Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 212
they closed their eyes Mogula hid behind the rock. When the two others opened their eyes, they
discovered that Bas Mogula had become a leopard through the use of vavanza. The two were
frightened and started crying. Mogula told them not to cry since they were children of the same
father. This is why the descendants of Bas Mongula stayed with this vavanza for transforming
themselves into leopards.
Next Dzunuwe took the ruma (spear) of their father and planted it outside into the ground. Now
fire erupted out of the top end of the spear and Dzunuwe was resting on top of this fire in the air.
When people saw this fire they came quickly to put it out but it was not possible. Only the father
was able to extinguish the fire when he came home from cutting grasses. When the three boys saw
their father coming home, they hid inside the house. Their father warned them not to do this again.
We list the use of vavanz bungwe in Table 12b and discuss it together with other powerful
ritual vavanza (Cissus quadrangularis) varieties in Chapter 3.23. Next, Baba Musa links the
Gaske to the Ɗagha in the following account. One of the reasons for recounting the legend
was presumably to explain why he thought that Ɗagha and Ske (Gaske) had been 'brothers':
There was a time when all Ghwa'a people, including Ɗagha, Ske and Thakara, went out for war
and raiding. They went to the plain. They succeeded in getting hold of the animals of the people
there. While they took the cattle away the enemies followed them on their horses. Now they asked
the Ɗagha what to do to resolve this dangerous situation. Ɗagha quickly applied his vavanza and
magically built a big forest between themselves and their enemies, and before the enemies could
clear this forest away, they had all succeeded to arrive on top of the hill and so ensured their
escape. Now they were all very thirsty and they called upon Gaske to produce something to drink
since they were brothers of Ɗagha. Gaske pulled out a grass called dhagla from the terrace and the
water started pouring out of the terrace wall.
This was how, according to Baba Musa, Ɗagha and Gaske contributed to the development of
Ghwa'a. We will learn later that the weed dhagla has an anti-erosive function in keeping the
terrace walls together (see Table 7c), and that rainmakers in particular seem to have owned
various grasses for use in the ritual contexts of crop protection. We will learn more about that
in Chapter 3.12, when we present the rainmaker's ritual 'bundle' which he hung in the loft area
of houses belonging to the mountain farms he served, to increase the yield of beans.
Baba Musa now gave an example of how he was once called to assist in peacemaking, in
Ghwa'a when lawan Buba was about to be killed in 1953. We have already described the
incident in the context of the failing resettlement scheme during late colonial times. Baba
Musa said that at the time he explained to the men of Ghwa'a that none of them would be
killed as a result of attacking lawan Buba, but houses would perhaps be burnt and cattle taken.
He added that this was in fact what happened. I am not sure how Baba Musa could have
known this, unless he was consulted before lawan Buba was attacked and killed. According to
all other Dghweɗe friends, it was not something that had been planned. Perhaps Baba Musa
wanted to illustrate the general importance of peacemakers in the past, or I misunderstood and
he was called after the incident, because the colonial officers in charge might well have
known about the Ɗagha role as Dghweɗe peacemakers.
When I interviewed Baba Musa in 1996, he had already been a converted Muslim for many
years, and he explained to me that he no longer practiced vavanza rituals, and that it was not
the vavanza that made the magic, but the self-belief of the acting Ɗagha in their own ability
of making peace by means of vavanza. He explained that if somebody had a divided mind or
a hidden agenda he would have never succeeded in peacemaking anyway. He added that
vavanza was a gift of God 1 and this was the reason why they were using it. Baba Musa then
said that it was something they had been using for a very long time, which was the main
reason why it had become so important, and that only people with a pure mind would have
been successful in using prayer in that way, and both the Ɗagha and Gaske had this ability.
He concluded by saying that he too in the past went to collect vavanza from the Gaske
1
Baba Musa’s concept of a Supreme Being is derived from his Muslim belief in only one God (Allah),
while the traditional Dghweɗe idea of gwazgafte as concept for a Supreme Being was seen as having
male gender. We discuss the concept of gwazgafte in the chapter about cosmology and worldview.
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