Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 75
The last word on how global change impacts locally on a remote area like the Gwoza hills has
yet to be written, and to aim for that is not the purpose of this book. I am only trying to weave
together historical loose ends, loose ends which might hopefully help the survivors of Boko
Haram to recover their cultural past and also encourage future historians to better understand
what followed. What seems certain is that small remote places can be affected by global
changes not only brought about by the introduction of the mobile phone and the Internet. The
case of the Gwoza hills shows that something similar happened when Germany lost its
colonies as a result of the Great War, when the Treaty of Versailles divided their former
possessions into mandated areas. The history of the Dghweɗe people is a good example of
that, and not only then, but still today and perhaps even again tomorrow!
Before we start Part Two, we want to present this overview map for the general orientation of
relevant groups and place names of the northern Mandara Mountains and their adjacent
plains. For more detailed views of the subregion please also refer back to Figures 1, 2, and 3.
Figure 4: Orientational map of the northern Mandara Mountains and adjacent plains.
Part Two will set the pre-colonial and colonial background scenario to our Dghweɗe history
in fragments, going back about 600 years to a time before the Dghweɗe as we knew them
existed. We will see how the mountainous environment and the invention of a very
sophisticated terrace culture helped them survive periods of extreme environmental
emergency. In the context of that, we will embed the northwestern Mandara Mountains as a
subregion, where early state formation and population movements, triggered by intervals of
aridity and humidity, set the scene for their development. In the light of that we will see how
the two main administrative parts of Dghweɗe, Korana Basa and Ghwa'a most likely did not
come about together, but in two steps, which we will attempt to link to palaeoclimatic
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