Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 467
where we pointed out that being gifted with supernatural powers was a talent with which any
individual could be born. In the case of the Dghweɗe rainmakers, it was the seventh born who
inherited the house of his senior rainmaker father who had been thaghaya before him, but he
was not automatically seen as the most talented rainmaker. He was however still the thaghaya
who had not only inherited the house but also his father's most important ritual equipment,
among which the rainstones were considered the most potent. Such equipment reportedly
never left the house, and according to our rainmaker friends the house of the senior rainmaker
was where the most talented rainmakers gathered to discuss how to ritually proceed in
controlling rain and wind across the Dghweɗe community during the agriculturally active
season of the year.
From infanticide to adoption
Our sources concerning historical infanticide of the eighth-born child are very limited. This is
my own mistake, because during my fieldwork in Dghweɗe between 1994 and 2010 I failed
to conduct specific interviews about the subject. After Boko Haram had destroyed most of the
montagnard culture of the Dghweɗe it was very difficult to obtain access to the same degree
of local collective memories, because it was not possible to return to the mountains and I had
to rely on oral sources from the Dghweɗe diaspora. Luckily, John was able to identify a
couple of older Dghweɗe who had managed to survive and flee to a place near where he had
fled, but these oral sources were not older people from the hills and they had mostly been
living in the plains before fleeing from the invaders. Still, we were able to work out that in the
past both boys and girls fell victim to infanticide of the eighth-born child, and we have
already referred to some of these oral memories.
We discovered another important aspect, which was that the wish for a seventh-born son of
the husband of a house (zal thaghaya) must have included the hope that his first wife would
bear a boy as her seventh child. We know that such a child would have been named Taɗa, and
if the seventh born was a girl, her sixth-born older brother by the name of Kalakwa would
have been in line to becoming the family seventh born. It was very rare indeed that the first
wife of zal thaghaya would give birth to seven sons, and that Taɗa would have been the
seventh among those. However, if that did happen it was reportedly considered an extremely
auspicious birth, although John told me that the Dghweɗe thought that such a lucky event
would lead to the early death of the father. We know that if the opposite happened and the
eighth born named Zuwala had been the only son the first wife had with her husband, Zuwala
was spared infanticide because he was now considered a potential seventh born.
Unfortunately we do not know whether this promotion from being an inauspicious birth to
auspicious family thaghaya would have held if the first wife later gave birth to another son.
Also, it was only while writing this chapter that it occurred to me to want to know whether
there were any other exceptions to the cultural practice of infanticide, and I was able to
establish that neither twins nor the child born directly after twins fell victim to it. I also
managed to establish that even before the British introduced the practice of adoption in
around 1925, not all eighth-born children were killed, but some were given away to the
Wandala or the Fulani, because the Dghweɗe felt that adopting such a child would not cause
bad luck for Muslims. In a correspondence initiated by Lewis between March and April 1925,
a letter includes a note by captain Lewis in which he speaks of:
...casting away the eighth born child born of a virgin by the same husband. This child is
2
sometimes placed on a path along which traders or others may pass.
We think that Lewis's use of the expression 'born of a virgin by the same husband' is a
reference to a first wife of a father of a house, as it is not possible for a virgin to have given
birth to an eighth child. We will also learn in Chapter 3.2: 'Past ways of marrying in
2
National Archives in Kaduna (No 83A/1925/3).
465
