Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 361
their ritual ways of celebrating it, but it still had many similarities to the Dghweɗe dzum
zugune celebration. We reconstruct and describe the complex cycles of this in the next
chapter, with the knowledge that it had not been performed for decades and that the Gudule
reportedly never celebrated it all. One of the reasons given to me as to why the Gudule did not
perform dzum zugune was that they were not part of the same clans as all the other Dghweɗe,
suggesting that they were somehow altogether of separate origin. Unfortunately we are not
sure whether the specialist lineages, particularly the Gaske and the Ɗagha peacemaker
lineages did not perform it either, and will return to that question later.
Conclusion
The chapter about the Dghweɗe bull festival is a reconstruction, and we have highlighted the
important role of Gudule. By so doing we have pointed out the ritual division of labour
between cornblessing and rainmaking. We have highlighted the importance of manure
production, as it was narrated in the legendary account of Zedima. We showed that the bull
festival was a true communal festival, and we explored how best to explain that the Gudule
were not only considered as first settlers, but also had a legendary link to Gudulyewe. We
acknowledged that the ritual significance of Gudur was presumably a later pre-colonial
development, which needs to be understood in the context of the formation of the Mafa as the
largest ethnic group in the centre of the northern Mandara Mountains.
Having acknowledged this, we were hopefully also able to show that the knowledge of terrace
farming, and with it the importance of manure production, was in prehistoric terms much
older than the formation of the Mafa and the Dghweɗe. We hypothesised that it needs to be
linked to the DGB sites and the formation of the Wandala state in Kirawa. This raised the
question about the importance of the terrace cultivation system practised in the Gwoza hills,
especially since they were not only geographically but also prehistorically sandwiched
between the DGB sites and Kirawa. In the context of that, we emphasised the climatic
circumstances and the labour-intensive and cultural aspects expressed in the Dghweɗe bull
festival, and also showed that the stall-feeding of bulls did not necessarily indicate a travelling
bull festival, as was the case with the otherwise very similar Chikiɗe or Guduf.
We have given a wider view of the role of the bull festival in the Gwoza hills and beyond, and
discovered that the Vreke of Moskota played a role in starting the harvest festival for those
communities of the Gwoza hills who did not perform a travelling bull festival. We were able
to show that local explanations were not always what they seemed on first hearing, but that in
general terms the role of managing fecundity was central to many ritual activities. This
included the control of clan medicines by specialist lineages. We pointed out for example that
the Gaske rainmakers were also known in Huduwa, and we were able to link them to the
powerful Gozla rainmakers of Muktele origin found among the Mafa of Moudoukwa. In this
chapter about the bull festival we took a view beyond Dghweɗe, to show that local traditions
have the tendency to vary in their organisational expression but are often similar in
underlying cultural function.
We have described the Dghweɗe bull festival from the collective local memory of our Gudule
protagonists because we know that they had the role of announcing it for the whole of
Dghweɗe. We saw that the roofs of a homestead played a particular role, not only in terms of
the starting of roofing before the bull festival, but also in relation to the tsaga stick and the
tent of zana mats (kwatimba) on the flat roof (gaɗike) behind the roof of thala. We learned
that the bull was ritually released through the side wall of the bull shed, and after recapture
brought back in by the son-in-law to be ritually slaughtered at the foot of the stick of tsaga.
We have no knowledge of what the tsaga stick represented, but showed that it was rooted to
the floor of the upper passageway and reached through the flat roof up into the sky, with some
splaying branches of tsaga visible above the zana mat tent kwatimba.
The roof area above the foyer, together with the zana mat tent, was decorated with items of
dress worn by the family of the owner of the bull, which in our opinion represented the desire
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