Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 358
right thing to do, but if that was the case a he-goat had to be slaughtered first. To have a bull to
sacrifice was, according to my Gudule friends, very much a matter of pride.
This presumably was similar to the pride felt when successfully performing the various stages of
the adult initiation rituals (dzum zugune). I was told later in Kunde that the Gudule people were
the only clan group in Dghweɗe not to perform dzum zugune. Why the Gudule did not perform
dzum zugune is indeed a puzzling question, considering that they started an important communal
celebration such as the bull festival. We will discuss possible reasons for this in a dedicated
section of the next chapter. We now present how the bull festival once travelled through the
various traditional Dghweɗe settlement units and beyond.
How the bull festival travelled in Dghweɗe and beyond
After the Gudule took the germinating guinea corn out of the water and started drying it on the
rocks, they went to the Gulve rock to beat the drums. After their brothers from Gudulyewe had
responded, they went back home and ground the dried sorghum corn and started making the beer
for the bull festival. Now the other clans of Dghweɗe also started preparing, that is those who
had a bull ready to be ritually released and sacrificed in their house. Bulama Mbasuwe and elders
from Korana Basa (1995) explained that the chain of how the bull festival travelled was done in
stages, to give enough time for neighbours, relatives and in-laws to enjoy feasting together.
According to them, the other reason was that it was the son-in-law of a family who would untie
the bull from the tree and bring it back to the house for slaughtering. As his own family might
also be sacrificing a bull that year, timing was of great importance.
There had also been changes in the way the bull festival travelled across Dghweɗe, and we
present our final list in Table 9 below, which relies much on bulama Ngatha of Hudimche with
subsequent corrections by bulama Mbasuwe of Korana Basa. We include it so we can see which
smaller settlement units might have celebrated with larger ones:
Table 9: Sequences of how the bull festival travelled in Dghweɗe
Sequence
First
Second
Second
Second
Third
Third
Third
Fourth
Fifth
Main units
Gudule
Hembe
Vaghagaya
Tokweshe
Gathagure
Ghwa'a
Kunde
Kwalika
Gvoko
Subunits
Subunits
Korana Basa, Korana Kwandame, Hudimche, Gharaza
Tatsa
Taghadigile
We can see above that under 'Vaghagaya' as a main traditional settlement unit, bulama Ngatha
included the subunits Korana Basa, Korana Kwandame, Hudimche and Gharaza. We know
these were the settlement units linked to the descendants of Vaghagaya-Mughuze, and
remember that the Vaghagaya lineage shrine (khalale) was in Korana Kwandame, and that
our Ghwa'a sources still referred to this late pre-colonial part of colonial or modern Korana
Basa as 'Gharghuze' (see again Figure 8 in Chapter 3.1).
We see that Hembe, Vaghagaya and Tokweshe celebrated together, and were followed by
Gathaghure, Ghwa'a (which included Tatsa and Taghadigile) and Kunde. We wonder why
Gathaghure did not celebrate with Hembe and Vaghagaya, especially considering Gathaghure
was so close to Hembe. We remember that Mughuze gave his first son to Hembe and that he
became the founding ancestor of Gathaghure, and we also know about the late pre-colonial
war alliance between Hembe, Gathaghure and Gudule (Figure 8a in Chapter 3.2). Bulama
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