Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 173
further below. We admit that we do not know who Ruwa was, but are quite sure that he was
not linked to Ghwa'a, but more to what would later become Korana Basa.
One of the reasons Mathews might have been mistaken on a few details is presumably
because many oral protagonists tend to explain things from their local perspective. We stick
here to a lineage tree I established in Figure 12 above, after talking to friends in almost all the
administrative wards of modern Korana Basa and Ghwa'a. I admit that it is a compilation
formed after much consideration and comparison with various oral protagonists. Sometimes
our sources contradicted each other, and at other times we, that is mainly John Zakariya and I,
were able to establish that they had mixed things up.
We demonstrate this in the following two examples from Kunde and Hembe: According to
Tada Zangav from Hudimche (1995), Mbra had come from the direction of Kunde and
continued uphill (southwards) to a place between Ngoshe Sama and Hudimche. He then went
on to say that there was a house that could still be found, meaning the alleged ruins of Mbra's
house already mentioned. In comparison, most other sources were clear that Mbra never made
it to Kunde, but that he had been travelling from the direction of Tur and reached only as far
north as the place considered as the ruin of his house between Ngoshe Sama and Hudimche.
Another confusion concerning Mbra occurred in the story of Hembe. According to a friend
from Hembe (we discuss this in greater detail in the next chapter section), Mbra killed a wild
animal called thatile (some kind of bush meat). Mbra allegedly brought Hembe the meat by
closing the door with the pile of meat. This was, according to my friend, the reason why the
Vaghayaya people did not pay the dowry for their mother. As we will see below, our local
friend confused Mughuze with Mbra.
Such confusions are not uncommon and I am sure that the lineage tree presented above is not
entirely correct either. Mathews must have been confronted with the same problem, and most
likely did not spend as much time researching narratives about lineage connections in
Dghweɗe as John and I did. Still, I cannot be sure, and my suggested Dghweɗe lineage tree
might therefore not meet everyone's approval.
The three 'brothers' or four 'sons' of Dghweɗe-Mbra
Dghweɗe appears in Figure 12 together with Wasa, Kwiyaka and Tasa, whereby those three
are not his three 'brothers' but only his classificatory co-descendants. They can also be
classified with other patrilineal key descendants of Mbra, such as Wandala or Dingida (Figure
9) who we have excluded from our dedicated Dghweɗe lineage tree. The reason for this is that
they moved on and therefore do not have much of a ritual relevance to what we think formed
Dghweɗe. According to our accounts, the Podoko had already left, but the Ɗagha peacemaker
lineage also claims links with Wasa. We do not know when, and in what sequence, the
Podoko left, but it appears to have been before the Mughuze-Ruwa completed their
expansion, resulting eventually in the rise of the Vaghagaya. The circumstance of the
Mughuze-Ruwa becoming so dominant might have also influenced Tasa, and perhaps
Kwiyaka and Wasa to become 'brothers', in the version of the Dghweɗe house of Mbra we
have adopted here.
We display below an alternative version, in which Dghweɗe has moved up one level, and as a
result suddenly appears as the apical ancestor for all the other Dghweɗe clan groups, now
being made exclusive, and where Ngara has moved one level up and has become link ancestor
for Thakara and Ruwa (Figure 12a). We prefer the first version (Figure 12) because it better
demonstrates the specialist position of the others as founding ancestors of associated clan
groups. We discuss the cornblesser and rainmaker, and the Ɗagha diviner and peacemaker
lineages separately, because we identify them as being associated with Dghweɗe. Some of
them, such as the Gudule and Hembe, are even seen as first settlers. We learn later how their
local position, excepting that of Hembe, is expressed in ritual roles contributing to the ethnic
unity of southern and northern Dghweɗe. We will learn, across various chapters, that a
171
