Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 179
to the formation of Gathaghure. Out of this comes the question of how Hembe as a place
came about, considering Mathews’ claim that he originated in Kwalika.
If we look at Figure 8, we see that Hembe and Gathaghure are next to each other to the north
of Gudule. We remember that they formed a war alliance together with Gudule when they
fought Kunde and Ghwa'a in the recent pre-colonial past. The reason for the war alliance
between Gathaghure and Hembe was based on the close relationship between Gathaghure and
Hembe because the latter had received Mughuze's son Balngada as dowry. This is of course
only a legendary reason, but nevertheless it represents circumstantial evidence that we can
further contextualise with other memory accounts, in this case with Mathews’ and our oral
sources.
If we take into account Mathews’ claim that the Hembe originally came from Kwalika, and
match that tradition with Hembe's forefathers listed in Figure 12, we can only assume that
Mughuze became Hembe's houseboy after Hembe was founded but before Gathaghure came
into existence. It also suggests that during that early time Vaghagaya had not yet formed, and
Gudule was still occupying much of the space in between what would later become Kwalika
and early Hembe. This is a spatial scenario we should perhaps keep in mind when thinking of
a pre-Korana southern and northern Dghweɗe. After all, none of the names of the places we
allocated presumably existed before Dghweɗe as we know it came about. We like to think
that this is an important reason why our local protagonists might have also referred to
Vaghagaya as 'Bughwithe'. Bughwithe’s strength as a founding ancestress of Hembe descent,
whose forefathers were considered to be early settlers of Kwalika, gave Vaghagaya his
custodial entitlement. We also think that this is why Mughuze gave his firstborn son as
dowry, which founded the close liaison between Hembe and Gathaghure.
Figure 12c: Vaghagaya lineage tree
Mughuze-Ruwa = Dugh Viye Hembe
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Balngada Ghweske Kuɗume Vaghagaya
Yazila
Nagaladewe Wudza Kwili'a
(---------- Gathagure ----------) ('Bughwithe') (Gathagure) (Kwalika) (Takweshe)
________________ | ___________
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Kurana
Kandile
Ghuna and Duwara (first in Hudimche)
____________|____
___ | ___
_____|_____
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Karpa Dagwana Kwachiwe
(------------Korana------------)
Kandile Lala
(Hudimche)
Ghuna Wuzawa
(Gharaza)
Even though his descendants eventually became very successful in terms of population
number, they called upon the Gudule not to leave in their entirety, for the sake of
underpinning their newly gained custodian entitlement with the ritual seniority of the Gudule.
We further discuss this later in the context of the Gudule’s role in starting the bull festival
(Chapter 3.13) where we present various key scenarios which explain their ritual role for the
whole of Dghweɗe. At this point we focus only on the Vaghagaya, and in Figure 12c above
demonstrate how settlement space was redistributed along lineage lines by the expansion of
the Mughuze-Ruwa.
Figure 12c shows the lineage tree of Vaghagaya in the context of his co-descending
'brothers', and we see that Kwilia'a is the only one who has not reproduced. We remember that
he had been cursed by his mother Dugh Viye. We have allocated all the 'sons' of MughuzeRuwa listed above to Dugh Viye, and can see underneath the lineage wards they occupy. We
have elaborated the lineage tree for Vaghagaya to show the spatial context of their expansion.
Despite Kurana being most likely the seventh born, we have put him to the left and listed his
three sons underneath.
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