Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 453
God himself reportedly came out of Durghwe one day, and God had taken on the form of a
rock which seems to have represented his head, and he was carrying his children on his body.
This is an image that could be easily interpreted as a rockfall. This view is confirmed by the
fact that John remembered the event, and his description also indicated a rockfall. While the
interpretation of a rockfall as 'God with his children' is quite straightforward, it is more
difficult to explain how the discovery of guinea corn stock at the flat place called Tar
Durghwe during a millet year came about. On the other hand, it is no surprise that the
discovery of guinea corn was attributed to Durghwe, because it was so powerful that it had an
interethnic significance, and people from as far as Tur acknowledged that.
We know that Tur is just to the west of the Ziver-Oupay massif, and that the DGB sites were
found along the northern slopes of the Oupay massif, specifically overlooking the most
northwestern extension of the Mandara Mountains. We need to account for the strong
possibility that Durghwe was already a shrine of subregional significance quite some time
before colonial times. Our friends referred to the legend of Zedima, and his access to 'the
roots of the sun' which helped him assert himself over the chief of Wandala to whose
daughter he was married. The Gwoza hills, with Durghwe as perhaps its most significant
ritual centre, are geographically placed in between the DGB sites and Kirawa. We tried to
make a link related to climate change, and we argue here that Durghwe might well have been
a mountain shrine of regional significance long before the Wandala dynasty converted to
Islam during the mid-18th century. We suggest here again, this time with an emphasis on
Durghwe, that Ghwa'a might already have existed as a regional ritual centre during the late
17th century when a 'Pagan usurper' ruled Kirawa. Interested readers should go back to Part
Two and consult again our Table of Contemporaneity where this hypothesis is accounted for.
We have also learned that the Dghweɗe only owned the most southern pillar of Durghwe, and
that the Chikiɗe and the Guduf owned the other two. There was no shared interethnic sacrifice
between these three neighbours, but still the Dghweɗe of Ghwa'a claimed that they had to
start before the other two could do their sacrifices. We cannot be sure whether this is correct,
since I have not counterchecked. It could well be that our local protagonists said this because
they wanted to emphasise their ritual seniority in terms of oral historical precedence. I know
from my work with the Mafa of the Gouzda area that ritual responsibilities were regularly
renegotiated, in the context of which the sequence of local arrival was a key issue. Because
'Johode' (Ghwa'a) was in oral historical terms widely accepted as the early arrival zone for the
rest of the Gwoza hills, the fact that the key ritual responsibility rested with Ghwa'a makes
sense.
We finally learned that all the various custodians responsible for Durghwe came out of only
the Btha lineage. Reportedly, Btha's father Viwaya held the responsibility before them, which
makes Btha the seventh born (thaghaya) of the first wife of Viwaya. Our friends remembered
some of the names of past lineage priests since Viwaya and Btha, which were:
Duwatha
(1850)
Ngwiva
(1875)
Ghuda
(1900)
Tawana
(1925)
At one point, perhaps after the four custodians mentioned above, the responsibility went to a
different lineage branch than Btha, and the names of those lineage priests were:
Nglamude, and
(1950)
Gwama Ndura
(1960)
Unfortunately these two died in the course of their ritual duty, and since then the Btha lineage
took the responsibility back, with:
Ɗawa, and then
(1970)
Ghamba Vunga
(1995)
Ghamba Vunga was the custodian and seventh born (thaghaya) of Ghwa'a during my time.
The above list gives us seven names as mountain priests before Ghamba, who was already an
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