Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 537
had spread, they came to see his father for ritual treatment with milk, finger millet (rata) and
charcoal to stop it spreading further.
Plate 64: This euphorbia called mahida was once used to drain the milk for skwe njiɗa.
Apparently, in a case of treating a child suffering from diarrhoea, the mother would bring the
milk and finger millet while the owner of the skwe would use his own charcoal for the ritual
treatment. He would first grind some of the finger millet and put it into the milk the mother
had brought, and then use his ritual charcoal to paint from the head down both sides of the
body, down the legs and feet, and down the middle of the body. Now he would throw the
charcoal into a ritual place marked by an upturned pot buried next to a tree. The place where
this pot was buried was seen as the location of the skwe, while the painting with charcoal and
the subsequent throwing was called kwah skwe. Meanwhile the finger millet had been boiled
in the milk and some of it was now given three times to the child. In order to complete the
treatment the owner of the skwe njiɗa blew three times into the anus of the child.
After John's father had done the ritual treatment with milk, finger millet and charcoal, the
diarrhoea reportedly stopped, even in places where people had not come to him for treatment.
John further explained that the use of charcoal for the treatment of sickness was very
common, and that it was always the owner of the charcoal who was the owner of the skwe,
and that the charcoal was applied as a medium of ritual transfer. We remember that charcoal
was a main ingredient of the medicinal 'bundle' described by rainmaker Ndruwe Dzuguma in
Chapter 3.12. Charcoal also played a role in the application of vavanz gulve (Plate 63i) which
was used to remove the yellow of the jaundice-like symptoms, and this was part of a skwe
owned by the Ngaladewe lineage of Tatsa. In order to neutralise the yellow, the owner of the
vavanz gulve ritually applied a charcoal and mahogany oil mixture to the body of the sufferer.
Charcoal was an important skwe that was used as kwagh skwe when processed or painted on
the body of a sufferer and then ritually disposed of at a place where that specific skwe was
thought to locally reside. Such a place was represented by an upturned clay pot buried in the
ground. We are sure the location where such a skwe was handled was not inside the house but
outside, and strongly assume that it was not a place where intensive farming was carried out,
considering that a pot buried under a tree used in such a ritual was perhaps a place people
avoided. Some of the ritual places we listed in Table 6a of Chapter 3.9 might also have served
as skwe for the ritual treatment of illnesses and diseases.
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