Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 96
different historical relationship with the Wandala, and ask ourselves whether this difference
was rooted in a shared pre-colonial past?
The above example of an eyewitness account from Kunde, which was situated in a lower
valley of greater Ghwa'a (see Figure 3), shows that the Wandala still controlled, via the
eastern plain, parts of at least northern Dghweɗe during the tail end of the pre-colonial period.
That our Dghweɗe friends were also aware of Disa as the contended boundary area between
the Fulbe of Madagali and the Wandala perhaps highlights their fear that the 'Plata' could also
come up into the Gwoza hills. We will see later, in our chapter about the unsettling colonial
years, that German colonial sources mentioned the same circumstance in 1906, and that
Madagali exercised colonial control in southern Dghweɗe during these early years.
Before we present our colonial sources, we will show with two legendary accounts how
deeply engrained the Wandala, as a ruling group of our subregion, was in the Dghweɗe
collective memory. We begin with the legend about a conflict between Zedima and a
Wandala chief, followed by the legend about Katala, a daughter of Wandala.
The roots of the sun and the moon legend
According to this legend, at the very beginning the Wandala settled at the foothill of Ghwa'a
called Guda Zgwimaha (between Arbokko and Barawa), and the Dghweɗe settled close to
them at a hill called Vagha Dongwe, at a place called Gud Ftsu'a, which is a lower hill east of
Durghwe. The legend was presented to me by Zakariya Kwire and Ɗga Paɗa (to whom we
also refer as dada Ɗga) of Ghwa'a, in 1996 after I had asked them about the very beginning of
the relationship of the Dghweɗe and the Wandala:
During that early time, the Dghweɗe had a chief called Zedima, who had married a daughter of
Wandala, but Wandala had given a certain poison to his daughter to kill the people of Zedima.
Zedima prepared a beer for people, to help them to put manure on his farmland. People drank the
poisoned beer, but because Zedima's beer was not poisoned, all the others died. Subsequently,
Zedima accused his wife, and she said that it was her father who told her to do so.
Zedima was very disturbed. After burying the dead, he entered a hole in the ground and went on a
journey inside the earth until he found himself very close to the sun and the moon. There he cut
some of the roots of the sun and the moon. He returned with these roots and placed himself in
front of his house. People didn't recognise him due to the masses of body hair he had grown while
away, except for the dog who recognised his master. After people had shaved the hair off his
body, they saw that it was Zedima.
Now Zedima carried out his revenge on the Wandala chief. First, he told his wife to take a bracelet
called dawana and give it to her father and tell him to put some water in a jar. He should then
place mbitha [presumably gourds grown at the house] into the water, and position the bracelet on
it. After that was done, Zedima used the roots of the sun and moon to cause drought, so that water
could only be found at Durghwe. The Wandala suffered thirst and started dying, except for three
who arrived with their horses at Durghwe. One of them was called Malawiɗe.
After a long period of suffering, Zedima produced a heavy storm which blew the hair off the heads
of the dead people, and their clothes were blown in front of Zedima's house. Now Zedima made
four types of rain. The first was made of blood, the second of pus, and the third was made of both
blood and pus, while the fourth rain was made of pure water.
During the drought, the chief of Wandala had taken the bracelet from the gourd in the water jug
and had put it on his chest, because he was feeling thirsty. This had made him survive the drought,
but after the drought was over, the chief of Wandala left Guda Zgwimaka to settle in Kirawa,
where he started raiding. This happened so long ago, that no one could tell anymore how long.
The ethnoarchaeological potential of the tale
The tale tells of an early relationship between the Wandala and Dghweɗe in which an extreme
drought was caused by Zedima to carry out revenge for the Wandala chief's attempt to kill the
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