Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 334
platform we see the neighbour’s house (c), and a storage facility (d) which he might have
owned. We see Buba's storage facility (dd) in front of the tree, with a single room next to it
(e). We also see the terrace wall at the beginning of the platform to the left (f), behind the
entrance of the house as shown in Plate 44b. Above we see the road passing by, as shown in
Plate 44a.
Plate 44b:
Buba's main
entrance from
inside (left)
Plate 44c:
Buba's long
entrance
platform (below)
Plate
45a
below
shows a temporary
storage
facility
(kawire) full of guinea
corn in Korana Basa
(a). It is clearly
positioned on the
western
hillside,
overlooking the plain
of Gwoza. Plate 45b
shows bulama Ngatha
of Hudimche in front
of his main entrance.
We can see his wuts
gwazgafte (in front of
God's
passageway)
represented by the
wooden
sticks
forming his doorposts
(b) on each side of the
main entrance area of
his homestead (see
also Plate 23b).
We already know that
during a guinea corn
year threshing was
done by men only, as
was bringing the corn
into the granaries after threshing. During har gwazgafte the road to the house would be
blocked off from possible passers by, and neighbours would avoid talking to the person
carrying out the core element of har gwazgafte. The father of the house carried it out while
the rest of his family had to stay indoors. The ritual consisted of throwing some contents of
the intestines of the slaughtered he-goat onto the outer frame of fibre mats of which the
temporary storage facility was made, after which the stomach contents were placed on top of
the sorghum harvest inside.
Unfortunately we do not have an oral description of the exact ritual performed at the
doorpost, but here present what bulama Ngatha had to say about it in 1995:
The sacrifice at the doorpost is for the house god, wuts gwazgafte [wuts = in front of]. If somebody
comes along during that performance and you sacrifice a he-goat, he will bring a cockerel. If you
sacrifice a cockerel and someone comes along, he will bring milk. That means that nobody should
come along while you do that sacrifice.
We will discuss the word gwazgafte as the Dghweɗe concept of divinity in the chapter on
worldview and cosmology, but notice here that bulama Ngatha has already twice provided us
with his idea of gwazgafte, one in the context of his personal god pot above his bed, which he
also referred to as his personal god pot, and now in referring to wuts gwazgafte as his 'house
god'. We remember the word wuts also being a prefix for the passageways in front of the
lower and the upper kitchen. If we consider the front entrance as being the most vulnerable
transition point between the outside and the inside of a traditional house, we can perhaps
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