Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 342
extended platform area of the front yard of the house. We learned that it was not unusual in
the past for not everyone to be able to afford to slaughter a he-goat for the rituals mentioned,
and that one lineage elder might have done the sacrifice for the rest of the extended family or
local lineage group, while the others might have used sorghum flour mixed with water. A
situation of that kind could have occurred as a result of an epidemic, which might have
reduced the quantity of livestock. We described the animal sheds as integrated parts of the
lower and upper room complex, and emphasised their importance for the production of
animal manure, and how its application was managed, including the release of domestic
animals after the harvest. This had already changed long before Boko Haram, mainly due to
the increasing use of chemical fertiliser. Concerning the rituals related to the family ancestors,
this had led decades ago to the transformation of the bi-annual ritual cycle into an annual one,
and to important community festivals such as the bull festival no longer being performed.
We finally showed the importance of the traditional house as a centre for rainmaking, and
how the rainmaker would hang his ritual 'bundle' in the opening of the adobe dome gude (loft)
of the houses he visited, to encourage the growth of beans. We also showed how rainmakers
used sorghum flour in a calabash of water to pour over the rainstones to make rain, and
learned that the most ancient rainstones were kept in the senior rainmaker's house of Viringwa
Ruta in Ghwa'a. We showed an image of retired rainstones in Kalakwa's house, who had been
a member of the Gaske lineage, and we pointed out that such rainstones were passed on from
father to son. We further explained that although the rainstones in Viringwa Ruta's house
were in the past used in worst case scenarios of severe drought, we pointed out that his ritual
responsibility as senior rainmaker did not extend to a lineage shrine outside his house. We
concluded from this that the house of the most senior rainmaker was the most important ritual
centre for the rainmaker lineage Gaske, rather than a public shrine. We pointed to Durghwe as
the most important Dghweɗe rain shrine, which remained under the control of the Btha
lineage as the seventh born (thaghaya lineage) of the descendants of Thakara who were the
most numerous lineage group in Ghwa'a
Our next chapter is concerned with the reconstruction of key elements of the Dghweɗe bull
festival from oral fragments I collected some years before Boko Haram finally destroyed the
last remains of Dghweɗe ritual culture. We will see for example how the roof of thala, which
we have so far neglected, was renewed before the bull festival as part of the thatching of roofs
at this time. We will learn about other ritual installations linked to the bull festival, such as the
planting of the ritual tsaga stick (a freshly cut branch from a particular type of tree) in the
upper passageway, reaching through the flat roof into the sky (Figure 21a). After the chapter
about the bull festival, we will reconstruct the adult initiation (dzum zugune), which had
already disappeared before the bull festival as the most important communal festival
vanished. We will see not only how the house continues to be a central place of ritual activity,
but how Ghwa'a as a mountainous landscape is included according to the ritual stages which
unfold there. This will lead us later to explore more deeply the underlying cosmological
interpretation of the Dghweɗe view of the world, from the memory fragments of our main
oral protagonists.
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