Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 52
to sustain this, and will the people who will hopefully eventually return be able to reconstruct
their livelihoods in the hills?
Despite the concern of the man in the pub in Gwoza in 1994, I never experienced the Gwoza
hills as a threatening place, in fact the opposite was the case. I was welcomed and the
Dghweɗe people in particular embraced my presence. However in 1994 I was still somewhat
fearful of going up there, presumably because it was not common for someone like me to
want to live in the hills. Luckily I met John, and he introduced me to his people and to his
family, and his father Zakariya Kwire became like a father to me too. It is still a shock to me
how quickly things have changed in the last ten years, and how a place I considered a second
home fell victim to the most brutal atrocities of a terrorist invasion. Chapter 1.1 in particular
aims to give the reader an impression of how freely the Gwoza hills and the surrounding
foothills and plains could be travelled before Boko Haram, and I have written it in the
ethnographic present to heighten the dramatic change that took place in such a short time.
Our imaginary journey is supported with a set of pictures, which illustrate how the Gwoza
hills appeared, not only by looking up from the plains, but also by looking down across the
plains from the hills. The latter was the view the montagnards had most of the time, and later
in Part Three, in the chapter about the significance of Durghwe as a mountain shrine, we will
come back to the topographical worldview aspect of living and farming in the hills. Chapter
1.1 will also highlight some of the environmental intricacies that were already present long
before Boko Haram, and also the mountains versus plains situation regarding the unequal
distribution of infrastructure, and the aspect of Christianity and Islam relative to that, which
led eventually to the sudden rise of Islamic conversion from 2005 onwards.
Chapter 1.2: 'Mapping ethnographic complexities', presents a summary of the survey I
conducted in late 1994, by visiting all the places described in Chapter 1.1, apart from the walk
from Ghwa'a to Gvoko that I did for the first time in 1995 when starting to work exclusively
in Dghweɗe. The survey presents three maps showing the boundaries of villages and wards as
they were administratively in place at that time, as well as a map of the linguistic and ethnic
relevances down to the administrative ward level. The question of population density will also
be discussed, based on estimates made upon the background of past national censuses.
While reading our imaginary journey of Chapter 1.1, we particularly recommend the reader to
consult Figure 3, as it represents a detailed map of the village and ward boundaries as they
were in 1994. Figure 3 will also aid in understanding the geographical situation presented in
the pictures shown in Chapter 1.1. It will presumably take some time, at least for a reader not
familiar with the complex geography of the Gwoza LGA, to become familiar with the many
place names in Dghweɗe, and the links to the descent groups who once derived their
indigenous sense of belonging through the oral history we retell throughout Part Three.
Finally, in Figure 4 at the end of Part One, we present an orientational map of the northern
Mandara Mountains and surrounding plains, by presenting an overview of relevant ethnic
groups, subgroups, and place names of the wider region, and advise the reader to become
familiar with it. We equally recommend consulting Figure 1 and Figure 2, which present
overview maps of the geographical position of the Mandara Mountains that are situated
between Lake Chad and the Benue river, with the Gwoza hills as their most northwesterly
extension.
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