Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 290
We think that Plate 23g might have been one of the animal sheds because the wall is low,
which indicates that the shed was perhaps lowered into the ground. We also see tobacco
plants growing next to it, which marks this space as part of the back courtyard. This perhaps
prompts us to look at the back of a bull shed. Tobacco plants were often found near the little
ancestor rooms. We see at the top right of the photograph, the roof of thala, with the bull jaws
on top as decoration.
Plate 23g demonstrates the importance of water, not only for storage in the big ndughwe pot,
but also the old grinding stone might also have served to feed and give animals water. Finally,
we see a photo with the three granaries of a house open and ready to be filled (Plate 23h). We
will see in the next section how the granaries were part of the foyer of the house, including
ritual pots being kept underneath the father's granary, but this will be part of Chapter 3.12.
Orientation and clustering of traditional Dghweɗe houses on a hillside in Dzga
In this subsection we will explore a little further how the Dghweɗe clustered their houses on
hillsides by arranging them, either horizontally or vertically, on interconnected platforms. We
will use typical situations from a hillside in Dzga, directly opposite to where I had my
research station. The hillside faces east, and over the top we get to Kunde. There were about
30 homesteads on that hillside and many of them were clustered together on terraced
platforms shared by two or three houses.
In Plate 24a below, we recognise the shared platform from Plate 23a, because the support
base that Buba and his wife had been sitting on in the shade of their tree is visible. Now the
same circular base carries a huge basket (3), most likely for the harvest of millet, because
unlike in the case of sorghum, the corn stalks are standing in the field ready to be cut later.
Buba's main entrance (2) of which we saw an image earlier, is in the centre, where we see a
flat roof next to a little thatched room. We can see from the distance how far away the
entrance is from the roof of thala (1) to the left. This is where the ritual centre of the house
was. It indicates that Buba's home had been significantly extended over time and the entrance
has most likely been moved with it on the platform to the right.
Plate 24a: Buba's house (1) to the left of the shared platform
We can also see that Buba's is the larger and more prominent of the two homesteads, and it
might even have been the more ancient and therefore the more traditional original house on
the shared platform. We know that his neighbour to the right (4) was not a close relative.
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