Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 359
Mbasuwe explained to us however that Gathaghure changed to Ghwa'a, and we can see below
that the change took place later, during early colonial times, and that it was to do with loyalty
issues around the attacks of Hamman Yaji:
Gathaghure which was in earlier times celebrating with Vaghagaya, eventually changed to Ghwa'a.
The reason was that Hamman Yaji had come up as far as Vaghagaya and then moved on to
Gathaghure. Gathaghure thought that Vaghagaya had brought him, and cancelled the bull festival with
them. Administratively they have been with Ghwa'a ever since.
The different settlement units listed in Table 9 participated in one another’s bull festivals, but
we were told that they followed each other within indefinable periods. The events were
sometimes only separated by a day, and other times even up to two weeks. We infer here that
this had to do with the size of the settlement unit in question. Tatsa and Taghadigile were for
example small settlement units, as was Tokweshe. We can also see that Kwalika was the final
place to start the bull festival in Dghweɗe, and after that it moved on to Gvoko. This means
that the bull festival travelled from Dghweɗe southwards to the Tur heights, which was the
opposite direction of the Tur tradition, meaning it travelled back to where most of our local
groups claimed to have originally come from.
Concerning the Lamang groups of Hiɗkala, the bull festival began with the Vile and always
took place before Dghweɗe. According to my Vile friends, the main reason for this was that
they performed the bull festival before and not after sacrificing to the deceased fathers, and it is
interesting that the Vile also called that sacrifice har ghwe. We remember that Hiɗkala was the
only other group of the Gwoza hills to perform a communal bull festival, except perhaps for
Gvoko, although we are not entirely sure how the bull festival was performed in Gvoko. For
most of the other Gwoza hills groups it was the harvest festival which travelled from group to
group. We have already said that the harvest festival started after the chief of Vreke came out
of seclusion, and that it moved from the Moskota hills to Glavda, then uphill via Guduf and
Zelidva to Chikiɗe. Neither the Chikiɗe nor the Guduf, who were otherwise the most similar to
the Dghweɗe, performed the bull festival as an interethnic travelling event, which makes the
Dghweɗe and the role of Gudule, with their legendary link to Gudur, very unique indeed.
Figure 21b gives a generalised version of how the bull festival and the harvest festival once
travelled through the Gwoza hills and across the northern Mandara Mountains:
Figure 21b: Travelling bull festival and harvest festival in relation to the Gwoza hills.
This is a simplified sketch
with Gudule as the central
place from where the drums
of Gudulyewe could be heard
to start the bull festival. We
see how the bull festival
turned around in Ghwa'a and
moved
southwards
via
Kwalika to Gvoko. The
harvest festival started from
Vreke, but not the bull
festival. It diverted after
Glavda to Zelidva and
Chikiɗe. The Vreke also
announced
it
for
Moudoukwa. The bull festival
travelled from group to group
all the way to Podoko in order
to get to Vreke, while Vile
was the starting point for the
Hiɗkala bull festival before
the Gudule could hear the
drums from Gudulyewe.
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