Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 485
According to dada Ɗga, God's role was to solidify the mixture of sperm and menstrual blood
in the fallopian tube and turn it into a human being, but the sexual encounter of a man and a
woman was needed to start the process of conception. He underpinned this view with what we
already learned in Chapter 3.16 about the Dghweɗe ideas around the concept of a Supreme
Being, where we talked about the belief that God had a wife and children. Dada Ɗga said
again that everyone had his own individual god (ku wire de gwazgafte cen vaha) and that only
if someone's personal god (gwazgafte) was married would that person also be married, and
only if someone's personal god had a child would they too have a child, or if someone's god
was rich would that person be rich, etc. We remember that such personal or individual gods
were seen as the children of God, and that they could perhaps be interpreted as spirits of
divinity, or compared with Christian angels. In Chapter 3.15 we tried to understand the
Dghweɗe belief in personal gods as part of their concept of existential personhood, and
referred to it as personal or individual spirithood.
Dada Ɗga pointed out that the newly created life in the womb (khuɗi) would grow like a grain
of guinea corn (hiya) after the sperm and menstrual blood had mixed and solidified with the
help of God. He said this was apparent because if a woman had a miscarriage the 'grain' could
be seen coming out of the fallopian tube. However, if the conception was successful it could
be seen that after seven lunar months the new life had taken on the shape of a human being.
He pointed out that this was evident because some women would give birth after only seven
months. We remember the ritual kɗafa (see Chapter 3.12) reported by bulama Ngatha, where
a three-legged cooking pot (sak sage) transformed into his god or spirit pot (sakgharfire) after
he had cooked a ritual sauce for his friend's first wife to celebrate the first seven months of
her first pregnancy. We know that a man’s first wife carried the hope of one day becoming
the mother of a seventh son. Dada Ɗga explained that successful procreation needed an equal
mix of both genders for the woman to conceive such a desirable son and for him to grow
inside her with divine support.
It was further pointed out by dada Ɗga that the child in the womb used its tongue to lick the
food the mother ate through its sunde, which is the Dghweɗe word for umbilical cord and
placenta. The Dghweɗe obviously distinguished this from the umbilical cord of animals
which is zululu, and dada Ɗga said that it was certainly not the blood but the food of the
mother which the growing child ate. After a birth the Dghweɗe bury the placenta in a separate
pot also called sunde, and this was already pointed out in 1995 by bulama Ngatha. Such
placenta pots were buried at the house but they remained partly visible and libations were
made over them in the same way that rituals were carried out with the spirit pots known as
dungwe for children (see Table 8). We remember, from Chapter 3.12 about the house as a
place of worship, that men and children had spirit pots while women did not, the only
exception being the first wife of a man who after her death was entitled to have the equivalent
of a ritual cooking pot kept in her lower kitchen.
That spirit pots were mostly not only male, but also transformed cooking pots, is significant if
we think of the transformative aspect of the gel-like mixture bringing about conception
through sexual intercourse with the help of divinity. This is also in tune with dada Ɗga's
statement that the Dghweɗe liked to believe that if a man pumped a lot of sperm into a
woman, the child would be very big, but even so, in the end it was God who decided how
large or small a child would be. We also spoke about premature sex, and dada Ɗga told us
that if a boy had sex before he was physically mature, he might be spoiled in reproductive
terms, meaning unable to reproduce. This was called baza in Dghweɗe, and he pointed out
that baza was also the word for miscarriage, and added that it was the same word as for the
new fruits of a mahogany tree. We have no idea of the meaning of the link to the new fruits of
a mahogany tree, but perhaps unripe mahogany fruits were a metaphor for a boy who had
premature sex. Mahogany trees were very important in Dghweɗe culture and the oil produced
from ripe mahogany trees had many medicinal properties.
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