Title:	Reading Migration and Culture
Authors:	Dan Ojwang
Keywords:	Culture
Issue Date:	2013
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan
Description:	The roots of this book reach back to the mid-1990s when, as a postgraduate student, I first encountered the fiction of M. G. Vassanji. Growing up in Kenya, I had read several texts that dealt with the presence of East Africans of South Asian origin, but none of them was by a member of any of the South Asian communities in the region. The figure of the “Indian” was common enough, appearing in popular jokes, formal historical accounts about the emergence of Kenya and Uganda as nation-states, in histories of pre-colonial Indian Ocean trade routes, in stories about the Ugandan-Asian expulsions of 1972, in my uncles’ accounts of black labor in colonial-era towns and plantations, in popular music, in novels by black East African authors, and in media discussions of “the racial issue.” In the many contexts in which it appeared, the generic figure of the “Indian” was usually, though not exclusively, an object of popular hopes, fears and resentments engendered by the rapid changes brought about by colonial “civilization.” It served as a lightning rod for anxieties about a new type of social life, one that was increasingly mediated by money and commodities. These anxieties were well captured in Otieno Achach (Otieno the Deviant/ Wayward), the first novel in the Luo language, authored by Christian Konjra Alloo (from Tanzania) and published in 1966. In this story, which I first read as a schoolboy, the picaresque anti-hero, Otieno, wanders about the countryside next to Lake Victoria in north-western Tanganyika, the old colonial name for part of what would later become independent Tanzania. Spoilt by his peasant parents because he is an only child, and dogged by ill luck, Otieno commits many crimes in his short life. In the melodramatic ending to the novel, he is buried alive after becoming trapped, mysteriously, in a grave that has been dug for one of his victims. In an early episode in the novel, Otieno’s wanderlust leads him to the home of a kindly “Ja-Hindi” (Luo for “Indian”) merchant in the small trading settlement at Kinesi on the shores of Lake Victoria. Here, he finds employment as a domestic servant, a washerman. Working as a laundry-man runs against a masculine code of honor to which he vaguely subscribes, but is willing to compromise because he is to be paid a monthly sum of twenty-five shillings. Due to his humility, he is promoted to work as a shop assistant, an easier role more in line with his wishes. One day, he learns that the “Ja-Hindi” is temporarily closing shop and going away on a day’s visit. Otieno is excited because this is his chance to take a break from the monotony of his work in the shop to go fishing in the lake nearby. However, his desire for adventure is soon dashed when “the woman owner of the house,” the wife of the “Ja-Hindi,” gives him an unusually large pile of clothes to wash. He is disappointed at this turn of events, but decides to humble himself once again. His discovery that the pile includes an item soiled by an infant, however, takes him back to a past of criminality he thought he had left behind. The son of the merchant, younger than Otieno, noticing the look of disgust on the latter’s face, tells him: “Boi, kaw lewnigo mondo ichak luoko piyo piyo” (“Boy, take those clothes and start washing them fast!”)1 In anger, Otieno slaps the boy, who rushes into the house and comes out with a hammer, ready to strike back. Otieno wrestles the hammer away from the boy and bludgeons him with it, leaving him for dead. Otieno’s last act before he leaves the household is to take as many valuable objects as he can: blankets, bed sheets, clothes, spoons and knives. He returns to his home to resume his old role as a herdsboy, but soon sets out on yet another quest for employment with an Indian merchant when his loot is stolen.
URI:	http://10.6.20.12:80/handle/123456789/52540
ISBN:	978-1-137-26296-7
Appears in Collections:	Population Studies

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