Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 547
cyclical rituals as part of the Dghweɗe seasonal calendar. In the context of this we argued that
change in agricultural methods in the form of the increasing use of chemical fertiliser might
have been a strong contributing factor. Our comparison of Dghweɗe ritual culture with that of
their immediate neighbours revealed another level of complexity. For example, our
reconstruction of the Dghweɗe system of adult initiation revealed that the Glavda had a
similar system, while the Lamang did not, but the Dghweɗe shared many other ritual practices
with the Lamang, such as the belief in the reincarnation of twins. We conclude from these
variations that ethnicity might have been secondary while the use of the same language was
perhaps more important in constructing a sense of identity and local belonging, especially
when they shared the same cultural practices with some of their neighbours.
We can demonstrate this assessment by the way Dghweɗe ritually organised sacrifices related
to local territories. There was very little evidence that their community and lineage shrines
were embedded in the same pattern of cyclical rituals as the sacrifices to a father or
grandfather of a house. It was more that a request related to an emergency would require such
a sacrifice, and the sacrifice to the mountain shrine Durghwe is a good example of this. The
seventh-born descendant of the Btha lineage represented Ghwa'a as earth priest, and this also
gave him the ritual responsibility for Durghwe. We portrayed Durghwe as the cosmographic
representation of Ghwa'a as early arrival zone and entry point into the northern part of the
Gwoza hills in pre-colonial times, from where groups continued to spread or to where they
withdrew depending on the environmental circumstance. Therefore Durghwe had an
interethnic dimension, which further underpins the fact that topographical landmarks such as
Durghwe might already have been part of the cosmographic worldview long before the three
granaries it represented were allocated in that way. The crucial factor was that the ritual
responsibility for Durghwe always lay with the local group that had been able to claim the
most recent oral historical entitlement. We therefore suggest here that Azaghvana as a precolonial reference to the Dghweɗe language as a long-term expression of local self-reference,
might represent exactly that, while a Dghweɗe ethnicity derived from Dofede as a shared
ancestor of the two largest clan groups in Dghweɗe is more likely a late pre-colonial
development. One of the underlying reasons might have been the high ritual density we have
described as typical.
We presented the high ritual density as part of the Dghweɗe cultural system, linked it to the
labour-intensive terrace farming system, and showed that any change in population number
had the potential to bring about a shortage of arable land. The insecure foothill areas were not
always an option for expansion, in the context of which we showed how the eastern
intramountainous plain had in the past suffered the threat of slave raiding by the late precolonial Wandala. It might have been that the Dghweɗe had not paid their tribute, and the
eastern plains were therefore not safe to farm when there was population increase in the hills.
The circumstances could be complex, but climate change, epidemics and other environmental
risk factors were the most frequent, and the pre-colonial experience of cyclical climate change
must surely have been a key factor in bringing about strategies to prevent such crises. The
ability to fill three granaries as part of the four stages of adult initiation (dzum zugune) is the
strongest evidence for this hypothesis. That dzum zugune was most likely commonly practised
during late pre-colonial times can be theoretically linked to the severe cyclical climate change
since the very wet 17th century, and before this period the rituals needed to guarantee
successful socio-economic reproduction might have been different. On the other hand, events
such as dzum zugune might have taken on a different form before that, considering the
evidence of the sophisticated DGB stone architecture along the northern slopes of the ZiverOupay massif. If we think of population movements following climate change, the Gwoza
hills will still remain the most northerly extension of the Mandara Mountains where a record
of the most sophisticated ritual ways of managing good and bad luck will hopefully now
survive through the oral testimonies and the material culture we have documented.
However, the international boundary has unfortunately meant that some of the oral memories
have not survived, as neither have the various systems of colonial rule which the British and
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