Theatre
Lake God
Bole Butake · 1986
Synopsis
On the shore of a sacred lake, the Fon Joseph, converted to Christianity under the influence of Father Leo, refuses to offer the lake god the sacrifices of his ancestors. The herds of the grazier Dewa ravage the women's fields; the Fon does not settle their quarrel and sells the land to the graziers. The women then swear an oath of silence and refuse themselves to their husbands, while the seven pillars of the Kwifon, the secret society of men, which Father Leo holds to be demonic, withdraw to the sacred grove to implore the god.
Context
Written during the author's stay at the International Writing Program in Iowa, the play was published and performed in Yaoundé in 1986, the year the Lake Nyos disaster, in the country's North-West, killed more than 1,700 people by asphyxiation. Joyce Ashuntantang, writing for the African Literature Association, sees in it a mytho-poetic explanation of the disaster, and Nalova Lyonga makes the lake the symbol of the sufferings of the Anglophone minority. An ecofeminist reading from 2018 studies in it the link between the oppression of women and the exploitation of the land.
Who it is for
In English. It helps to know that the Fon rules over the village, surrounded by initiatory societies of men and women.
Prizes and reception
No prize found for the play. It was reissued in 1999 by Éditions CLE, then in 2013 by Langaa, in Bamenda.
Sources for this page 6
The pages consulted to check this page.