Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 337
deceased father was done after the sorghum was successfully stored in the granaries. The
quote contains a brief description of brewing beer from guinea corn, and the importance of
intestinal contents being placed on the ancestor stones and under the granary of the father of
the house, underpinning once more the ritual aspect of manure production:
After threshing, the corn is taken into the granary. Now he starts preparing towards har ghwe. He
takes some guinea corn and puts it into water. The following day he takes it out of the water and
keeps it to germinate. After 3 to 4 days of germination, it will be dried in the sun. Now they will
grind it. Now it is cooked for two days and then it is kept in one jar for two days. On the 3rd day
they will slaughter he-goats. But before slaughtering he-goats the beer (ghuze) is put into several
containers called tughdhe. They go round to invite people to share food, meat and beer. The
intestinal and the stomach contents are put on the three stones and the remains of it they put into a
broken pot and place it underneath the father’s granary.
Bulama Ngatha tells us here how the remaining guts and stomach contents were ritually
placed in a broken pot underneath the husband's granary. John Zakariya (1995) added that this
was all done on the actual slaughtering day, and we remember from our earlier description of
har ghwe that also on that day the ritual sauce and the beer from the two tughdhe thala was
poured into the jahurimbe beer bowl and the ndafa eating bowl, to be libated over the
ancestor stones. John also said that some of the gut contents of the slaughtered he-goat were
put on the chest and belly of the male children. This shows again how important it was that
the fertility of the land and the ownership of land were linked in ritual terms to the upcoming
paternal line. Perhaps a girl did not have the gut contents placed on her chest and belly
because she would move to live and work with the family of her husband after marriage.
There her labour contribution would increase the yield of the terrace fields of her husband,
and she and the children would remain indoors when he brought the guinea corn harvest into
his house.
About the use of rainstones
We have already discussed the importance of stones used for rainmaking, in the chapter about
interacting with the seasons, where we showed how Ndruwe Dzguma's junior brother used them
in his house to make rain. We also introduced Ndruwe Dzguma, a respected senior rainmaker
from Gharaza, as he was talking about his rainmaking skills. Before we present Ndruwe
Dzguma's memories about the ritual importance of the senior rainmaker's house for all the other
rainmakers of the past, we will show in Plate 46a a set of rainstones in Kalakwa's house. He
belonged to the rainmaker lineage Gaske but was no longer practising rainmaking.
Plate 46a: Retired rainstones in Kalakwa Wila's house
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While Kalakwa Wila's
old house was already
quite derelict in many
ways, and its location is
not exactly remembered,
we photographed the
retired rainstones he
showed us. As far as I
could establish, we were
in the granary area of the
foyer of his house. We
can see they are stored in
what looks like a broken
bowl. They consist of
round pebbles, some of
which might have high
quartz content, and some
other longish stones of
