Writer of poem ‘My Husband Has Gone’ speaks out
I have decided to write these few background notes on my poem, <i>My Husband Has Gone</i>, for two main reasons: First, there is an interesting history behind it and the circumstances under which it was written.
By Mukotani Rugyendo
I have decided to write these few background notes on my poem, My Husband Has Gone, for two main reasons: First, there is an interesting history behind it and the circumstances under which it was written.
It is my view as the poet that since it has been appearing in the Ordinary Level list of Literature set works, it is only fair that young poetry readers get the benefit of what could have been in the poet’s mind when he decided to express himself in those terms. I believe the students deserve the opportunity to get exposed to such background pointers.
Second, as the poet, I am intrigued by the interest the poem has generated in East Africa since it was published in An Introduction to East African Poetry by Oxford University Press in the early 1970s. I first encountered the signal that the poem had generated some interest when, in 1982, I was working as a sub-editor for a newspaper in Nairobi. I had been on the job for a few weeks when the paper’s managing editor, a white woman, came over to my desk and asked: “Are you the author of the poem my daughter has been assigned to read in her school?â€
I was, in a sense, taken aback because the lady was known to be mean with her commendation; and, indeed, I had at first feared I was going to be criticised for a poor headline in the day’s paper. But I quickly collected myself, had my memory go through several possibilities of published sources and then answered her with a question: “You mean this poem in the Jonathan Kariara and Ellen Kitonga collection?â€
She said: “Yes.â€
My mind then closed off the poem because it was not in the category where one can be regularly reminded of its existence through the seasonal royalty cheque payment. It was not until sometime last year when some teachers in Ugandan secondary schools told me a name similar to mine was on the Ordinary Level Literature set list that I once again revived my interest in the poem, this time with an aim of discovering what value is embedded in it that has endeared it to readers and curriculum developers for close to 30 years now.
Reason behind writing My Husband Has Gone
I originally wrote My husband Has Gone in my mother tongue, Runyankole-Rukiga, when I was in my Senior Six at Ntare School in Mbarara in 1969. An old schoolmate, Richard Ntiru (author of the poetry collection, Tensions), who was then a student at Makerere University, but was doing vacation work at Uganda Publishing House Ltd in Kampala, wrote to me and said the publishing house was interested in collecting poems originally written in mother tongues and then translated by their authors into English.
I thus penned two pieces, one of which was My Husband Has Gone (Ibanyi Agyenzire, in Runyankole/Rukiga). I have since lost track of the second poem. I then sent both poems and their English translations to Ntiru in Kampala.
I forgot all about the poems as I went off to Dar es Salaam for my university studies in 1970 and soon after that in January 1971 General Idi Amin blasted his way into power. This disoriented the lives of many, including the top managers at Uganda Publishing House and that seems to have been the end of the project.
The next time I heard of the poem was when Oxford University Press in Nairobi contacted me in Dar es Salaam asking for rights to publish the poem in English in a collection of East African poetry. Since I had no reason to say no, I jumped at that prospect too and did not bother to ask where they had got the poem from or what happened to its Runyankole/Rukiga version.
The poem: My Husband Has Gone
I do not intend to offer a full appreciation of my own poem. The beauty of poetry is that it is open to a variety of interpretations, even contradictory ones; and I would not want to impose my ‘understanding’ of the poem on the readers. I was, however, intrigued by a question concerning the poem that appeared to be extracted from a UNEB examination paper that I feared that there may be some misreading or misconception about the poem’s subject-matter. If there was, I thought, it would disadvantage the students who are supposed to answer questions.
The question went like this: My Husband Has Gone depicts the breakdown of a marriage with the departure of the husband. As you read it, consider what sort of a woman the speaker is — and what exactly she misses about her husband? For the benefit of our discussion, let us have the poem in full:
My husband has gone
My husband has gone
To where fate takes men
He’s gone and left me a widow
And gone with everything of mine.
I have heard others laugh
Laughing with their husbands
But mine has gone
And has left me a pauper.
He told me he was going to Buganda
In the mine of money
I have heard other people say
That prostitutes expose their private parts.
I have seen others go to the swamp
To look for perfumes
Why should I go there
When my husband has gone?
My husband has gone
And has taken the reliever of loneliness
That stick of manhood
Which drives the coldness.
I have heard others laugh
I have seen them shimmering
They spend their nights wriggling
And shaking their bottoms
But I have become a widow
I spend the nights trembling
Embracing the mats.
What is the poem about?
First of all, it is important to note that the woman who is speaking or singing in the poem is of the Bakiga ethnic group who live in the mountains of Kigezi (now Kabale) in south-western Uganda. The Bakiga are an intensely agricultural people, and since the woman in the poem talks of having “heard the others laughâ€, their laughter could sometimes be with their husbands as they work on the fields together, or it could be by groups of women who normally gather to help one another in tilling the land.
The poem is about a woman whose husband has left her and “gone to Bugandaâ€, “in the mine of moneyâ€. These are important leads to what has led this woman’s husband to go away. It is important to realise that the marriage has not broken down. What the husband has done is to go to Buganda to “mine moneyâ€. This points to an important aspect of the historical experience of people from some particular regions of Uganda (the Bakiga, the Banyoro, the Alur and the Lugbara being some of them) who were not allowed to grow cash crops by the colonial authorities so that they could provide a labour reservoir for the coffee, tea and sugarcane plantations in central Uganda.
Indeed, when many of us were growing up in the 1950s, it was common to see young men marry, stay with their young wives for a few months and then go off “to Buganda in the mine of moneyâ€. Sometimes the man would be away for over a year. While it was necessary for such husbands to leave their young wives and go to work for money, it was also painful to them and the wives that they had to live apart for long periods at such early stages in their youth. Yet they had to go because there was no economic activity in their area to raise money — more especially the colonial government’s taxes that they had to pay.
In My Husband Has Gone, therefore, a young wife is lamenting that her husband has left her and gone to work for money. This has left her lonely and miserable. She is not able to laugh like the other women because she is feeling the absence of her husband. At night she feels cold in bed because there is no one to make her warm. She does not see any reason to go to the swamp where other women collect herbal perfumes because she does not need to perfume her body for anyone.
The woman is yet worried about something else about her husband while he is away. Stories have been told that in the towns where the husband may have gone to get employment, there are many prostitutes who have no shame. They sell themselves by exposing “their private partsâ€. The woman is, therefore, seriously worried that her husband can end up getting caught up in a friendly relationship with such women.
Clearly, what the woman in the poem is missing is the company she would share with her husband if he was around. But the company the husband would offer is in many forms. He would go with her to the field to till. He would crack jokes and she would laugh. They would share meals together. And, ultimately, he would keep her warm in bed at night.
It is only natural that she would imagine what happens between other women and their husbands who have not gone away. This part of the poem (stanzas five and six) is intensely erotic. The husband has gone away with
the reliever of her loneliness
That stick of manhood
Which drives the coldness.
In stanza six, in addition to the “shimmering†of the other women’s bodies as they have to look good to their husbands, they also,
...spend the nights wriggling
And shaking their bottoms
While I have become a widow
I spend the nights trembling
Embracing the mats.
The poem tries to use the intensity of the loss and the discomfort it causes to bring out the predicament the woman finds herself in.
It is not correct to see the woman as a real widow. Her husband is alive, and she has agreed with him that he goes to work for money. But the fact is this makes her live a lonely life, and this is the effect the expression of her feelings about her situation is supposed to have on us. We are expected to feel her loneliness with her and wish with her that her husband had not gone away or that he returns soon.
She calls herself a widow to drive home the extent of her loss. In reality she does not believe she is a widow. But the loneliness and emptiness she is forced to endure makes her picture herself as one. This makes us sympathise and empathise with her even more.
I have decided to write these few background notes on my poem, My Husband Has Gone, for two main reasons: First, there is an interesting history behind it and the circumstances under which it was written.
It is my view as the poet that since it has been appearing in the Ordinary Level list of Literature set works, it is only fair that young poetry readers get the benefit of what could have been in the poet’s mind when he decided to express himself in those terms. I believe the students deserve the opportunity to get exposed to such background pointers.
Second, as the poet, I am intrigued by the interest the poem has generated in East Africa since it was published in An Introduction to East African Poetry by Oxford University Press in the early 1970s. I first encountered the signal that the poem had generated some interest when, in 1982, I was working as a sub-editor for a newspaper in Nairobi. I had been on the job for a few weeks when the paper’s managing editor, a white woman, came over to my desk and asked: “Are you the author of the poem my daughter has been assigned to read in her school?â€
I was, in a sense, taken aback because the lady was known to be mean with her commendation; and, indeed, I had at first feared I was going to be criticised for a poor headline in the day’s paper. But I quickly collected myself, had my memory go through several possibilities of published sources and then answered her with a question: “You mean this poem in the Jonathan Kariara and Ellen Kitonga collection?â€
She said: “Yes.â€
My mind then closed off the poem because it was not in the category where one can be regularly reminded of its existence through the seasonal royalty cheque payment. It was not until sometime last year when some teachers in Ugandan secondary schools told me a name similar to mine was on the Ordinary Level Literature set list that I once again revived my interest in the poem, this time with an aim of discovering what value is embedded in it that has endeared it to readers and curriculum developers for close to 30 years now.
Reason behind writing My Husband Has Gone
I originally wrote My husband Has Gone in my mother tongue, Runyankole-Rukiga, when I was in my Senior Six at Ntare School in Mbarara in 1969. An old schoolmate, Richard Ntiru (author of the poetry collection, Tensions), who was then a student at Makerere University, but was doing vacation work at Uganda Publishing House Ltd in Kampala, wrote to me and said the publishing house was interested in collecting poems originally written in mother tongues and then translated by their authors into English.
I thus penned two pieces, one of which was My Husband Has Gone (Ibanyi Agyenzire, in Runyankole/Rukiga). I have since lost track of the second poem. I then sent both poems and their English translations to Ntiru in Kampala.
I forgot all about the poems as I went off to Dar es Salaam for my university studies in 1970 and soon after that in January 1971 General Idi Amin blasted his way into power. This disoriented the lives of many, including the top managers at Uganda Publishing House and that seems to have been the end of the project.
The next time I heard of the poem was when Oxford University Press in Nairobi contacted me in Dar es Salaam asking for rights to publish the poem in English in a collection of East African poetry. Since I had no reason to say no, I jumped at that prospect too and did not bother to ask where they had got the poem from or what happened to its Runyankole/Rukiga version.
The poem: My Husband Has Gone
I do not intend to offer a full appreciation of my own poem. The beauty of poetry is that it is open to a variety of interpretations, even contradictory ones; and I would not want to impose my ‘understanding’ of the poem on the readers. I was, however, intrigued by a question concerning the poem that appeared to be extracted from a UNEB examination paper that I feared that there may be some misreading or misconception about the poem’s subject-matter. If there was, I thought, it would disadvantage the students who are supposed to answer questions.
The question went like this: My Husband Has Gone depicts the breakdown of a marriage with the departure of the husband. As you read it, consider what sort of a woman the speaker is — and what exactly she misses about her husband? For the benefit of our discussion, let us have the poem in full:
My husband has gone
My husband has gone
To where fate takes men
He’s gone and left me a widow
And gone with everything of mine.
I have heard others laugh
Laughing with their husbands
But mine has gone
And has left me a pauper.
He told me he was going to Buganda
In the mine of money
I have heard other people say
That prostitutes expose their private parts.
I have seen others go to the swamp
To look for perfumes
Why should I go there
When my husband has gone?
My husband has gone
And has taken the reliever of loneliness
That stick of manhood
Which drives the coldness.
I have heard others laugh
I have seen them shimmering
They spend their nights wriggling
And shaking their bottoms
But I have become a widow
I spend the nights trembling
Embracing the mats.
What is the poem about?
First of all, it is important to note that the woman who is speaking or singing in the poem is of the Bakiga ethnic group who live in the mountains of Kigezi (now Kabale) in south-western Uganda. The Bakiga are an intensely agricultural people, and since the woman in the poem talks of having “heard the others laughâ€, their laughter could sometimes be with their husbands as they work on the fields together, or it could be by groups of women who normally gather to help one another in tilling the land.
The poem is about a woman whose husband has left her and “gone to Bugandaâ€, “in the mine of moneyâ€. These are important leads to what has led this woman’s husband to go away. It is important to realise that the marriage has not broken down. What the husband has done is to go to Buganda to “mine moneyâ€. This points to an important aspect of the historical experience of people from some particular regions of Uganda (the Bakiga, the Banyoro, the Alur and the Lugbara being some of them) who were not allowed to grow cash crops by the colonial authorities so that they could provide a labour reservoir for the coffee, tea and sugarcane plantations in central Uganda.
Indeed, when many of us were growing up in the 1950s, it was common to see young men marry, stay with their young wives for a few months and then go off “to Buganda in the mine of moneyâ€. Sometimes the man would be away for over a year. While it was necessary for such husbands to leave their young wives and go to work for money, it was also painful to them and the wives that they had to live apart for long periods at such early stages in their youth. Yet they had to go because there was no economic activity in their area to raise money — more especially the colonial government’s taxes that they had to pay.
In My Husband Has Gone, therefore, a young wife is lamenting that her husband has left her and gone to work for money. This has left her lonely and miserable. She is not able to laugh like the other women because she is feeling the absence of her husband. At night she feels cold in bed because there is no one to make her warm. She does not see any reason to go to the swamp where other women collect herbal perfumes because she does not need to perfume her body for anyone.
The woman is yet worried about something else about her husband while he is away. Stories have been told that in the towns where the husband may have gone to get employment, there are many prostitutes who have no shame. They sell themselves by exposing “their private partsâ€. The woman is, therefore, seriously worried that her husband can end up getting caught up in a friendly relationship with such women.
Clearly, what the woman in the poem is missing is the company she would share with her husband if he was around. But the company the husband would offer is in many forms. He would go with her to the field to till. He would crack jokes and she would laugh. They would share meals together. And, ultimately, he would keep her warm in bed at night.
It is only natural that she would imagine what happens between other women and their husbands who have not gone away. This part of the poem (stanzas five and six) is intensely erotic. The husband has gone away with
the reliever of her loneliness
That stick of manhood
Which drives the coldness.
In stanza six, in addition to the “shimmering†of the other women’s bodies as they have to look good to their husbands, they also,
...spend the nights wriggling
And shaking their bottoms
While I have become a widow
I spend the nights trembling
Embracing the mats.
The poem tries to use the intensity of the loss and the discomfort it causes to bring out the predicament the woman finds herself in.
It is not correct to see the woman as a real widow. Her husband is alive, and she has agreed with him that he goes to work for money. But the fact is this makes her live a lonely life, and this is the effect the expression of her feelings about her situation is supposed to have on us. We are expected to feel her loneliness with her and wish with her that her husband had not gone away or that he returns soon.
She calls herself a widow to drive home the extent of her loss. In reality she does not believe she is a widow. But the loneliness and emptiness she is forced to endure makes her picture herself as one. This makes us sympathise and empathise with her even more.