Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 536
handling evil or bad luck, and that it was a general reference to the regular rituals a husband
would carry out, and the regular religious rituals of the house could in that sense be
considered a form of man skwe. In the context of this, the family priest (zal jije) came to
attend to the ancestor stones, and we remember that he not only had to be from the same
exogamous lineage but also a generation mate (skmama) of the deceased father (dada) or
grandfather (jije) of the house. This zal jije would also have been the one who used the
calabash from the 'stomach of the house shrine' (khuɗi thala) to pour corn flour water over the
ancestor stones to initiate a new spouse into membership of the patrilocal family. All this had
to be done to prevent bad luck overcoming a nuclear family, but if everything was carried out
according to the rules, such bad luck could be prevented. To understand John correctly, this
was generally referred to as man skwe (doing skwe), meaning members of the same extended
family group gathering to carry out a ritual to prevent evil.
While the man skwe of giving sorghum flour mixed in water to paternal family ancestors was
a ritual that needed the correct setting in terms of when and who was carrying out the libation
over the ancestor stones, there was also another type of man skwe. This alternative concept of
man skwe was to do with an individual's ownership of a particular skwe (ritual treatment),
being something that could be used to remove bad luck or evil in the form of illness or
disease. John explained that this kind of ritual ownership of a skwe, in the form of a substance
representing a ritual treatment, was also part of the Dghweɗe religious belief system, and in
that sense was very different from sorcery. According to John, the owner of a particular skwe
would transfer the illness or disease into the skwe, and then dispose of it, and it should never
be touched by anyone else after that because it was infectious and someone could even die
from it. In that sense skwe could also be interpreted as a means of controlling evil by ritual
means. It was removed by the owner of the skwe and in that sense man skwe meant the
handling of a skwe as a result of ritual ownership of specific religious treatments and clan
medicines.
In this regard, the specialist lineages such as the Gaske rainmakers, the Gashiwe cornblessers
and the Ɗagha peacemakers claimed their own particular skwe or clan medicines. We saw in
the previous section that the Ɗagha peacemakers owned most of the very powerful vavanza,
but only a particular type was referred to as vavanz skwe and in that instance a pot called
vavanz maghshime was considered to be the carrier of the vavanz skwe. This particular
vavanza was used to treat cramps and tightness, which were symptoms of an illness
reminiscent of meningitis. I understood from John that this was the skwe for which the Ɗagha
peacemakers were known, and that rainmakers claimed their own skwe. He added that
members of other lineages owned specific types of skwe used to control certain diseases. One
of these was control over diarrhoea, being a skwe his own father had owned, and he said that
different people could own it while others could control earache or diseases of the eye.
John referred to his father’s ritual treatment as skwe njiɗa, and explained that his father had
inherited it from his own father. To cause diarrhoea in the community with skwe njiɗa, milk
was drained from a plant called mahide by cutting it with a large knife, and one would then let
it drop into a calabash with a hole in the top and another hole in the bottom. Ground red
pepper and water were subsequently added, and after mixing these in the calabash with the
plant milk, one would drop the mixture through the hole in the bottom into a fire made of hay
to produce an infectious smoke. He remembered that when he saw his father doing this, only
a few days later most children of the wider neighbourhood developed diarrhoea, and it spread
as far as Kwalika in southern Dghweɗe. He said his father did this because he was angry that
John’s older brother was not able to marry the girl promised to him, which is a further
example demonstrating the importance of marriage alliances between families.
John explained that the plant mahide was not classified under vavanza, which we know to be
Cissus quadrangularis, and in Chapter 3.10 we provisionally identified mahide as a euphorbia
variety used in working the terraced land. Plate 64 below shows such a ritual euphorbia
variety called skwe njiɗa. According to John's memory, when people realised the diarrhoea
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