their year began with the first moon of the month when planting started. Because the ripeningperiod of the millet was shorter, the millet year started later than the guinea corn year. Thisled to a situation where the guinea corn year was considered to be up to one month longerthan the millet year. Therefore the agriculturally active part of the year lasted either seven oreight lunar months during a bi-annual cycle of crop rotation, depending on whether it wasmillet or a guinea corn year.Table 5a: List of the various calendrical activities during the bi-annual crop cycleGuinea corn yearPlanting finger milletPlanting guinea cornBoth yearsFirst rainTying animalsCutting grassFirst hoeing (wusa)Second hoeing (khurta)Ritual crop treatmentRipening periodPlaying the fluteCornblessingMaking hayRitual: tikwa kupeHarvestingRitual: tswila (throwing of guts)Releasing animalsRitual: har gwazgafteThreshingThe bi-annual slaughtering rituals of he-goats became annual:1. har ghwe (for dead father)2. har jije (for dead grandfather)3. har khagwa (closing ritual for har ghwe and har jije)Ritual: thagla (harvest festival)Roofing housesRitual: har daghileForgingClearing fieldsRitual plantingFertilizing (putting manure)Millet yearPlanting milletPlanting beansRitual: dzum zugune startsBefore we contextualise the various activities of our Dghweɗe calendar, we want to link itsbi-annual dimension to the modern Gregorian calendar. In the context of this, we begin withMay, which was when the planting of guinea corn started during my 1995 field session.Because the lunar months in question started at the end of May, we can perhaps infer thatplanting started not in May but in June. We can see in our adaptation below that this naturallycoincided with the beginning of the rainy season (viye). The start of the traditional dry season(kalyagha) was not so easy to determine, but the Dghweɗe counted the rainy season to havemore or less six lunar months, which brings us to October/November in our sample year. Wecan also see that they referred to a guinea corn year as vaghiya, and the millet year as vagwira(vag meaning year and hiya and wira being the words for guinea corn and millet).Table 5b is self-explanatory. At the top are the Gregorian months starting with May, andanother listing of seven Gregorian months included for better orientation further down,starting with June and ending with December. The columns of the Gregorian months are notequal in width, but that should be ignored. In between we see first the lunar months of theguinea corn year, with '1M' (meaning first lunar month) to '8M', and we can see that thebeginning of '1M' of the millet year is later, but ends like the guinea corn year in December,and is counted up to '7M'. The next row is dedicated to periods of activities, beginning with'Planting period' and ending with 'Clearing the terrace fields before planting'. In the middle ofthat row we have marked the 'First and second hoeing and ripening period', which coincides at219
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