Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 305
The backyard and the miniature ancestor rooms
In this last subsection about the key elements of the architecture of a traditional Dghweɗe
house we will show the little ancestor rooms in the backyard of a house. I only learned about
their existence in the later phase of my fieldwork, and was rather impressed by their miniature
architecture. They are listed in our ideal groundplan (Figure 18) as room 11 for batiw gadada
(deceased father's room), and room 12 for batiw gajije (deceased grandfather's room). We
have placed them in our plan to the right of the upper room, but they could equally have been
somewhere else nearby. There could also have been more than two, as for example was the
case in Kalakwa's house, where there were three in his backyard. There were also differences
in where they were placed, compared to the rest of the farmsteads.
Plate 35a: Buba's ancestor rooms
Plate 35b: Kalakwa's ancestor rooms
Plate 35c: tughdhe batiw gajije
Plate 35d: tughdhe kule
Plate 35e: sak batiw gajije
By examining Plate 35a and 35b above, we can see that ancestor rooms were miniature
versions of rooms for the living. They were made of stone and had thatched roofs. The fact
that Buba's ancestor rooms were almost integrated into the terrace wall (d) behind his house
and near the trees of the infields (d), with tobacco plants (b) growing around them, shows
high ritual significance. This is also supported by the fact that in front of them, between the
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