Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 482
unpredictable semi-arid environment. The ritual culture of managing good and bad luck was
driven by the experiences and ritual regimes of their forefathers, and we think that the rituals
surrounding reproduction might have gained in complexity over time. The memories of our
oral protagonists were most likely informed by the religious practices of late pre-colonial
times, and hopefully these testimonies can be presented as evidence for such complexities.
Our account of the ritual handling of good and bad luck regarding the belief in the
reincarnation of twins is still very fragmented in ethnographic terms, and perhaps we have
over-interpreted it a little.
Triplets or any other ways of being born differently
We have already mentioned that the first child born after twins was called Ghamba if it was a
boy and Pire if it was a girl. Dada Dukwa pointed out that one of the differences between such
a birth and the birth of twins was that it did not involve former parents going to Durghwe to
collect the leaves of the bzaka tree. He added that there was no twin ceremony (har ghwala)
performed, but that they would perform the annual ritual of marking the forehead with guinea
corn flour (buh dungwe).
With regard to the birth of triplets, dada Dukwa explained that triplets were also referred to as
ghwala (twins) and that they would be called Wasa, Wala and Ghamba, and that the third
triplet was seen as the younger brother or sister of the twins. We can speculate as to whether
the significance of Ghamba and Pire as the first boy or girl born after twins was historically
rooted in the much rarer collective experience of the birth of triplets. Considering that dada
Dukwa knew about the birth of triplets makes this a reasonable hypothesis in our opinion.
Another birth circumstance that dada Dukwa thought extraordinary was if a child was born
legs first. Such a child was referred to as nzuwa nzuwa, but there was apparently no literal
meaning of this term. The children born in such a way would also have the buh dungwe
(marking the forehead) ritual performed, and they received a pot, but it was not one with two
mouths or a divided mouth. We infer that it was an ordinary dungwe pot, meaning a small
beer pot with a small aperture, or a cooking pot that was also used as spirit pot for children
(see the list of ritual pots presented in Table 8 in Chapter 3.12 about the house as a place of
worship). Like twins, such children could cause harm to farm produce and therefore needed to
be kept happy.
There were also children born with a 'head helmet' (Caput galeatum) also known as a caul,
which is a piece of membrane covering the newborn's head and face, but there was no special
ritual treatment in this case as these children were not considered able to cause harm. Still, a
piece of the membrane was kept in a tadiya amulet which the child would wear around the
neck (see Figure 31). We will revisit the meaning of the Dghweɗe word taɗiya or tataɗiya in
the next section dealing with the Dghweɗe ideas around conception, but before we move on
to that we want to briefly present in Figure 30 an illustration of the special bangle worn by
twins and the parents of twins.
Figure 30: Sketch of the three types of twisted twin bangle (ding ghwala)
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