Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 495
After the family priest has performed his ritual, the groom will now go and find a married women
who has not lost her firstborn child to perform dzar dva which means 'cutting the wedding cake'.
When that woman comes, the first thing she will do is to ask the young woman to untie the thread
made of cow pea fibre (za'a ndole-ndola) and tie it around the groom's waist. The bride now
unties the thread and ties it around the groom's waist and then unties it again. After they have done
that, they bring in another food piled in three stacks made from uncooked guinea corn flour and all
this will be taken into kwadgara, the room for a boy or girl and where the young woman spent the
three days fasting. Now the married woman takes some pieces of food and gives it to the young
woman three times but the young woman will refuse to eat it. Next, the married woman holds the
young man's and the young woman's hands together and dips them into the [solid] food and then
dips them into the sauce served in a clay bowl called jahurimde. Now the young woman will give
some to the young man and he eats and the young man also gives some to the young woman and
she eats too. The married woman will now take the middle piece from the three [solid] food stacks
and break it into two on the head of the young woman. Two male and female children will be
called to come and each of them takes one half of the broken food. The half in the married
woman's left hand will be given to a female child while the half in her right hand is handed to a
male child. Immediately after collecting the foods the male child will run into gdighwe [which is
the ritual sauce kitchen for exogamous lineage brothers], and the girl will run with her half to kudg
tighe, which is the first wife's ritual beer kitchen. Then they both go and eat the food.
This first part of John's more detailed account identifies the left hand representing a female
and the right hand representing a male, and also speaks of the girl running with her half of the
middle part of three stacks of solid food (John's 'wedding cake') to the left-hand or lower
kitchen of the first wife. In the other account, John referred to the kudigh daghre, which was
the right-hand or upper kitchen of a traditional house (see Figure 19), and we can only assume
that this is what might have happened when the bride was marrying as a secondary wife. John
also wrote in this version of his testimony that it was the family priest who threw some of the
two halves of the 'wedding cake' at the ancestor stones. The fact that there are variations in the
two versions John reported from his oral sources shows that there might well have been
several ways in how the rituals of a marriage ceremony could be performed. Still, the fact that
in the above account it was the left-hand or lower kitchen where the girl had to run with her
half of the 'wedding cake' strongly indicates that this was the scenario specifically for a
primary marriage. Figure 32 illustrates what John has described.
Figure 32: The middle stack of the three stacks of solid food is broken and shared.
Zalaghwa ritual:
While still inside the child's room
where the bride has been in seclusion
for three days, a married woman
ritually breaks the middle part of the
'wedding cake' in two halves on the
bride’s head, then with her right hand
gives half to a boy, and with her left
hand gives half to a girl. The boy runs
with his share to the ritual sauce
kitchen (9) of the husband and father
of the house, and the girl runs with
her share to the ritual beer kitchen (1)
of his first wife. After this, both
children consume their shares.
John continues with his second longer version, of which we can only assume some parts are a
detailed description of the more elaborate rituals performed for a marriage by promise, while
perhaps other parts are not, such as for example when the bride goes to the upper kitchen after
she comes out of seclusion. Unfortunately we cannot be sure, and perhaps even during a
primary marriage by promise the bride would have gone first to the upper rather than the
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