Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 221
their year began with the first moon of the month when planting started. Because the ripening
period of the millet was shorter, the millet year started later than the guinea corn year. This
led to a situation where the guinea corn year was considered to be up to one month longer
than the millet year. Therefore the agriculturally active part of the year lasted either seven or
eight lunar months during a bi-annual cycle of crop rotation, depending on whether it was
millet or a guinea corn year.
Table 5a: List of the various calendrical activities during the bi-annual crop cycle
Guinea corn year
Planting finger millet
Planting guinea corn
Both years
First rain
Tying animals
Cutting grass
First hoeing (wusa)
Second hoeing (khurta)
Ritual crop treatment
Ripening period
Playing the flute
Cornblessing
Making hay
Ritual: tikwa kupe
Harvesting
Ritual: tswila (throwing of guts)
Releasing animals
Ritual: har gwazgafte
Threshing
The 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 houses
Ritual: har daghile
Forging
Clearing fields
Ritual planting
Fertilizing (putting manure)
Millet year
Planting millet
Planting beans
Ritual: dzum zugune starts
Before we contextualise the various activities of our Dghweɗe calendar, we want to link its
bi-annual dimension to the modern Gregorian calendar. In the context of this, we begin with
May, 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 that
planting started not in May but in June. We can see in our adaptation below that this naturally
coincided 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 have
more or less six lunar months, which brings us to October/November in our sample year. We
can 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, and
another 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 not
equal in width, but that should be ignored. In between we see first the lunar months of the
guinea corn year, with '1M' (meaning first lunar month) to '8M', and we can see that the
beginning 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 of
that row we have marked the 'First and second hoeing and ripening period', which coincides at
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