Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 238
collective experience of the Dghweɗe through that later pre-colonial period, and identified the
tail end to have perhaps overlapped with the beginning of colonial times, during which the
key rituals of the Dghweɗe calendar had already started to change.
We mentioned earlier that the adult initiation rituals had most likely already ceased by the
1930s, and the bull festival possibly stopped being performed not too long afterwards. We
will learn in our chapter about working the land how the introduction of chemical fertiliser
perhaps played an important role, something which was promoted quite early under British
rule. This, and increasing pressure for forced downhill migration, must have had a strong
impact on the proud Dghweɗe, who at the beginning of colonial times had been subjected to
Hamman Yaji's slave raids. The formation of a new Muslim elite in Gwoza presumably had
an additional impact on the Dghweɗe way of life, and we can only imagine how different
Dghweɗe had already become when I started visiting modern Korana Basa and Ghwa'a in
1995.
Our chapter on the Dghweɗe interaction with the seasons is therefore very much an attempt to
look back in time, by trying to reconstruct a seasonal calendar as it might have been practised
in late pre-colonial and perhaps during early colonial times. When I collected the oral data
underlying our reconstruction I did not know that I would never have a chance to revisit to
ask more questions. Still, considering the very few oral accounts we have available, hopefully
we have been able to present a calendrical scenario which approaches an understanding of the
meaning and importance of the agricultural and ritual sequences linked to the specific seasons
of their bi-annual system of crop rotation. The next chapter is concerned with the distribution
of ritual custodianship of local shrines, which were not necessarily part of a somewhat
prescriptive calendrical cycle, apart perhaps from the lineage shrines (khalale).
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