Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 492
We will learn below how the befriending of a girl (dugh dzugwa) eventually led to a ritual
initiation (kla dughwe) in which the promise became fixed in the form of a marriage
ceremony at her future husband's house before the girl reached sexual maturity. After the
ritual initiation into her future husband's family, the girl was brought back to her father's
house together with some of the bridewealth. She was called back when she was ready to
consummate the marriage, and only after she had given birth to a child did her husband give a
cow to her father as the largest proportion of the bridewealth. We mentioned that a future sonin-law was obliged to work voluntarily on his future father-in-law's farm. The kla dughwe
ritual of turning a former dugh dzugwa from the state of befriending a girl into a marriage by
promise was reportedly the most important marriage ritual in Dghweɗe, and the only marriage
which led to the birth of a seventh son (thaghaya) by her as the first wife.
The second way of marrying in Dghweɗe was Dugh pata and according to John it meant
something like 'marrying a girl without notice of the parents of the girl'. This implied that the
marriage was an arrangement between a girl and the boy who wanted to marry her. The girl
would follow the boy to his house where they would perform the marriage rituals, but we
were not able to find out what exactly the difference was between this and formal marriage,
and how less complex the rituals were in comparison. John noted down that a marriage
without notice of the parents was often one in which a boy and a girl had fallen in love for the
first time, but we think that this was perhaps not necessarily the only scenario. We infer that
such a marriage might have been typical for a man and a woman forming a secondary
marriage, since according to John's notes only a marriage by promise could bring about the
status of a first wife and subsequently the rightful birth of a seventh son.
As discussed in Chapter 3.18, the Dghweɗe distinguished between the family seventh born
and the seventh born of a co-wife as the seventh-born in waiting, and we acknowledge that
John speaks of the family seventh born when he says that this son should be from the first
wife. There was a similar ideal scenario for a marriage without notice (dugh pata) and we
could easily interpret this as a marriage for love and therefore see it as the ideal case of a
romantic marriage from today's perspective. But we need to ask ourselves whether it was as
easily achieved, since in the past it was often the case that a man and a woman who had
strong feelings for each other would have to arrange 'a marriage by capture (dugh viya) in
disguise'. The reason behind this would be that the woman was embarrassed to marry as a
secondary wife, because she was acting without notice of her parents, and had asked her lover
to organise his friends to abduct her while for example she was on her way to fetch water for
her father's house or was at the local market place.
The official version of a marriage by capture (dugh viya) was different, and it was not
initiated by the woman but happened when a man could not find a suitable woman to marry.
One reason might be that his parents were not very successful farmers, leading to chronic
food shortage. Unfortunately we do not know how frequent marriage by capture was, and
neither do we know whether there were any particular circumstances in form of crises which
prevented the raising of bridewealth which could have increased the likelihood of this way of
finding a wife and starting a family. We need to remember that the exogamy rules would still
have applied during such periods, although they might have become modified if a crisis was
collective. The Dghweɗe not only practiced lineage exogamy (gwagha) along patrilines but
also matrilateral exogamy (zbe) through a wife's father's line for up to four generations (see
Chapter 3.6). We can only assume that the practice of marriage by capture (dugh viya) was
less of an issue when times were good and peaceful in Dghweɗe of the late pre-colonial past.
According to John, after finding a woman either through pata (without notice of the parents)
or viya (by the use of force) the marriage ritual known as kla dughwe would be performed.
We therefore like to think that kla dughwe was not only part of all primary marriages but also
of all secondary marriages. It meant that when a woman was in the house of her future
husband she would be taken to the children's room called kwadgara where she would remove
all dress items and remain in the room for three days before the marriage ceremony was
performed. During the seclusion period she would only be allowed to consume sorghum beer
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