Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 55
If we want to climb up to Dghweɗe from the western side of the hills, we might want to hire a
motorbike in Gwoza town to take us to the mountain foot. To get there we have to travel
through Vile, one of the three Lamang villages of Hiɗkala, forming a semicircular valley
wide open to the western plains and a range of foothills along the inner valley floor. Plate 7b
shows an oral-historical key site in Vile, called bebe, while Plate 10a shows the upper slopes
of the Hiɗkala valley that belongs to administrative Korana Basa in Dghweɗe.
Hambagda and Hudugum are the other two Lamang settlements, but the administrative name
for these three villages is not Hiɗkala but Hambagda. We decide not to climb from this side
since it looks rather steep, and instead continue our journey south by following the main road,
and after about 10km from Gwoza town we get to Limankara. Here the mountain foot reaches
out a little into the plain (see Plate 7a) and the main road passes very close by. We look up to
our left and see the Gvoko massif equally steep and high but we know there is a dirt road
leading up to Ngoshe Sama. As we don’t have a four-wheel-drive car or a heavy powerful
motorbike we can’t make it up to Ngoshe Sama and decide to head back to Pulka.
Plate 7a: View of Gvoko and Tur heights from Uvagha foothills of the western plain.
Plate 7b: Bebe (legendary foothill and shrine) of Vile, with foothill of Disa in background.
To get to the eastern side of the Gwoza hills we have to leave the tarmac road in Pulka and
find ourselves on an extremely badly-maintained dirt road leading towards the Cameroonian
border. As the weather is fairly clear we can see the distant Mora hills rising out of the
northern plain when looking across from Ghwa'a in Dghweɗe (see Plate 9b).
They are about 40km away, and represent the northeastern limits of the Mandara Mountains.
Straight ahead of us, only about 15km away, we see mount Kirawa jutting out of the plain,
and to its eastern foot is Kirawa town, the old capital of the early Wandala state (Plate 9a).
The international boundary divides Kirawa into Cameroonian and Nigerian parts, but we
don’t want to travel to Kirawa, and turn south at the earlier mentioned crossing, shortly after
Pulka. Only a few kilometres later we arrive in Bokko, where we see to our right the Zelidva
spur rising steeply from this side of the Gwoza hills (see Plate 8b).
As on the northwestern side, here the majority of the population is Zelidva, though the
southern part of Bokko is mainly occupied by Glavda. Similar to the Lamang, the Glavda are
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