Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 357
at seeing his beloved bull being prepared by his wives for sacrifice between the lower room and
upper passageway:
The bull is now taken near the tsaga, where they slaughter him with his back half in the room batiw
tighe. He is held with sticks halfway in that room. They cut open the loose skin hanging from his
throat and then stab him in the gullet/throat. The blood comes out and is gathered in a container. The
bull breaks down. The bull is cut into pieces, and the meat, including the intestines, is put under the
zana mat tent around the tsaga on top of the flat foyer roof. Those who have done the slaughtering get
a big pot of beer, a calabash of ground tigernuts and a calabash of sesame.
The second day you gather your people and friends for a ceremonial meal. You cook enough meat so
everyone can eat.
We can imagine how the bull stood with hind legs in the lower room of the first wife, while his
front legs were outside, near the tsaga stick in the upper passageway, perhaps with his head
facing the granary of the father of the house. When his front legs broke down on the top
passageway, his middle part would have come to rest on the entry step to the lower room formed
by one of the large foundation stones (ghar malga). His hind legs would also have broken down
after he had been stabbed in his gullet or throat. The blood was collected in a container
(presumably a clay pot, but we do not know which one), and then he was taken apart and the
meat and intestines put under the kwatimba tent around the tsaga stick on top of the flat roof
(gaɗike). We do not know who did the slaughtering but they received a pot of beer and a
calabash of ground tigernuts and sesame.
If we look at Plate 28a and 28c of Buba's house, in the earlier chapter about the house as a place
of family worship, we can see narrowness of the ghar malga passageway. Plate 31a shows the
back passageway, this time of Abubakar's house, and the entry step to the lower room of his first
wife is visible, opposite Abubakar's granary. Plate 31d shows Kalakwa's first wife's lower entry,
but this time we see Kalakwa's granary very close, on the other side of the passageway. We
recognise the standard architectural structure, and can imagine that all three houses had seen the
ritual slaughter of bulls across their ghar malga thresholds. It is also possible to imagine how the
tsaga sticks had once been planted there, ascending through the flat roofs, covered by kwatimba
tents as illustrated in Figure 21a. We think that the flat roof of gaɗike had most likely been
partially opened up above the passageway to allow the meat to be placed .
These were the main events of the first day of the bull festival, and on the second day more
guests would come for a ceremonial meal, for which it had to be ensured enough meat was
cooked. The rest of our interview was more general, about certain conventions about the bull
festival, which we will now summarise in the last few paragraphs of this chapter section.
The first person in Gudule to ritually release his bull was the lineage custodian (thaghaya) of
Gudule, who in that context was the first and therefore thaghaya for the whole of Dghweɗe. He
was followed in Gudule, first by the various elders, presumably senior lineage elders or seniors in
terms of age, within their extended families. Some bulls had been kept in their sheds for two, and
others for three years, before they were ritually released and sacrificed. This meant that a man
might have started fattening a bull in a millet year, and then waited until the next bull festival, but
it would not have been the one of the following guinea corn year.
I was also told in Gudule that they involved the Ɗagha diviners at a very early stage of preparing
for the bull festival, to identify the bulls that might be very dangerous on release. One of the
reasons was that some younger men would take huge risks in catching them, especially if the bull
was labelled dangerous. Because it was such a great challenge to catch a vicious bull it was
considered to be a great achievement, and he who did so would reportedly be seen as the
strongest, a desirable status to pursue.
It was the dung produced by the bull which was important, but a bull was also stall-fed for
fattening because if he had been released during the dry season he would have run around free
and therefore lost weight. In keeping a bull in the dedicated shed, the hump would also grow fat
as he was eating with his head raised, and in that context we remember that the shed was lowered
about one metre into the ground. A castrated bull might be used, which was not considered the
355
