Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 177
descendants were seen as being genuine Ɗagha peacemakers. Conversely, the first ones were
not seen to be pure Ɗagha, a view underpinned by the story that they had allegedly been
found in the stomach of one of Wasa's cows. There is an alternative narrative about the
special talents of the Ɗagha of the western foothills which we will present a little later in our
discussion of the Ɗagha of Kadzgwara descent.
The last few paragraphs show how complex oral history is, and how many versions we have
to take into consideration to find an underlying narrative that is sufficiently convincing from
which to reconstruct a form of local Dghweɗe history. Many of the points we are making
need to be revisited and looked at from various perspectives of the intricacies of Dghweɗe
culture, to make ethnographic sense of them in their own right.
Vaghagaya
Mughuze must be considered a mythical founder personality, a view which is underpinned by
the oral narrative that he had seven sons (village head of Korana Basa, 1994). Among the
seven sons of Mughuze, Vaghagaya would become the most successful, and he too was often
seen as someone who had also seven sons. However, Vaghagaya was locally remembered as
much more concrete, and he was also more of a legitimate descendant because he had not
been adopted as a local nobody by becoming houseboy to an autochthonous clan member, as
was Mughuze. He most likely grew up and married and then lived in what later became the
administrative ward of Korana Basa. We remember that at the time of Vaghagaya's birth, a
traditional ward by the name of Korana did not yet exist, and that it was possibly still called
'Gharguze'.
Oral history reports that Vaghagaya 'was left in the house'. This presumably means that he
inherited the house. According to some of my friends from Korana Basa (bulama Mbasuwe
and elders, 1995), Vaghagaya had three wives, but his mother was Dugh Viye. Figure 12c
below shows that Dugh Viye Hembe was also known as Bughwithe. She was the daughter of
Hembe. We learn, in our chapter about outsiders as founders, how Hembe became Mughuze's
father-in-law, but briefly mention here a narrative I was told in Gharaza (1996). The story
tells us how Dugh Viye was accused by her co-wives of being a witch, and the subsequent
events after the birth of Vaghagaya:
Dugh Viye was a wife of Mughuze Ruwa given by Hembe. Dugh Viye was accused by her co-wives
of being a witch. Her son Kwili'a told her that if she was really using witchcraft she should stop this.
Dugh Viye was very annoyed about the accusation and cursed her son Kwili'a. She said to him that he
would not grow in number. Next, she packed her son Vaghagaya and went off towards Gvoko. While
she was leaving, something happened to her accidentally. It was something like clouds or fog that
arrived to cover her and she could not see the road any longer. She could also feel her son Vaghagaya
on her back holding on to something very heavy with his hands. Since she could not see the road in
front of her any longer and since she could not remove the object on her back, she stopped and
checked upon Vaghagaya and discovered a stone in his hands. She tried to remove that stone, but she
could not. Now she turned around and decided to make her way back home. She surely thought that
there must be a reason for the mystery that she could not go any further. When she arrived back home,
she explained everything to her husband and she showed him the stone in Vaghagaya's hands. Since
then the Vaghagaya carry the name Bughwithe, which is said to refer to that particular incident.
We like to interpret the gravity generated by the stone that baby Vaghagaya held in his hand
as a representation of his local bond and an upcoming sense of entitlement, and indeed, the
three ancestor stones (see Plate 25c) found in every traditional Dghweɗe house are the
material representation of that entitlement. We do not know how old the use of ancestor
stones is, but some of the houses we documented were themselves several generations old.
We will learn about Dghweɗe stone architecture in the relevant chapters of Part Three. At this
point, we only want to refer to the part where Dugh Viye curses her son Kwili'a, who, if we
compare with Figure 12c of our Vaghagya lineage tree, has not expanded or reproduced at all.
Unfortunately, we do not know the literal meaning of the name 'Bughwithe', but know that it
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