Lakunle tries to leave, but Baroka insists he stays and they continue the dance. Suddenly, Baroka joins the dance and the action stops as the villagers kneel and bow to him. The rest of the villagers dance while Lakunle performs realistic miming of driving a car, drunkenly wandering through the jungle, and discovering Sidi in the river. Despite his initial unwillingness to participate, Lakunle throws himself fully into the dance. Sidi suggests that they dance the dance of the “lost traveler.” She assigns parts to the villagers and forces Lakunle to play the part of the stranger. Upon hearing this, Sidi declares that she is more powerful than Baroka and has no reason to marry Lakunle. Another girl says that Baroka appears in the magazine as well, but his image is very small and shows him next to the latrines. They say that Baroka, the village Bale, is still looking at the images and is jealous of Sidi, though he pretends to be proud of her. Sidi excitedly asks if the stranger made Sidi as beautiful as he said he would, and the girls tell her he did. She calls Lakunle a mad man.Ī group of young villagers enter the square and tell Sidi that the stranger returned to the village with a magazine of images. Though Lakunle insists that he loves Sidi and that kissing is something normal for modern couples, Sidi replies that kissing is only a way to avoid paying the bride price. He grabs Sidi and tells her how wonderful their modern marriage will be. Lakunle sees this as barbaric and refuses.
Sidi reminds him that she would marry him any day if he would agree to pay the bride price. Lakunle refuses to give Sidi her pail of water back until she agrees to marry him and he offers a number of flowery lines that describe his intense love for her. He says that soon the village will have machines to do all the hard work and he describes the beauty of Lagos, which is an entirely modern city. Sidi grows angry as Lakunle tells her that women are less intelligent than men because of their small brains. He berates her for carrying loads on her head and not dressing modestly, and she retaliates by reminding Lakunle that the village calls him a madman. Lakunle, the western-educated schoolteacher, sees her, runs from his classroom, and takes Sidi’s pail. The play begins as Sidi, the village belle of Ilujinle, enters the square with a pail of water balanced on her head.
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