Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 363
Chapter 3.14
Becoming an accomplished male (dzum zugune)
Introduction
In the previous chapter we highlighted manure production as being perhaps the most
important symbolic ingredient of Dghweɗe ritual culture. We developed this idea from our
oral data on soils being kept fertile behind terrace walls, and by remembering the relevance of
the cosmological concept of the stomach in the most vital part of the shrine in the foyer of a
traditional house. In the chapter on the house as a place of worship, we described how the
three ancestor stones were placed on the ground in front of the 'stomach' of the house shrine
opposite the granaries, and how the senior brother of the owner of the house and the
generation mate of the deceased grandfather came to assist in carrying out the sacrifice to the
deceased father (har ghwe). We also learned in the previous chapter that the patrilineal family
ancestors had to be served before the bull festival could be performed as the most important
communal symbol of manure production.
We have seen how the bull was slaughtered, with his rear in the lower room of the first wife
of the house, while his head faced the granary of the husband in the upper passageway of the
foyer (ghar malga). From our ethnographic evidence so far we have concluded that
maintenance of the reproductive continuity of Dghweɗe society by ritual means was very
important, and we now want to show that becoming an accomplished adult by performing the
rituals of dzum zugune was equally so. We will show that not only was the collective aspect
valuable, but also the effort of the individual. The overall target was for every participant to
fill his three granaries, an individual strategy for future crisis prevention. We will learn from
our reconstruction that completing dzum zugune was not an easy task, and if someone's father
had not done it, none of his sons could even consider starting it as long as their father was
alive. Rules of entry along the lines of seniority, denoting who could begin to perform dzum
zugune and thus prove themselves an accomplished adult, existed not only between sons and
fathers, but also among brothers and their mother's brothers.
We pointed out that dzum zugune literally means 'going male'. Altogether it consisted of four
stages, and each stage had to be performed during a guinea corn year, which brings us to a
total of seven years providing there were no interruptions, which was not always the case.
There was some confusion among our oral protagonists as to whether preparations could start
after the harvest festival (thagla) of a millet year, which was the only communal festival the
Dghweɗe performed annually. In such a case it would only have taken a man six years to
complete it. We will discuss this issue, together with questions of succession arising if a
man's father or older brother had not completed all four stages of dzum zugune. Unfortunately
we do not have sufficient oral data available, but will distinguish between what we know and
do not know, and cases where we are only making an informed guess.
When I heard about the Dghweɗe adult initiation stages for the first time in Korana Basa in
1995, I remember it being mentioned as something historically important, but about which
little was known. This shows how greatly Dghweɗe ritual culture had changed over time and
that only the slaughtering of he-goats for extended family ancestors (har ghwe and perhaps
har jije) had survived. The harvest festival (thagla), the bull festival (har daghile) and the
adult initiation rituals (dzum zugune), being the three most important community events, had
ceased being performed. Besides this, har ghwe had become an annual rather than a bi-annual
event, meaning it was no longer connected to the guinea corn harvest. This presumably also
meant that har khagwa, the closing ritual for har ghwe and har jije, which had originally been
the preceding ritual for those who wanted to perform the bull festival, had also come to an
end. Later in this chapter we will revisit some of the underlying socio-economic changes we
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