Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 483
Such special bangles or bracelets were called ding ghwala (ding = bracelet). Unfortunately we
do not know what material they were made from, but we do know that they were twisted,
which suggests they were made of iron. Three connected twisted bangles were for a twin boy,
two connected twisted bangles were for a twin girl, while a single twisted bangle or bracelet
was for a boy or girl born after twins. According to dada Dukwa they could be worn in any
way, so we infer that this meant not necessarily around the wrist, and both the twins and their
parents wore them. While parents wore two or three such bangles, depending on whether the
twins were boys, girls or mixed, or wore a single twisted bangle for a child born after twins,
the children themselves only wore the bangle representing their gender, or the position of
their birth if they were the child born after twins.
Dada Ɗga about Dghweɗe ideas around conception
In August 2001, when John and I conducted the following interview with dada Ɗga of
Ghwa'a about ideas around conception, he was in his mid- to late 80s. The interview also
aimed to discover the linguistic expressions the Dghweɗe used to address these ideas.
Therefore we will start this section by presenting such expressions, and then contextualise
them with the oral fragments discussed earlier.
There is no general word for conception, but only a general word for pregnancy, which is
khuɗe, also meaning stomach or womb. For example khuɗe nis tsagha means 'my wife is
pregnant' (nise = wife; tsagha = my/is mine), and khuɗe tha tsagha means 'my cow is
pregnant' (tha = cow or cattle). We also remember the word khuɗe in the context of khuɗe
luwa for 'stomach of settlement', hamlet (luwa = human settlement) and khuɗe thala for
'stomach of the house shrine' (thala = house shrine).
Dada Ɗga explained that a newly married couple would make love immediately after the
wife's first menstruation, as this was the best way to get pregnant. The Dghweɗe word for
menstruation is za za'a which literally means 'take rope', but we do not know what else 'take
rope' might stand for in this context. The expression za za'a was used exclusively for human
menstruation, while animal menstruation was called dhuva and apparently had no literal
meaning. A wife would say to her husband, 'I am pregnant' (khuɗe ghe). The husband would
answer, 'Yes, this is the reason why I married you', and the husband and wife would now
count up to the 10th lunar month, because the end of a moon marked the first month of
pregnancy.
We asked dada Ɗga how exactly pregnancy occurred, and he explained that when a man and
women 'met' (made love) the male sperm (ghwa ndire) met the blood (ghuza'a) released by
the woman at the end of her menstruation, and the two substances solidified to form a human
being. Neither the word for sperm nor the general word for blood had a literal meaning in this
context. Dada Ɗga added that if a woman could not conceive she had to see the diviner to
find out what was wrong, and in that case a woman often had to perform a sacrifice to become
pregnant.
Next we asked what role gwazgafte (God or divinity) played in the context of conception, and
dada Ɗga explained that it was the work of gwazgafte to solidify the sperm and the menstrual
blood, like a blacksmith smelting iron in a furnace. First it liquidised and then solidified into
many small pieces of iron. We asked again whether it was the sperm or the menstrual blood
that made a woman pregnant, and dada Ɗga explained that it was not one single thing that
brought about fertilisation but that the sperm and menstrual blood had to mix in the fallopian
tube (tataɗiya). He said that the sperm came from the man, and the menstrual blood, which
according to him was like female sperm, came from the woman, and gwazgafte would mix
them and make a solid form.
We can only guess that dada Ɗga included the ovaries in his concept of the fallopian tube, but
recognise that the fallopian tube and not the womb was the place where conception happened,
by the mixing of the sperm with the female equivalent of sperm which he possibly thought
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