Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 408
order of traditional beer consumption. The one who had completed tsufga could drink before
a senior male who had not done so. I have described the sequential order of ritual beer
drinking among the Mafa, and we wonder whether a similar rule also applied in the past in
Ghwa'a, at least when it came to someone who had achieved dzum zugune.
In earlier chapters we demonstrated the geopolitical dimension of Dghweɗe ritual behaviour,
consisting mainly of providing first for the patrilineal ancestors of the extended family before
religious performances reaching out to the lineage level and the wider local community. The
same spatial pattern also became clear in the two types of social space of fstaha as the core
initiation ritual of becoming an accomplished adult. While the fstaha ritual of the ngwa
kwalanglanga (second stage) took place inside the privacy of the house, the fstaha initiation
of the ngwa yiye (third stage) was performed communally and in public. In the context of
food production, we had first the individual farmstead as a household compound forming the
elementary corporate group of food production, and then the ritual dunghole near the
rainmaker's house as a communal representation of the same for Ghwa'a as a whole. The
significance of manure production for successful food production was represented by the
'black cows' shouting 'Yi Ye Yi Ye' at the ritual dunghole, and at the same time being ready to
defend it.
We went through all the dress codes of the various stages, and tried to explore what might
have been their meaning. One of the key features was the use of different materials for
making sets of bandoliers and waistbands, firstly made of speargrass, but then the speargrass
bandoliers and waistbands were reduced to necklaces of speargrass while the bandoliers and
waistbands were replaced by leather strips decorated with rows of cowrie shells. In the next
stage, white strips of cow skin replaced the cowrie leather strips, and finally strips of cotton
attached together into a blanket dress called darke, dyed dark indigo, which John always
translated as 'black' for lusa. We have a separate chapter on symbolic classification and the
classification of things, where we also discuss the colour schemes of the Dghweɗe, and
demonstrate that there was traditional thinking about shades of colours. The colour lusa is
connected to the green of the vegetation according to Taɗa Nzige, and we also mentioned
charcoal as an important ritual material where the translation of lusa for 'black' was correct
from our view. On the other hand, the indigo coloured darke dress was also referred to as
being 'black' by John, but this was of course the word for shades of dark colours such as
indigo (see Chapter 3.22).
We discussed the use of female dress items, and saw that more fibre and plant materials were
used during the earlier stages of dzum zugune, while textiles were used more towards the end.
Also, iron objects as ritual items and weapons played a larger role, the closer a participant
came to the two final stages of dzum zugune. The carrying of war helmets was noticeable, and
presumably not just to demonstrate the readiness of the local community to defend their
valuable land resources, but also as symbols of pride and personal achievement. We showed
the hierarchy of the more senior stage levels in comparison to the more junior levels,
dramatised by the ngwa garda (first step of the second stage) as 'red cows' who were ritually
forced by the ngwa yiye (third stage) 'black cows' to kneel in submission in front of them at
the place where the downhill running competition of ngwa garda began. We pointed to the
mixed age range of the participants, in that there could be older men among them whose
extended families had not done so well for some reason, and there might have been younger
men who forced older men to ritually kneel on the ground for them.
We also tried to picture the geographical dimension of dzum zugune in Ghwa'a, by
considering all the topographical positions of the different places, such as for example the
downhill run and the uphill dance, and the role of the two ritual assistants: zal fstaha as the
one who had performed dzum zugune, and zal duɗ ɗala as the one who had not. We remember
how they helped the second stage performers to change dress at the bottom of the hill at the
place called Yawa, before they danced uphill again, meaning that the change of dress code
was embedded in the topography of the local landscape. We also remember the keen young
men dancing at a place near the border of the part of modern Korana Basa, which was once
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