Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 433
realised that the Wandala could not protect them and they believed the British were unaware
of Hamman Yaji's atrocities, they sent a peacemaking delegation to Maiduguri (see Chapter
2.2).
We also remember the supernatural elements of the tale represented by our Dghweɗe friends,
in that Cissus quadrangularis was swallowed by Vaima, a member of the Ɗagha local
peacemaker lineage, before he went on his journey which led to the arrest of Hamman Yaji.
We interpret bulama Ngatha's reference to the arrest of Hamman Yaji as the oral historical
marker for the end of pre-colonial times, a time when things were still in order and the
beginning of colonial times when cultural changes came about. In a way it also marks the
transitional period between traditional and modern times. Perhaps only Boko Haram can
claim a similar significance in oral historical terms, but bulama Ngatha died before they
arrived.
Before attempting to interpret the mythological element of the tale, we will provide a
selective summary of how the story was told to me by the Mafa of the Gouzda area, by
focussing on the similarities in both versions (Muller-Kosack 2003:102ff). There too the
stones had once been soft and were used as food and soil was the sauce, until an old woman
urinated over the 'food stones' and as a result they became hard. Until then life had been good
and people lived forever, but now they buried the stones under the soil. Next, a local clan
ancestor by the name of Goye stole guinea corn from God's wife. He put two grains of it
under his foreskin and managed to smuggle it past God's children despite them having
checked his ears, anus, mouth and armpits. Back on earth, Goye was the first to start planting
sorghum, and it was still a local custom during my time for the first ceremonial beer of the
year to be dedicated to Goye, who was seen as a mythological representation of the first
settler.
In Gouzda, Goye was seen as someone with a supernatural talent, similar to the talent of
sorcerers and specialist healers which extended beyond human personhood as we discussed
earlier. According to bulama Ngatha, a dog not only brought guinea corn by digesting it, but
he also brought fire by carrying it on his tail. Bulama Mbaldawa added that dogs became
domesticated because they brought all these goods to man. The Mafa of Gouzda also honour
dogs because they brought millet and fire. They told me that when they threw food to their
dogs they would say: 'thank you for bringing us millet', while bulama Mbaldawa of Tatsa
claimed that a dog brought only sorghum, and that millet had transformed from a grass called
tuve. Unlike Goye who brought sorghum to the Mafa of Gouzda by hiding it under his
foreskin, the Dghweɗe believed that a dog produced it through his digestive tract, and when
humans saw it germinating from his excrement they planted it and started cultivating.
My Dghweɗe protagonists were not too rigid in the claim that stones were once the only
source of food, and some claimed that the fruits of trees were also used before guinea corn
was discovered. Concerning the prehistoric relationship between millet and guinea corn, we
know that the cultivation of guinea corn was the more recent, and perhaps the Mafa version of
linking millet rather than sorghum to a cosmological dog as the bringer of fire makes more
sense prehistorically. However, these are mythological accounts after all, and what seems to
be important in both tales is that it was not the discovery of millet but that of guinea corn that
led to the stones to be rendered useless as food.
We therefore favour the hypothesis that the regional development of terrace cultivation as the
main source of subsistence needs to be seen in the context of the adoption of guinea corn.
Such a hypothesis also makes sense in the context of it being used as a sacrifice to God
following the discovery of how to make sorghum beer. We also learned in earlier chapters
how people who could not afford to sacrifice a he-goat used sorghum flour in water to
sacrifice over their ancestor stones. This combination links sorghum beer and animal
husbandry as a source of manure production to the discovery of guinea corn.
Unfortunately the mythological tale does not refer to animal husbandry, but we do know from
earlier chapters that the stall feeding of animals was a crucial aspect of terrace cultivation for
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