Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 268
land, but not necessarily short-leasing. They might prefer themselves to short-lease during the
rainy season to produce capital.
The above text was written by John and me, by my asking questions about the Dghweɗe ways
of leasing out farmland, including the most recent changes. One of the main changes seems to
be the system of short-leasing to raise and reinvest into farmland to generate capital.
Bridewealth was originally the main reason for leasing out farmland, because in Dghweɗe of
the past, marriage for a woman resulted in her becoming a member of her husband's
patrilineage, which made the primary marriage and the role of a first wife very important. We
remember that lineages split according to the metaphor of a kitchen (kuɗige), meaning being
sons of the same mother, and it was the seventh born who represented the most successful
outcome of patrilocal family reproduction. Here we only point out the link between land as a
local resource and the generation of bridewealth. We also learned that trees could be leased
out, among which the fan palm and mahogany tree had a particularly important place. We
produce a list of useful trees and grasses in Dghweɗe in two separate sections below. There
were other reasons for changes in leasing out farmland, which had to do with changes in the
architecture of a house, for example the replacement of the thatched roof by zinc.
John also explains the link between the reduction of manure production and the increase of
chemical fertiliser, as a result of the market economy increasingly replacing the subsistence
economy of the past. In the next chapter we will suggest the hypothesis that this was one of
two root causes in terms of strategic changes in local resource management, leading to millet
becoming the dominant cash crop. We also think that this is a fundamental change in terms of
the cultural history of our subregion, since it ends the socio-economic importance of guinea
corn and manure production, which might well have had its roots in the 15th century when the
DGB complex developed in the south and Kirawa gained influence at the northern foot.
Reversal of significance between the guinea corn and millet years
We have noted in the chapter about the Dghweɗe calendar, how bulama Ngatha listed the
different agricultural activities during the sorghum and millet years. Reviewing his listing
again, together with some updates from bulama Ghdaka from Hembe, the main changes seem
to be linked to the millet year. In particular, beans played an increasing role as a cash crop,
and we have learned from John that the millet year had become the year when people did
most short-leasing. In this sense, the millet year most likely had the tendency to become
socio-economically more important than the guinea-corn year. Despite this recent
development, crop rotation remained essential for successful terrace farming, until most of
that was brutally destroyed by Boko Haram from 2010 onwards. We reported at the
beginning, how in 2019 they exploited the older Traditionalists in Dghweɗe, to farm for them
while they were hiding in the hills. It remains sadly unknown whether terrace cultivation and
with it crop rotation will ever again be fully reactivated in the hills.
Beans and groundnuts might potentially have been the main cash crops apart from millet, but
we have only a little information on the cash cropping of groundnuts, at least in the eastern
plain. Still, I do remember seeing a lot of that in Gouzda (near Koza) on the Cameroonian
side. Bulama Ngatha did not tell us whether groundnuts or tigernuts were also planted in a
millet year, but we do know that tigernuts were preferably grown in the hills. However, for
our table above, Bulama Ghdaka confirmed that in 1995 most plants were grown in both
years. The same applied to cocoyam, which they only planted in the dry season. Still,
cocoyam was presumably only for consumption at home. In turn, cassava seemed also to be
planted in the rainy season, and it could be harvested almost any time, but neither was it a
cash crop. One had to wait two years to harvest cassava, while tigernuts were planted around
August and harvested in December (see bulama Ngatha in Chapter 3.8).
We see in Table 7a that bulama Ghdaka also mentions Bambara nuts, and we can only assume
that they also are planted every year. This leaves us with only guinea corn and millet together
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