The internet version:
And every night by the pale moon light
In the forest he would sing...
The version I recall us singing:
And every night by the pale moon light
In the forest he would swing
The implication as we sang it was that the Zulu king was a monkey, of course.
As it coursed through my brain, I recognized the racism. I probably didn't do so at the time.
I'm not sure if I've recalled that song in 50 years, and why I did so this morning, I have no idea.
It may have to do with reading the book on the awful realities of the British Empire, only one of the horrible European Colonial practices.
I recall hearing the word for the Kenyan anti-imperialist warriors, the Mau-Mau revolt, "Mau-Mau" being used as a derogatory term.
One of the most beautiful movies in our personal library is, interestingly,
Nowhere in Africa based on Stephanie Zweig's fictionalized autobiography. It is a tale of the family of a German Jewish lawyer who escaped the Nazis by signing on to run a farm in British Kenya in order to get out of Germany.
A subtle point is made at one point in the movie, in a set of lines given to the character played by
Sidede Onyulo that the White People in Africa are understood to be weaklings by the indigenous people, a point he makes subtlety with great kindness and restraint, explaining why his wife doesn't need him; she does fine by herself whereas the European cannot function well in Kenya and he feels compelled to help them with great mercy and forbearance.
Interestingly, at one point in the movie, the German Jews are interned by the British for being German after the Second World War broke out.
I recommend this movie highly. My wife and I have seen it several times; she asked for a copy for her Birthday, and of course, I got it for her. It's now 20 years old, trilingual (as was Stephanie Zweig), English, German and Swahili.
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