Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 479
Although his sons Wasa and Ghamba (Ghamba = first boy born after twins) are Muslims, he still
performs the ritual. He ties dzadza (middle, white/yellow new palm leaves) around the neck of the
twin pots and ndafa [eating bowl], and puts sorghum flour on the pots and leaves. He also puts
palm leaves around his neck and the neck of his wife. Every time he has sour milk (wuɓa) he puts
some of it in two potsherds. The following day the sour milk has magically disappeared.
If one of the twins dies the remaining twin will take ɓlungwe (the remains of cooked guinea corn
flour mixed with water) and put it in a potsherd for his deceased brother. He does that every day.
If the [actual] mother or father or one of the twins dies, ngag ghwala is performed (ngag = locking
device, it can also be on a door or a trap). The ngage part consists of a large calabash with water
inside and an upturned smaller calabash inside it, with a guinea corn stalk leaning on each side.
The smaller calabash covering the water is the ngage [locking device]. This is done on the second
day of the funeral. People who have been parents of twins will come that day and take one of the
sticks and tap it on the bottom of the small calabash. They tap three times on the calabash
followed by one time on their foreheads. All of this is done three times. If twins are a boy and a
girl you have to arrange two sets of ngag ghwala. If they are only boys or only girls you do it in
just one single set.
The fact that it could take years to organise a proper twin ceremony reminds us of the adult
initiation (dzum zugune) where it could take a performer seven years or more to fill three
granaries before he finally felt free of the pressure of worrying about food shortages. We
concluded that the seven years was made up of the four stages performed in four guinea corn
years with three millet years in between. During each stage the performers had to demonstrate
their farming ability, which started with the first stage where the elders counted the jahurimbe
bowls filled with sorghum beer at the public place Fkah ga Maruwa (see Figure 22) under the
summit of Durghwe. This means that they saved grain from every stage of the bi-annual cycle
of crop rotation, and we can only imagine that for a father of twins, saving up for the proper
twin ceremony (har ghwala) was not an easy task. Further difficulties were added as two hegoats, not just one, had to be sacrificed, and it could have been a large burden considering that
at the same time such a father of twins might have planned to perform dzum zugune.
The reference har ghwala reminds us of the many other har (slaughtering) rituals of mainly
he-goats in the context of the house as a place of worship, which from now on the parents of
twins, or later in life the twins themselves, had to perform. Again palm leaves (dzadza) played
a large role as the former and new parents decorated themselves with these, and odd and even
sets of cornstalks were carried around by the fathers of twins. There was also a concerted
effort to balance the gifts brought by members of the community, but it was the twins
themselves who indicated whether they were happy or unhappy. The parents and guests
always aimed to make the gifts completely equal, by rearranging them so the twins would be
happy.
After the initial twin ritual (har ghwala), the annual twin ritual buh dungwe took place, and
eventually the twins themselves decided when it would happen and how many guests they
would invite. If we imagine buh dungwe during late pre-colonial times, it was presumably
done regularly, including on key seasonal occasions such as starting the planting and
harvesting. Unfortunately we are not sure whether buh dungwe was more historically linked
to the guinea corn year and was therefore bi-annual, as the sacrifice to a deceased father (har
ghwe) once was. In August 2001 dada Dukwa described how he expected not to have a very
good yield, but that even then he would always perform a basic version of buh dungwe.
Dada Dukwa told us how he put sour milk (wuɓa) on two potsherds, and we remember the
use of potsherds as representations of up to three generations of paternal family ancestors,
whereas in dada Dukwa's case it was two potsherds. We can indirectly conclude that Wala
had either died, or that she was a girl and had been married, in which case we can only
assume she would have done her har ghwala in her husband's house. It therefore remains
unclear whom dada Dukwa's two potsherds represented, but I think they might have been a
representation of ritual pairing rather than twins he had as ancestors. We are familiar with
ritual pairing in the pairing of ancestors of rainmakers and cornblessers among the specialist
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