Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 224
The labour-intensive phases of the agricultural year and the lunar months
The Dghweɗe word for the year is vag, and accordingly a guinea corn year was called vag
hiya, while a millet year was vag wira. The months throughout the year are not counted, only
those in the growing season, the harvesting season, and sometimes into the threshing season.
We like to refer to the growing season as the active period of the year, since after planting it
included a lot of hoeing, weeding and transplanting. According to John, the labour-intensive
period of viye, the rainy season, can be structured into three main parts.
Table 5c: The three main labour-intensive periods of the year
Dghweɗe expression
kath-gwihe
takar viye
tǝfighe
English translation
Acquiring land and planting season
Middle of the rainy season
Ripening and harvesting period
The Dghweɗe word for month is tile, which means moon. We have already established that
they did not give names to months, referring to them only by number. John explained that
they could theoretically count up to 12 months per year, but would never think of doing that.
In hindsight, I am not sure whether he was aware that a lunar month was shorter than a solar
month, but this is irrelevant here. What matters is that the Dghweɗe only counted the months
in the labour-intensive part of the agricultural year. John also said that they would consider
the rainy season to last about six months. He subsequently passed on to me the list below, to
which he added the harvesting period which was part of the dry season. In this way, together
with the extra two months, he made the active period of the year add up to eight lunar months
altogether.
Table 5d: List of months of the labour-intensive period
We see that the two
hoeing seasons (wusa
and khurta) took, with
four lunar months, the
greatest part of the
labour-intensive
season. John did not
include the threshing
period as part of the
active season. We will
see
in
bulama
Ngatha's account that
the threshing season
could sometimes be
counted as the 9th
traditional month (til-tamba), which he said was the 3rd month of the dry season. In the
calendar table of the previous chapter section, we have however referred to the 'harvesting
and threshing period', because it was also the time when, during a guinea corn year, the
slaughtering period began. This transition was ritually and spatially marked by har gwazgafte
as the transition of the newly harvested and threshed guinea corn from the front yard into the
inner part of a house. Both the harvesting and the threshing were part of kalyagha, the dry
season, and in that way marked the end of the labour-intensive season.
The first two months mark the planting season (kath-gwihe)
month one
til-tikwe
month two
til-mitse
The next two months mark the first hoeing period (wusa)
month three
til-khkare
month four
til-fiɗe
The following two months mark the second hoeing period (khurta)
month five
til-dtheɓe
month six
til-nkuwe
The final two months mark the harvesting period (man-dakfighe)
month seven
til-wuɗife
month eight
til-tighishe
Overall, the Dghweɗe dry season was dominated by their ritual rather than agricultural
activities, of which the bull festival stands out as perhaps the most important one. As such it
marked the bi-annual cycle of crop rotation. It was part of the slaughtering period, but was
more concerned with the community as a whole, while the various house rituals were more
about the extended family. Zakariya Kwire claimed in the late 1990s that changes regarding
the traditional calendar were taking place at that time. In the past, har ghwe and the counting
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