Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 233
ground, like smoke goes up. Supposed rain would be in heaven it
would have destroyed the whole world but because it evaporates from
the ground and forms clouds it cannot do so. When there is excessive
heat people are sweating etc, that means water is evaporating up. When
there is heat, water goes up. It forms clouds and goes to the east. When
the clouds come back it will rain. [The word for east is mbart luwa
which has two meanings: mbarte also means rectum. It means that the
east is considered as a place where the sun rises in terms of beginning,
coming out. West is ftsukwe, meaning also evening, that is where the
sun goes.] When the wind (vale) is blowing towards the east, it is a
sign that it will rain because if it is coming back it will come with rain.
[Kalbaka means clouds].
really come from heaven
[ghaluwa] and describes
the thermological process
of humidity rising because
earth gets heated up by
the sun to form clouds =
kalbaka, which are blown
east = mbart luwa, and
when wind = vale, blows
clouds west = ftsukwe,
again, it rains
On the hills, there are heavy rains because of the rocks. When it rains
the water runs down to the plains which means that there are heavier
rains on the hills than in the plains. The rain starts when the clouds are
coming from the east, but the heavy rains will be on the hills.
Because of the rocks, the
water of heavy rain in the
hills doesn't get absorbed
into the ground but runs
downhill instead
Rain depends on the periods of the rainy season. It depends upon the
movement of the sun. When the sun moves to a particular place it will
start raining and when the sun goes to another place it means it will not
rain, even periods within the rainy season (even within the rainy season
the sun moves). They only observe the movement of the sun. If the sun
moves to a certain point it will rain. Any person can know that.
Rain can be predicted by
observing the movements
of the sun and its position
concerning landmarks
during the rainy season
We will continue the rest of the interview in form of a summary at the end of Chapter 3.12,
where we present in Plate 46 a set of retired rainstones, and introduce the list of items of a
rainmaker's ritual gear. We show below two pictures of a rainmaking ceremony by the junior
brother of Ndruwe Dzuguma, who took me and John to his house in Tatsa to show us how he
made rain. The images show the rainstones erected like imitations of mountains, and the
mixture of water and sorghum flour poured over them. We think it is a good demonstration of
how the rainmaker himself engaged with gwazgafte (divinity) by the means of his ritual
entitlement of praying for rain. It was actually raining later that day, and my rainmaker friend
came to see me and told me very proudly that it was he who had made that rain. We discuss in
Chapter 3.23 the concept of skwe as a term for ritual specialism, and wonder whether the term
man skwe (meaning: handling a ritual specialism related to the ownership of a specific ritual
treatment) refers to the mixture of water and guinea corn flour our rainmaker friend uses here
to 'make' rain.
Plate 14: Rainmaker demonstrates his rainmaking ability: The left picture shows freshly
ground sorghum flour while to the right the mixture is being poured over the rainstones.
We learned from our interview above that Ndruwe Dzuguma distinguished between his
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