Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 532
frequent or a rare occurrence, but having no ritual or common use allocated to it was
obviously the reason it was not owned by anyone.
Some of the vavanza considered useful in the list were planted near the house, but not all of
them had to be given to the owner of a house by a ritual owner who belonged to a specialist
lineage. This was the case for example with vavanz daghile (Plate 63h) which was used to
mix into the food of the bull kept in the stall next to the upper room of the father of a house.
Other types of ritual vavanza planted near the house, such as vavanz gharaghara (Plate 63g)
or vavanz wira (Plate 63e), had to be given to the owner of the house by a member of the
cornblesser or the rainmaker lineage. Both were to do with increasing the yield of the most
important crops, and vavanz gharaghara was particularly relevant to guinea corn because it
could stop guinea corn growing or cause it to fly away from storage if not managed properly.
A departure from the ideal order of the eruption of children’s teeth seems an odd thing to
affect the growing of guinea corn, and here we will add some additional ethnographic details I
was told during my documentation of vavanz gharaghara. Apparently, if the second upper
front tooth of a girl fell out, her father hid the tooth. When the girl married, the tooth was
embedded in a traditional sausage made of cattle fat (dgɗale) and the whole package was
given to her to take to the home of her new husband. Now that the tooth had gone from her
father's house, the guinea corn could no longer fly away from her father's granary. Another
scenario was that in order to avoid the upper central incisors growing first in a child, the ritual
specialist who owned vavanz gharaghara could be called to press the upper gum of the child
so the lower teeth would grow first.
Presumably the main point was that it was not considered good for the reproductive capacity
of guinea corn if it was observed by a child who started teething from its upper jaw rather
than from its lower jaw. This seems in tune with universal child development, as the front
teeth of a child generally erupt from the lower jaw first. If a child who started teething from
the upper jaw looked up to a field of guinea corn, the growth of the guinea corn would be
negatively affected, which is symptomatic of guinea corn being seen as a crop needing much
ritual attention. It seemed to be a crop considered to have a personality of its own. That the
specialist rainmaker and cornblesser lineages owned vavanz gharaghara, and tied it around
three guinea corn stalks from the same root in every single field before the harvest, is
indicative of the cosmologically integrated farming methods of the Dghweɗe.
Before we continue to discuss the ritual aspect of Cissus quadrangularis (vavanza) and its
various ownerships, we present in Table 12b our fieldnote list of twelve more vavanza
varieties for which we have no images.
Table 12b: List of ritual vavanza without images
Name
Application
Ownership
Vavanz kla (kla = fracture)
and
Vavanz lugwe (lugwe =
wound)
A bone fracture is tied with vavanza
kla but the same variety is called
vavanz lugwe when used to heal an
open wound. For wound applications
it first has to be powdered.
Although it can be owned by
anyone, it is extremely rare.
Only one individual in
Ghwa’a and another one in
Gudule reportedly owns this
type of medicinal vavanza.
Vavanz makrta or vavanz
dzawske (dzaw = selling/
buying; ske = something)
This vavanza is used by traders.
Vavanz makrta means to draw
attention to yourself, and it might
even draw negative attention leading
to people opposing you. This can
draw bad luck to your home, even
attracting leopards and snakes. One
will not lack anything because of this
vavanza, but it can lead to bloodshed
similar to vavanz ghuza’a.
It is owned by the Ɗagha
peacemaker lineage.
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