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The Lusoga language has been the most revealing and entertaining window into Soga culture for me. “A different language is a different vision of life,” suggested Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini. I find much truth in this statement in my attempts to grasp a language so different than the English in which I think and communicate. The way even the most simplest ideas are expressed in any given language can highlight drastically different perspectives pervading the culture underlying the language. So when my ears hear, amaadhi gayenda kutoona (The rain wants to rain) or enmere erobye okuya (the food has refused to get ready), they struggle not only to interpret these different sounds but the different ideas behind the sounds.
In American English, situations, ideas, and things are typically the object or result of human thought, activity, or possession. I watered my yard. We build our house. I earn my money. In Lusoga, those situations, ideas, and things have their own life that can shape human experience. Obulwaire bulikunluma - Sicknesses are biting me. Oluguudo lutuyambye - The road has helped us. Emotoka eyenda musadha mugaiga - A motor car wants a rich man. The shift of emphasis between subject and object in Lusoga and English is subtle but profound. English idiom reflects a vision of life in which humans are placed in the center of a world assumed under their control. The vision of life revealed in Lusoga views everything under the sun actively shaping and creating the world we live in. What does this vision bring into focus about the Basoga people and their culture?
One “vision” Lusoga offers into Soga culture is their idea that life is something that happens to us rather than something we create for ourselves. A negative corollary here is the tendency to exempt oneself from responsibility since life is viewed primarily outside of one’s control. A contrast of expressions illustrates what I mean. An American who showed up thirty minutes after the scheduled departure time of a boat would simply say, “I missed the boat.” A Musoga would most likely lament, “the boat has left me.” Or a man who has prematurely run out of money might say, the money has gone, as if the money had grown legs and walked out of his pocket. Africans have long been forced to submit to direct and indirect rule of outsiders which perhaps accentuates an overly passive mentality and approach to life. Yet there is a positive affirmation about Soga culture revealed in its language:
A second “vision”, and more significant, is the idea that Life is something that happens all around us. The rain has returned. The food has filled me. Katonda agabula – God Provides! For the Basoga, the world is not a passive object of human domination and control but active and alive. The implications in this are penetrating, especially if we allow them to search and challenge our American “vision of life.” We might first realize that nature and the God of nature are bigger than we are and operate with or without our consent. Just like the teacher in Ecclesiastes who seeks to grasp the world, we might truly admit, “if clouds are full of water, they pour rain on the earth…you cannot understand the work of God.” (Ecc. 11:3-5)
The second vision suggests life is not something we create or control but something we participate in. Studying Lusoga, and by extension Soga culture has helped me recover the vantage point from which I can join the Psalmists who speak of nature’s chorus, “Let the rivers clap their hands, Let the mountains sing together for joy” (Psalms 98:8). Or exclaim, “Shout joyfully to the Lord, all the earth,” (Psalm 100:1) The Lusoga language has helped me expand my vision of life and recover a syntax of faith so that with greater meaning I can confess: The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it. The world and all its people belong to him.” (Psalm 24:1)
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