Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 496
lower kitchen, because the lower kitchen might have still been owned by the first wife of the
father of the groom and used as her ritual beer kitchen:
After the tying of the cowpea thread and the cutting of the wedding cake, three grown-up girls will
be called to come and perform al-njewe dughwaha welet, al-nejewe dughwaha welel, consisting of
them running three times backwards and forwards from kwadgara [children's room] towards the
kitchen. After doing that the young man, now husband, will go and borrow some money from
people to show to his new wife, so that she will come out of kwadgara and go to the place where
she will bathe and wash. Then she will move on until she reaches the entrance of kuÉ—ig daghre,
the upper kitchen. When she takes the bath, there will be a small girl aged between eight and
eleven with her, so that when the new wife bends, the small girl also bends under her stomach so
that the water drips from her body onto the small girl. As a result of the water dripping from the
wife, the small girl will also wash. This girl is called dugh-dhagh yawe (dugh = girl; dhagh =
collect; yawe = water). In this context it means: 'the girl that collects the water dropping off from
the new wife'. This small girl will be a friend to this new wife, especially when the marriage
stands.
We are not sure what John meant by 'when the marriage stands' and can only infer that it is a
reference to a marriage by promise, because in that case the 'new wife' would not be mature
enough to consummate the marriage and therefore would be returned to her father's house
until she was called back when she had sexually matured. The three grown-up girls run three
times backwards and forwards between the children's room (kwadgara) and presumably the
upper kitchen, which as we know was situated adjacent to the children's room, and we realise
here that the number three most likely refers in this and in all the other ritual contexts in the
description to the wish for a boy as the firstborn child. We also notice the importance of water
as a symbol for fecundity, but now we will continue with John's second part of his more
detailed account:
After bathing, the new wife will go and sit on a mat near the three ancestor stones (kwir thala)
where they will rub her with mahogany oil and dress her in traditional dress. When they are doing
all this, mature young women will now gather in the upper kitchen to grind on the grinding stones
while they are singing songs. Then the new wife (dughwa-ha) will be invited to come and grind
there too and she will praise her husband by giving him nicknames. After grinding she will now
take the broom and start sweeping the house from inside to outside.
A sister of the husband's mother will now come to eat the leftovers from the three stacks of [solid]
food used as a wedding cake. She will also make the following sound: alebe alebe, and praise the
new wife. After she has eaten the remaining food she will give some money to the new wife.
John continues by explaining how the 'new wife' (dughwa-ha) was brought back to her
father's house in the case of a marriage by promise:
If the new wife is mature enough to stay as a married wife, then she stays, but when she is not
mature enough then on the seventh day her husband will now find a man that will lead her to her
father's house. A man and a woman come with one she-goat, one chicken, one black robe (darke)
contained in a box made from thatch, and one iron called para para. They now go to her father's
house but will not enter but stand on the landmark of two farmlands. Her father now calls his
neighbour to come and take some feathers from the chicken and the iron, and the neighbour starts
moving it three times from the crown of her head to the toes of her feet. The neighbour keeps the
iron and the chicken while her father takes the she-goat and the box with the darke robe. They
now wait until she is mature enough to become a [mother] and housewife. The person who led her
on the day she went back to her father's house together with the woman who accompanied them
will now both go and call her back to her husband's house. This happens after the girl has
discovered that she is now mature enough to be a married woman.
On the day they go and call her yah dughwaha they also come with the dowry that may consist of
some money and goats. The remaining balance of dowry consisting of a cow is payable after a
new wife has given birth to sometimes two but even up to three children. The reason a cow as the
final part of the dowry might be paid so much later is when the husband is not rich enough to pay
after the birth of a first child.
The most important thing here is the tying of the cowpea thread (za'a ndole ndole) which is only
performed once in a lifetime. Thaghaya [a seventh-born son] always comes from the children of
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