Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 261
We see from these three types of assistance that the Dghweɗe distinguished between
collective labour organisation, which only consisted of a small number of relatives, and
assistance including relatives and neighbours. However we do not know whether the nonrelatives would be neighbours or people from further away. The third one is the son-in-law
who gathers people to help his father-in-law's family, which we mention again in Chapter
3.20: 'Past ways of marrying in Dghweɗe', but overall we do not have much oral data on this
subject.
Not only was the making of agricultural tools essential
The making of iron tools was the most important technological invention of the Dghweɗe,
enabling them to carry out their hard agricultural labour. We do not know when the smelting
of iron in furnaces stopped, but are sure that the highly developed technique described below
was still practised during late pre-colonial times. This oral account gives us a good insight
into the Dghweɗe way of making iron, which also formed a subsistence investment policy.
Bulama Bala and elders (1995) Korana Kwandame:
In making hoes or sickles in the rainy season women collect iron sand (vize). Vize is kept until the
dry season and then made into iron through a process called tag ɗutsa (tage = working; ɗutsa =
processed iron or iron bar). The next step is to forge (ghdha = smithing; vɗa = hammering into
tools, forging) the processed iron into tools. New iron is available from Maiduguri but they still
did the forging in the mountains.
Processing vize into ɗutsa is done by opening a terrace wall. Inside they mould it with clay. Now
they build it up by leaving a window at the bottom, which will be closed later, and one in the
middle through which they fill the furnace with charcoal and iron sand. There is another hole on
top where they install the back bellows, blowing air through two tubes that go deep into the
charcoal, almost near the bottom of the furnace. They close the openings and close the lower one
[in such a way] that they can break into the furnace easier later on. Towards the end they check,
and if the inside of the furnace glows almost white they stop blowing [the bag bellows]. Later they
remove the iron bloom [through the bottom hole].
Now they separate the slag from the iron and make another smaller oven which is round and not
very high and made of clay, with two tubes entering and a back bellows attached, and they fill it
with the smelted iron, and charge charcoal again and heat it again. After this they take it out and
forge it on a stone into ɗutsa (iron bars). From this they cut iron to make tools. People were
specialists in forging iron tools out of ɗutsa. They were called gwal vɗa (gwal = people; vɗa =
forging) but they intermarried with everybody. Processing the iron sand into ɗutsa was done by
almost everybody during the dry season.
Before turning vize into ɗutsa they went cutting trees to produce charcoal (ghuvare). They burned
the cut trees by gathering the pieces and setting fire to them. When it burned they covered it with
sand so that it did not turn into ashes. Before processing iron they invited people to carry the
charcoal home. They were doing that, making charcoal and processing iron, before the clearing of
the land for planting.
Those who processed lots of ɗutsa would become quite wealthy. They could buy lots of cows (9
ɗutsa was one cow) and could marry several wives. Anybody could make charcoal. If you did not
have enough trees on your farm or bushland you could ask a neighbour to do it on his farm. As
compensation, you provided ɗutsa or an iron tool. Women did not participate in cutting trees or
burning charcoal, but by carrying it home.
This example shows that smelting iron was quite a profitable industry, open to anyone who
wanted it, and that it served as a means to invest in livestock, particularly cows. We also see
that the technique involved two steps in processing from the collected laterite sand into a
bloom. The first one was in a bigger furnace, with bag bellows on top and tubes reaching deep
down in the charged mixture of charcoal and iron sand. In this way the air was preheated in
the tubes before it reached the mixture. The second step used the iron that had fewer
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