Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 263
was a means of survival in the hills. This would explain the technological sophistication of
the two furnace system and the two tubes, which allowed high temperatures to be reached. I
already knew the preheated tube system from the neighbouring Mafa. It is possible that the
two-step furnace process with preheated tubes was a technological development already
known in our subregion before the expansion of the Mafa. After all, Ghwa'a as an early
arrival zone of groups from Tur was very close to Kirawa, which was a recognised trade
centre during the late 16th century, as was reported by Anania (1582). To produce enough
iron bars for making hoes and sickles to use for the labour-intensive terrace farming must
have been a key requirement in those days, and production of a surplus for tribute and
individual wealth creation might have increased the ambition. Only archaeological digging
might one day answer that question.
The possibility of a shared subregional background scenario as described above would have
changed again during the 17th century, when a long wet period established a presumably
prosperous late pre-colonial Dghweɗe (see Figure 16). If we assume that the number of trees
increased for making charcoal, and that the population grew in number, leading to an increase
in iron production and as a consequence an increase in livestock, it means we have important
hypothetical reasons why the Dghweɗe might have become quite prosperous during that
period. That manure and iron production was socio-economically interlinked becomes far
more apparent in the next chapter section on the importance of livestock.
Iron was not only important as a potential payment of tribute in the context of regional trade,
making the mountains a stable place to dwell, but its production was necessary in making
sufficient tools for terrace farming. That everyone could produce iron was certainly a socioeconomic advantage, which might also be reflected in the promotion of competitiveness as
presented later in the chapter on adult initiation (dzum zugune). The ability to store three
granaries full of crops to secure household sustainability must have proven very useful while
the increasingly cyclical stages of climate change were unfolding throughout the 18th and
19th centuries. We remember from Figure 16 the intermittent twenty or thirty years of very
arid and humid periods, which set the palaeoclimatic background to the reconstruction of the
pre-colonial phases of the unfolding Dghweɗe culture.
The importance of livestock
We already know how important livestock was for the production of manure in keeping the
terrace fields fertile. In the section on terraces and soils, we learned that it was not so much
the type of soil that mattered, but the care a farmer took to make his land fertile. In that way,
any soil was good, as long as it could be contained behind terrace walls and made into
'cultivated land' (kla pana) by manuring and farming it. Livestock was essential for that.
Bulama Bala (1995) explained that the tying of animals came after planting, when the crops
started germinating in the fields. Everyone would keep their animals indoors and release them
again after the new harvest. If there were children, preferably boys, they could help with the
cutting of grasses for the animals. Women and girls traditionally did not do this.
In Korana Basa (September 1995), I was told that in the olden days there was no eating of
meat outside of a ceremonial or ritual context, unless the animal died. In the past, if a cow or
bull died, they exchanged the meat with their neighbours for guinea corn, millet or beans.
There were more animals in the past than in the present day, and almost everybody reared
them. The main problem in those days was the death of animals. Epidemics could sometimes
wipe out all the animals from a household, because epidemics were more common in those
days. If something like that happened during har ghwe (sacrificial slaughter for a deceased
father), they would only take one he-goat for the eldest of the group to sacrifice, and he would
celebrate his har ghwe on behalf of the rest.
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