Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 278
Medicine to increase the yield of crops and domestic animals
Magulisa was an important clan medicine for increasing yield, and was tied to guinea corn
and millet before the harvest. We present its elements below, because they also detail the two
clan medicines Mathews referred to in 1934 as 'gadali', which he translated incorrectly as 'the
locust cactus' or simply as 'cactus'. We identified them as belonging to two plant genera, but
were able to establish that Mathews might have used a Fulfulde word for both with 'gadali',
which might be at the root of the ethnonym 'Godaliy' (see Chapter 3.3).
Magulisa consisted of the following four ingredients:
•
•
•
•
Huɓa
Vavanza
Changwithe
Ghuvare
- Urginea maritima (also used to improve reproduction of livestock)
- Cissus quadrangularis
- a quarz stone
- a piece of charcoal
Plate 20a: Ingredients for magulisa
Plate 20b: Rainmaker ties
beans
While vavanza (Cissus quadrangularis) has a very high ritual significance, which was not
only owned by the Gaske rainmaker but also by the other specialist lineages, huɓa (Urginea
maritima) seems to be more specifically part of the ritual repertoire of the rainmaker lineage.
We will discuss this aspect again later, together with the grass tgija, in the second part of our
interview in Chapter 3.12 with rainmaker Ndruwe Dzuguma of Gharaza, but we think that
Plate 20b shows how his junior rainmaker brother ties tgija wushile to the flowering part of
the beans.
Concerning the quartz stone and the piece of charcoal, we are not sure what they represent,
but notice that they are black and white, and we know that charcoal was important in
producing agricultural tools and even manure. In the chapter about adult initiation we will
explore an aspect of the potential ritual meaning of charcoal, and also remember that the grass
za'aghaya was not only used for roofing, but that the Ɗagha used it together with charcoal to
treat muscle tightness. Apart from magulisa, there was also dag mbarɗe, which was another
crop-promoting medicine applied during the labour-intensive growing period, and it also
contained charcoal.
We will learn later from Ndruwe Dzuguma, that in the past the most powerful dag mbarɗe
medicine was made in the house of the grandfather of Taɗa Nzige, the senior rainmaker of all
Dghweɗe. Considering that in the 1950s Taɗa Nzige was a young man, it is conceivable that
his grandfather was the senior Dghweɗe rainmaker during early colonial times, or even before
that. This throws an oral historical light on the ritual application of crop promotion, and
allows us to hypothesise that labour-intensive terrace cultivation had a ritual equivalent which
was also expressed in a social division of labour. Such a view implies that rainmakers were
presumably in the greatest possible demand during the active part of the seasonal year.
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