Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 429
Gouzda did not entertain the idea of a cosmic snake embracing this world, but we do not
know whether the Gwoza hill neighbours of the Dghweɗe did so.
Neither do we know what the other groups of the Gwoza hills believed concerning the
cosmographic journey of the sun. The Dghweɗe belief that the sun rose from the next world
after it had set in the west of this world suggests that the east of the next world was
underneath the west of this world. The reversal of west and east seems to suggest the idea that
the next world, besides being peopled by ancestors, was cosmographically a mirror image of
this world. We never explored this with our Dghweɗe friends, but it is supported by their
view that the ancestors used the left hand when carrying out their rituals for their dead fathers
and grandfathers. This was explained to me as the reason why a father of a house used the left
hand when he performed the first ritual after the divination following the death of his father. I
was explicitly told that the reason was the very belief that the left hand in the next world was
comparable to the right hand in this world.
Similarly, we could equally perceive the mouth and the anus as reversals in the context of the
image of the 'stomach' of the house shrine (khuɗi thala), seeing the entry point and the exit
point of food as a cosmological concept for manure production. It was always important, as
well as quite amusing to me, when my Dghweɗe friends explained that the meaning of mbarte
for anus also meant a new beginning. In the context of this, we refer back to the meaning of
the word kambarte for the new beginning of a localised lineage group of the same
genealogical descent (ksage) after splitting along the lines of different mothers, commonly
known as 'kitchen' (kuɗige). We remember how our Dghweɗe friends explained that a
kambarte was the start of a new local settlement which would subsequently become a khuɗi
luwa. This involved not only the building of new houses but also the development of fertile
infields by manuring them over several generations. In the context of this, the patrilineal
ancestors of the new local lineage branch would then become the inhabitants of a mirror
world under that one, imagined as luwa mbarte (the cosmographic 'bottom' of a local
settlement). I admit that this is only a circumstantial ethnographic conclusion.
The Dghweɗe cognitive orientation in which the sun passed through the next world while it
was dark in this world throws light on what we refer to as 'blessings from above and below'.
While the ancestors lived in the world below (luwa mbarte), the world above (ghaluwa) was
the home of gwazgafte as Father Almighty (God), plus his wife or wives and children. We
refer to this as celestial or divine parenthood, and discuss it in the final section of this chapter
together with the relevant fieldnotes. It was bulama Ngatha who told us that people were born
from the world above and that they would go to the world below after they had died, which
presumably makes this world the true world of the living. While the world below was
connected with tracing patrilineal descent and the inheritance of assets in this world, we will
see in the next section that the adoption of sorghum and the skill of making fire came from
the celestial world above. This implies that the cosmological direction of reproduction was
inspired from the world above, while hard human labour had created the world below and it
needed to be defended by means of physical warfare in this world, while spiritual warfare
happened in the world above.
We remember how individual spirits as shadow images of humans (sɗukwe vagha) could be
abducted by powerful sorcerers, and how specialist healers would fight a war in the world
above to bring those spirits back into the human body. We were equally told by the rainmaker
of Gharaza, how rainmakers would fight a war in the air (vale), and that the most powerful
ones could go as far as ghaluwa to fight the war for rain. By remaining with our image of a
cosmological above and below, we also remember the legend of Zedima who collected 'the
roots of the sun', not only to control the rain but also to control drought. He used it to gain
victory over the chief of Wandala, despite his wife Katala-Wandala having poisoned the local
beer he shared among neighbours while they were distributing manure on the terraced fields.
These narratives demonstrate how important the ritual promotion of fecundity was for the late
pre-colonial Dghweɗe, and interpreting them in the context of their view of the world helps
towards a better understanding of the cosmological meaning of the legendary tales.
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