Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 242
apart from it being the Dghweɗe idea of a place where a first comer might in the past have
settled on virgin land, would be to take into account the other meaning of khalale, which was
'water spirit'. It was my research assistant John, who in 2001 explained to me that a khalale or
water spirit might appear as a human being, and then it would suddenly disappear. He went
on to explain the general belief that things were able to magically transform and disappear,
especially during the night when people were asleep. We will learn more about this cultural
aspect of the Dghweɗe mindset in the chapter about existential personhood, in the context of
the role of the 'personal spirit pot' which a man might have kept above his bed (Chapter 3.12).
We already mentioned the similarity of khalale to the Mafa word halalay for their twin ritual,
and also the link between twins and the role of the water spirit. Water was an important aspect
of the Dghweɗe belief system, which implied that the mountain shrine Durghwe was seen as
the house of twins, and that will be addressed later also.
Water spirits are perhaps one of the most powerful spirit agents known in and around the
northern Mandara Mountains. For example the Wandala Chronicles inform us that king
Agamakiya was allegedly abducted by a female water spirit. We also remember that Kumba
Zadva (see Chapter 3.5) discovered his reproductive clan medicine with the support of a
female water spirit. He was able to revive all his children and subsequently had seven sons.
The strong belief in water spirits is perhaps no surprise, considering the cyclical arid
environment by which we are surrounded, and it seems that the ones considered to be female
are very powerful indeed. Unfortunately we do not know much about the gender of water
spirits in Dghweɗe culture, but notice that the scribes of the Wandala Chronicles reported in
the early 18th century that even king Agamakiya had been abducted by a female water spirit,
which allegedly represented one of his best loved wives (Forkl 1995:108f).
The aspect we would like to emphasise here, is the connection of the spirit quality allocated to
places of communal significance, to the identical word for water spirit, not only in Dghweɗe,
but also among the Mafa of the Gouzda area. This meant that the Dghweɗe word khalale for
lineage shrine was not just a place with one or two rocks, but also an ideal imaginary habitat
for spirit activities in which water was represented as a key element of fecundity and which
needed to be ritually managed. It was ideally thaghaya (seventh born) who was the
responsible custodian, and who also managed other important communal shrines. This was
because they were found on the land on which his lineage section (kambarte) had successfully
been established. Whether that land had ritual predecessors from another lineage section
which had been outnumbered, appeared to be secondary in terms of including them as part of
a regular ritual order. What seems to have been important was that the entitlement of the
current ritual owner was represented by a har khalale as an obligatory sacrifice to their shared
local lineage ancestor.
We will learn later, in the context of Durghwe, that the ritual entitlement of custodianship also
implied that the lineage custodian (thaghaya) of Ghwa'a, who was traditionally from the Btha
lineage, was also responsible for rituals to Durghwe, even if they were to be requested by
subregional outsiders. We invite our readers to look at the dedicated chapter about Durghwe,
but in the next section of the current chapter we provide a brief description of the Vaghagaya
lineage shrine in Korana Kwandame. We will subsequently try to explore the geographical or
spatial aspect of ritual sequencing as an essential part of a Dghweɗe calendrical order as it
might have existed during late pre-colonial times and even into the early colonial period.
Example of the Vaghagaya lineage shrine
According to bulama Mbasuwe and elders of Korana Basa (1995), the main shrine dedicated
to their shared ancestor Vaghagaya was called kwirgwiya, and we know that this was a place
in Kurana Kwandama. Bulama Masuwe told us that there was a stone set upright, supported by
other stones. Cissus quadrangularis (vavanza) grew closely around this stone. A goat was
slaughtered and blood and stomach poured over the stone. This symbolised unity as opposed to
dispersion or scattering. The sacrifice itself was called har khalale, but the general name of
240
