Title: Simba Nyaima: The Village that Sank
This English translation of Grace Ogot’s Simbi Nyaima originally written in Dholuo is as engaging today as it was when it was first published in 1983.
At the start of the novel, the small Owiny clan is settled in Usenge. But it is soon harassed away from this beloved home by the larger Jok clan.
Led by Ger Ondula, the clan emigrates to the land of Owila, but it does not stay here long as its women instigate a migration across the lake to Ruri hills, which reminds them of Usenge.
Finally, the clan settles in Ruri after fighting wars that force the occupying clans to enter into a peace covenant with them.
A splinter of the clan led by Ochieng’ Yogo, the ambitious wrestler-warrior, and nephew of Ger Ondula, migrates further south and settles at Simbi after they conquer the original occupants of the land, the Waswa clan.
Disaster overtakes this latter group when extraordinarily heavy rain sinks their village and makes it part of the small lake it had been built beside.
Besides dispensing historical truths about how parts of the African continent were populated by the ancestors, Grace Ogot’s elaboration explores moral and political truths that are especially relevant to modern-day Kenya.
Through very careful characterisation, Simbi Nyaima places before readers alternative, sometimes competing, notions of leadership, the woman’s role and position in society, and ethnic identity.
On leadership, for instance, the brave and wise Ger Ondula who contemplates issues before arriving at decisions meets his contrast, the brash fearless Ochieng’ Yogo.
This is the contrast between the democratic civilian leader and the military dictator. When it comes to women Simbi Nyaima presents an assortment of characters and argues for their proper appreciation.
Perhaps the feature that is most characteristic of Grace Ogot’s writing in Simbi Nyaima, besides the deployment of traditional Luo literary material, is the insistence on moral conduct by all regardless of their station in life.
The frame of the novel is a retold half legend half etiological Luo narrative. The narrative, also known as “Simbi Nyaima”, which literally translates to “Simbi that submerges”, explains the features in the saline Crater Lake Lake Simbi in Homa Bay County which suggest that a part of it was once dry land inhabited by people.
The story is that a sprawling village that sat next to the original, much smaller lake became part of the water body after it sank.
The drowning was judgement for the villagers’ arrogant refusal to shelter an elderly woman from a different village who had been caught out by the night. The traditional moral tale thus cautions against being cruel.
Ochieng’ Yogo and the Owiny clan that lived at Simbi are judged for thinking that their success in battle and in amassing wealth made them superior to everyone else, who they also disdained. The novel goes out of its way to make the point that our wealth must never close our eyes to the humanity of those who are not as fortunate as ourselves.
