okot p'Bitek participated in the inaugural International Book Fair of Radical Black and Third World Books in London in April 1982, when he performed extracts from his poems "Song of Lawino" and "Song of Ocol" in what would be his last public appearance.

Okot p'Bitek's point, aimed partly at Africans who had had a training in Christian traditions, was that it led to a concentration on matters distant from the actual concerns of Africans; this has been contested by others.