Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 191
After those people had died, Zadva and Kalaghva grew up in peace and finally got married. It was
Zadva who had three sons. Among these three sons, it was Kumba Zadva who was alone with his
mother.
Kumba eventually had seven wives and seven dogs. But all the children he was getting died.
Because of that, he went into exile. There he met a woman in the water [presumably a water
spirit]. He told her that he had a problem and that all his children were dying. The woman asked:
'Is it that what got you to this place here?' He answered: 'Yes.' The woman advised him to find the
black and white bat on the palm tree and to kill all her infant children. Then to hide beside and
observe what the bat was going to do. When the bat brought food for the children, she found all
her children dead. The bat went on a search to find a medicine to revive her dead children. Finally,
she succeeded and found one cactus medicine to revive them. Kumba Zadva went and picked that
medicine and carried it home.
On his way home he could not find his way uphill. He asked a rock to get out of his way. A huge
rock in front of him cracked and he walked through the gap. This place is now called WidaghaWidagha Kumba 3. When he reached home it was already night. He laid down on the refuse
ground of the house. In the morning one of his wives came out to dump refuse and she saw
somebody lying there. She quickly runs back in to inform the other wives and all of them run out
to see, but none of them recognized him. Finally, one of his dogs, called Maza, recognized him
and behaved in a very excited manner and now his wives saw it was Kumba.
Kumba got up and took his wives together with him inside. But before he entered the house he
called his family to bring him a bull and he slaughtered the bull in front of the entry. After he had
entered his main room he called again for a certain she-cow, the one he knew did not give birth
because she was infertile. He slaughtered the she-cow in the middle [foyer area] of his house.
Finally, he went and slaughtered a castrated billy goat in front of the door of his first wife's room.
After that, he went out behind his house and planted the cactus [medicine] he had brought from
exile.
The first sexual encounter with his wife led to pregnancy. A boy was born. But already after a
year, this boy died. He had named him Mufake. Kumba went to get some of the medicine he had
planted behind the house and held it under his dead son's nose. The child revived. Now he had a
second child and the same thing happened again. The child died and he revived it with his [cactus]
plant called huɓa. 4 After that, he had altogether seven sons and all of them died but he could
revive them all. The village head who told the story now listed the seven sons of Kumba for us.
We will not list those seven sons here, but some of them became founders of powerful Zelidva
lineages by intermarrying with their Wandala and Glavda neighbours. We have already given a
summary description of the ethnolinguistic complexities of the Gwoza LGA (Chapter 1.2). The
current context is to present the circumstances of the legendary tale to show how the grandson of
a houseboy and stranger made it as an outsider to became a founding ancestor for a whole new
ethnic group: the Zelidva.
What stands out is the clan medicine recommended by a Ɗagha diviner, which Ghwasa
successfully applies to kill the children of the Zuwagha clan. Later it was his grandson Kumba
who received another clan medicine via a spirit woman linked to water, which allowed him to
revive his children who were regularly dying before reaching adulthood. From then on his clan
expanded and steadily grew in number. This shows that both Mughuze and Kumba owned clan
medicines to increase in number, but Kumba seems to be the only one who actively used it to
increase his kind after his grandfather had first killed the children of the autochthonous host clan.
We notice that Ibrahim Vile refers to both types of clan medicines as 'cactus' (see also Mathews
1934), and remember that huɓa (gadali in Fulfulde) was one of the ritual plants from which we
derived the ethnonym Godaliy, and we show in Plate 20a (Chapter 3.10) an example of the
application of a mixture of Urginea maritima (huɓa) and Cissus quadrangularis (vavanza).
Unlike Kumba Zadva, Mughuze kept his clan medicine hidden in a horn in Korana, but we do
not know whether he ever used it. Also, the relationship with Hembe as his autochthonous host
3
4
Widagha is Guduf and allegedly means 'in front of your house'.
Huɓa (Urginea maritima) is a wild onion and was also used to increase the yield.
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