Okukokolima Is Ugandan for Cock-A-Doodle-Doo

It’s time for a nonsensical braided essay about roosters as we enter summertime.

Wilson walking the apartment complex after the rain.

“Where the rooster crows, there is a village.”

~Famous African Proverb~

I’ve never given roosters much thought until I travelled to Uganda in 2022. Back home in the Southwest I knew of people who raised them for cockfights but nothing more beyond that. Cockfights in America are brutal. Razors are placed on the rooster’s feet so that both can duel to the death. Gambling and drinking are usually involved. Definitely not my cup of tea, but to each his own.

The first time I heard a rooster crow I’m sleeping in my room at the Lavanda Hotel with my then fiancée – now my wife. The jetlag kicked in sooner than I had anticipated but not strong enough to keep me comatose.

COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO! 

I think I’m dreaming. But I don’t feel like I’m in a dream state. The television set in my brain isn’t turned on. There are no images or sounds or anything dreamlike. I’m in that range of sleep between unconsciousness and being somewhat aware of my surroundings.

COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO!

That one I hear. But I don’t want to open my eyes. I’m in the zone, to borrow from Vygotsky, I’m in the zone of proximal comfort. I feel the way a cell phone must feel after being charged up after a few hours of heavy YouTube bingeing.

COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO! 

My eyes open. I look at my watch. It’s three-thirty in the afternoon. I must’ve fallen asleep at twelve. I reach over to hug my fiancée. She’s sleeping on her stomach holding a pillow with her head facing me. For some odd reason I make sure she’s breathing. I kiss her forehead. The rooster crows once more and I realize it’s not sunrise and the sound must be right out of my hotel room. I quietly go to the window, draw back the heavy floral embroidered curtain, and look out. In the distance, I see this majestic rooster standing tall with grey and black feathers mixed in dashes of pepper and salt. He’s staring back at me as if he knows me. His head is bright red and his comb resembles the way children draw ocean waves. He looks strong, almost as if he’s the father of his flock the way I’m the father to mine. We stare at one another for what seems like an eternity. I hear my fiancé calling me back to bed.

***

The word ‘rooster’ is of North American origin. It’s built from the verb ‘roost’ and the adjective forming suffix -er meaning ‘that which roosts,’ which is really strange because bats also roost, but we call them ‘bats.’ Maybe it has something to do with the word ‘cock’ becoming a dysphemism for ‘penis’ in the United States somewhere between the late 1700s and mid-1800s. The origins of ‘roost’ go back to proto-Germanic ‘hrostaz’ that then morphed into ‘hrost’ in Old German and finally formed into ‘roste’ in Middle English.

The famous idiom ‘the chickens coming home to roost’ was taken from the opening in Robert Southey’s 1810 poem The Curse of Kehama, “Curses are like young chicken, they always come home to roost.” The idiom is used in a variety of contexts. I can only think of a historical one.

On December 4, 1963, following his lecture “God’s Judgment of White America” given at the Manhattan Center in New York City, during the Q&A session, Malcolm X, then member of the NOI – the Nation of Islam - was asked about the assassination of president John F. Kennedy. He gave a controversial response to which no transcript of his actual statement exists. Spike Lee, in his 1992 film Malcolm X, improvises accordingly:

News Reporter: Mr. X, don’t you even feel a little bit of remorse, saddened by the President Kennedy’s assassination?

Malcolm X: Well sir, I don’t think anyone here would deny that when you send your chickens out in the morning from your barnyard, those chickens will return that evening to your barnyard. Not your neighbor’s barnyard. I think this is the prime example of the devil’s chickens coming back home to roost. That the chickens that he sent out, the violence that he perpetrated in other countries, here and abroad, be it four children in Birmingham or Medgar Evers or Lumumba in Africa, I think this same violence has come back to claim one of their own. Now, being an old farm boy myself, chickens coming home to roost never made me sad, in fact it’s only made me glad.

The comment caused the leader of the NOI, Elijah Muhammad, to silence him for ninety days. Malcolm eventually broke off from the Nation after learning of Muhammad’s premarital affairs and being invited by Sunni Muslims to make the pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia where he converted to orthodox Islam.

Ironically, Malcolm X was assassinated on February 21, 1965 at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem, New York by members of the Fruit of Islam – the NOI’s security branch.

***

COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO!

The second time I heard a rooster crow was in a furnished apartment we stayed in after we left the Lavanda Hotel in Nairembe. He faithfully crowed every morning at sunrise. It’s how I knew it was time to get up for breakfast. I heard him for a week straight until I finally saw him outside wandering around below us. He was reddish-brown with a salt and pepper tail. Unlike the first rooster I saw at Lavanda, me and this one didn’t bond. He was more of an asshole strutting his stuff up and down as if he was Flyguy from I’m Gonna Git You Sucka. Something told me he was a bachelor. He reminded me of my father.

According to some scientists, the rooster is a biological descendant of dinosaurs, the tyrannosaurus rex to be exact. A 2004 research study among international geneticists mapped the chicken genome revealing they were the first domesticated animal and the first bird to originate from Southeast Asia approximately fifty-eight thousand years ago. This red junglefowl seemingly made its way to ancient Egypt and Rome, then spread to other parts of Europe, Africa and the Americas. Ellen Pasternack, evolutionary biologist, explains, in her Notes from the henhouse: How the Rooster got his Crow, the intensity of the rooster’s crow. Unbeknownst to yours truly, it can get as loud as a lawnmower or chainsaw and is magnified to the sound of a jet taking off if heard at close range. She goes on to mention that researchers in Belgium (2017) CT scanned a few roosters while they were crowing discovering that when they open their beaks, they have ear flaps that close over their ears to protect them from the sound. Amazing how far science has come. I wish the same can be said of religion.

***

COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO!

The third time I heard a rooster crow was in Najjera II. But, like the gods of the Abrahamic faiths he remained incognito much of the time I lived there. He belonged to a nearby neighbor who had barbed-wire walls surrounding his home about ten feet high resembling something out of Alcatraz in its heyday. Every time he crowed, usually in the mornings or in the late afternoons, I always tried to picture what he looked like. I’d hear dogs howling from the same residence every time the Islamic call to prayer blasted from the mosque minaret next to us. One day, the rooster stopped crowing. A month went by, but I never heard that unique crackly crow from him again. I’d like to believe that his owner left the front gate open one day and he miraculously fled, but another part of me thinks that either the dogs tore him apart or his owner had him for supper.

The rooster has major relevance in the world’s belief systems from Southeast Asia, to Africa, to the Middle East, to Europe, to America. Among the ancient Greeks, the rooster was the sacred animal of Helios. The Romans used roosters as oracles and were treated as scared. In the Far East, the Chinese zodiac uses the rooster as the tenth of the twelve animal symbols. Among Taoists, the rooster symbolizes the yang in the ying-yang dichotomy and represents the sun. In Japan, Shinto shrines associate the rooster with the sun goddess, Amaterasu. In Indonesian myths, some hold that the rooster can resurrect the dead or grant wishes. The Dayak people believe in a rooster god and that humans can become fighting roosters on its behalf. Some Hmong Shamans use the rooster as a means to repel evil spirits and initiate ceremonial cock fights. The Santeria of North America use roosters as ritual sacrifices to ward off the evil eye. The Igbo of Nigeria use the blood of the rooster as a consecration before religious ceremonies.

In the Old Testament, in the book of Isaiah, chapter 1, verse 18, it is written, “Come now, let us settle the matter, says the Lord. Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.” From this verse, the Jews derived the practice of ‘kapparos’ on Yom Kippur where a rooster is swung around one’s head and then slaughtered as expiation for sins. The sins are said to transfer to the rooster and purify the person. Natronai Ben Hilai mentions its origins originating among Babylonian Jews. They interpreted the Hebrew word ‘Gever’ to mean both man and rooster, thus the belief that roosters were a suitable substitute for man as a religious vessel. In comparison, the Khasi of Northeast India sacrifice the rooster to bear the sins of man. The Hindus of Kerala sacrifice roosters to the Theyyam gods despite it being forbidden among other Hindus as well as Jains and Buddhists.

In the New Testament, Jesus prophesied that his disciple Peter would betray him, “I tell you, Peter, before the rooster crows today, you will deny three times that you know me.” As a symbol, it refers to man’s weakness and denial of Christ; Jesus’s forgiveness of Peter signifies God’s willingness to pardon and love those who betray him.

Central European folk tales claim that when the rooster crows, the devil flees from the first crowing. In contrast, Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam, is recorded to have said, “When you hear the crowing of the rooster, supplicate to Allah that he bestow favor on you for it (the rooster) has seen an angel.”

***

COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO!

This time, the rooster I hear crowing is downstairs. He isn’t shy and doesn’t run from the children playing in the parking lot. I know he belongs to someone I just don’t know who. Like the Nairembe rooster, this one seems like a bachelor. But he isn’t an asshole. He’s actually pretty cool. He carries himself like an OG. When he isn’t pecking the floor for food, he struts with his head and beak upright. He never looks down when you walk by him. His comb is blood red, his head down to his neck is bronze, and the rest of his body is black. From top to bottom he’s covered in white blemishes similar to the sprouts of white hair coming out of my head. I decide to call him Wilson – he reminds me of Wilson the Volleyball in that 2000 Tom Hank’s movie Cast Away. He crows all day long but not in an annoying way. The pitch is strong, yet soothing.

COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO!

In Luganda, the rooster is called enkoko empanga. I think that’s easier to say than the Latin form gallus gallus domesticus. The onomatopoeia of the rooster in Luganda is okukokolima. I try to hear that in the mornings when Wilson crows. OKUKOKOLIMA! OKUKOKOLIMA! But I can’t hear it. I keep hearing what I was taught, “Cock-a-doodle-doo.” Language is funny like that.  

I often ponder the onomatopoeia of the rooster in other languages among my students…in Spanish, the rooster crows QUIQUIRIQUI while in Chinese it’s WO-WO-WO. In German, the rooster crows KIKERIKI almost like in Portuguese where it crows COCORICO. My Japanese students told me that the rooster crows KOKEKOKKO. A Palestinian student I once taught told me that Mahmoud Abbas prohibited all roosters residing in Area A of the West Bank from crowing in Hebrew KUKURIKU and instead must crow in Arabic KOOKOOKOO-KOO. One of my Somali students told me that in Xamar the rooster crows KU-KU-KUU-KUU. I hope one day to write a pamphlet that includes the crowing of the rooster in all of the world’s languages.

COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO!

Today it rained from morning until sunset. Wilson did his usual tour of the complex pecking and crowing to the nearby roosters. I can hear them going tit-for-tat. I’m jealous. I wish I was King David or Doctor Dolittle. I often think about being able to speak with animals. So many questions. Do they have vowels and constants? Are there diphthongs or consonant clusters? Do they use idioms or other forms of expression? Do they have make claims about divine beings speaking to them or revealing divine books? When I taught English in Riyadh, a Ugandan Muslim told me that Idi Amin used to own a chicken farm in Jeddah. He loved breeding his chickens but favored his roosters the most. One time a few roosters bullied another rooster. Singlehandedly, that rooster pecked the other roosters to death. Idi named that rooster Lubega. When Lubega died, Idi cried for three days. He even prayed over his body. A few days later, Idi fell ill and died in the hospital. Some say he loved that rooster more than his own children. Something about how Lubega reminded him of himself when he ruled over Uganda.

I go downstairs to take a pic of Wilson. It almost feels as if he wants me to. He stands upright turning one eye towards the camera and strikes a pose. It’s almost as if he’s smiling at me. My neighbors look at me like I’m crazy. I hear a few say what’s this muzungu doing? I ignore them. In America we do the same thing to Ugandans when they take pics of our pitbulls. After a few snapshots, I wave to Wilson. I put my heart on my chest. He lets out a sound somewhere between crowing and grunting. I think I hear him say, “Webale nyo ssebo.” Perhaps it’s the Waragi running through my veins. I’ve never given roosters much thought until I travelled to Uganda.