Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 484
was part of menstrual blood. We also think this because he explicitly pointed out that the
sperm was not like a seed that germinated but that it was a mixture of the two which brought
about conception.
Dada Ɗga now elaborated,
explaining that there was an
amulet made of iron or
aluminium, which represented
the fallopian tube (tataɗiya).
Such an amulet was called
taɗiya. Figure 31 shows its
possible shapes and the
numbers worn, depending on
whether it was for a man or a
woman. In the previous
section we mentioned the
taɗiya amulet for children born with a 'head helmet', and that the some of the caul membrane
was put inside this.
Figure 31: Types of taɗiya amulets representing a fallopian
tube – two of type (a) was for women, while a single type
(a) was for men. The amulet with two ends (b) was
reportedly mostly worn by men.
Unfortunately we do not know anything further about the taɗiya amulet, and whether it was
worn by men and/or women in order to induce conception. Neither do we know whether they
also had medicinal fillings for this purpose. The only thing we can see is that two taɗiya of
type (a) were worn by women while only one was worn by men.
We already know that khuɗi meant stomach or womb and also pregnancy, and that tataɗiya
was the word for fallopian tube, and it seems that the taɗiya amulet with the two ends as
shown in version (b) of Figure 31 perhaps comes closest to the anatomical reality of this.
With regard to the composite word for uterus (khuɗi) and fallopian tube (tataɗiya), dada Ɗga
pointed out that the Dghweɗe term was vak-yag-vagha, but we do not know whether there
was a literal translation of that. We do not know whether the Dghweɗe included the ovaries as
part of their anatomical perception of the fallopian tubes, and neither do we know whether
vak-yag-vagha was a reference to the birth tract including the vagina (ndale) as a whole. We
identified ndale as the general Dghweɗe word for vagina in the comparison of sexual
references in Chapter 3.15 about ideas around existential personhood.
What seems to be crucial is that the successful mixing of sperm and menstrual blood in the
fallopian tube depended on the intervention of God (gwazgafte) in making the mixture
zahgha, meaning 'gelatine' or 'jelly', referring to a kind of a cooking or reduction process in
which something liquid was changed into solid form. Dada Ɗga described it not only like the
process of smelting iron, but also like cooking pumpkins and beans together, or beans and
tigernut flour. The fallopian tube would hold the mixture, and the sign of a successful
conception was that the woman would stop menstruating, and this was the moment when the
new human being would start to grow. 5
We remember, from the first section about the birth of twins, the jelly mixture known as
zahgha mixed with guinea corn flour and sour milk into zah yakara, which was given to the
former parents of twins on the third day after they were born to new parents. While the former
parents received the greatest share of the gel-like zah yakara in the dedicated ndafe eating
bowls, the new parents and other participants only received the remainder. Is it reasonable to
speculate that the ritual transformation of the twins as a communal representation of fecundity
was similar to the solidifying process of conception in the fallopian tube (tataɗiya) by the aid
of divinity (gwazgafte)?
5
For a subregional comparison we want to mention here that sperm and menstrual blood being the two
key ingredients for conception was also known among the Mafa of Gouzda, who also believed that the
local water spirit was involved in bringing about pregnancy (Muller-Kosack 2003:150ff).
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