Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 402
contested by Zakariya Kwire who insisted that the early stages of dzum zugune started after
har ghwe and only during a guinea corn year, shows how memories about ritual sequences
can differ.
Eli Gula (ibid) points out that it was told to her that if one did not perform tsufga, one's wealth
could disappear and that performing it brought about prosperity. Like in Dghweɗe, achieving
tsufga did not depend on age, and Eli Gula explains that even during social consumption of
sorghum beer the younger men who had performed it would have the calabash handed to
them before any elder who had not performed it. She also speaks of sacrifices to a deceased
father or grandfather, which a man who had not performed tsufga could not make. She further
adds that it was usually men above twenty years of age who could start considering doing
tsufga, but that someone would have to wait for anyone senior in their extended family, as he
had to perform it first. There were however additional complications related to age, and she
admits that she has not tried to work them out, but mentions a situation in which a cousin who
was too young to perform it but who was next in line would sit on a stool while his older
cousin would start to perform it.
Eli Gula lists six stages, and according to her only one stage is performed in one year, and the
number of years it would take for someone to finish it depended on the size of the family in
terms of their potential male participants. She points out that it was not performed in a
progression of six years, and that someone who had performed the first stage might wait
several years before he could perform the second stage. During the intervening times, other
cousins or persons next in line would have performed it, and each year there would be men in
the community performing different stages, and those of the same stage would group together,
dress and behave in the same way. She further explains that apart from the difference of the
various stages there were a few things they all had common, for example each man
performing tsufga had a young boy who followed him around as a ritual assistant, holding a
stool which was used to sit on whenever they stopped.
We will not list all six stages of the Glavda tsufga ritual mentioned by Eli Gula, but will
provide a summary, and in the light of this will see what appears to have been essentially
different but also similar in comparison to dzum zugune. The first thing, on reading through
the six stages, is that the last two stages were similar in terms of the attitude of the
performers, especially the last stage in which they no longer performed but just came to enjoy
their achievement. Also, the second stage bears a certain similarity, in that it was the one most
concerned with femininity aspects, not only in appearance but also in presentation. For
example, an interesting detail is: 'they walk slowly like a Glavda bride being taken to her
husband's house amidst hailing, and as he keeps walking certain people would be pouring oil
on his head and pouring grain flour over him' (ibid:27). This reminds us of the ngwa
kwalanglanga dancing uphill with their old women's sheepskins packed in layers on their
hips, and they too were showered with grain flour. Also, the Glavda second stage performers
wore similar metal bells called kwalanga, and Eli Gula gave us some altogether beautiful
drawings of those bells (thanks also to the support of Jim Wade) and many other items used
during the different stages of tsufga.
In the third stage of tsufga, performers also wore kwalanga bells, and they also carried a
wooden pestle which they beat on the ground, especially if they came to the front of a house
and expected people to come out and give them something to eat. They would reportedly eat
so much they would have running stomachs, and then would relieve themselves in front of the
house of someone who had made fun of them in the past, or of a girl who might have refused
to accept them, and they would have relieved themselves into the grinding stone of her
kitchen. Although this sounds rather comical, it was also out of order, and it seems that this
was one of the differences between dzum zugune and tsufga. The tsufga performers took
liberties which included beating people up, and also quite extreme indulgence in terms of
overeating and appearing to get fat. There is no mention of any ritual dunghole or a reference
to manure production or warfare in defence of fertile terrace fields, as was the case with the
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