Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 97
Dghweɗe people. At that time they were immediate neighbours, with the Wandala living at a
foothill near Ghwa'a, and intermarried. Zedima's control over rain finally caused the Wandala
chief to realise that he lacked such control, which is why he moved away and settled in
Kirawa. Durghwe, the most northerly rain shrine of our subregion, is mentioned in the tale as
the only place where water could still be found during that extreme drought. The other
important detail of the narrative is that Zedima had to travel inside the earth to harvest the
roots of the sun and the moon.
There are several motives in the legend which also appear in other legends of the Gwoza hills
(Muller-Kosack, Gwoza notes 1994), such as for example the dog being described as the only
one to recognise his former master whose hair had grown so long. There is one part of the tale
we need to elaborate on, which is the 'roots of the sun and moon' that Zedima brought back
from deep inside the earth to control the rainfall. However, we need to raise a doubt as to
whether the moon is not an addition which does not belong to the legend, and that it is only
the roots of the sun and not the moon, if we follow Taɗa Nzige of Ghwa'a.
Taɗa Nzige, who was the senior rainmaker of Dghweɗe, explained that some people were
born with certain gifts, while others had to work hard for them. For example, some of the
rainmakers were born with rainstones in their hands, while those rainmakers who owned the
'roots of the sun' had to suffer to obtain them. He explained that the 'roots of the sun' were
called thlace fice (thlace = root; fice = sun) in Dghweɗe, and that they were red, and someone
would have to go very deep down into the earth to the water table. There the 'roots of the sun'
would be cut when the sun was rising, and if these 'roots' were taken out of the house, the rain
would stop forever.
We will hear in Part Three more about the specialist rainmaker lineage Gaske, but only refer
here to the roots of the sun story, which plays such an important role in the legend presented
above. What does 'roots of the sun' actually mean, especially that they are cut in the morning
when the sun is rising? After all, the sun is up in the sky and not down inside the earth! In
Chapter 3.16 about the cosmological worldview of the Dghweɗe, we will learn that the sun
moves during the night through the world of the ancestors, a place perceived as being deep
inside the earth. Considering that Taɗa Nzige explained that a hard-working rainmaker would
have to cut the 'roots' when the sun was rising, might well be an indirect reference to that
belief.
The legend not only points to the ancestors, but also to the earth. We will learn in the next
legend about Katala-Wandala from the hills, who was, according to the Gudule, the ancestral
mother of the Gaske rainmaker lineage. We contextualise in several chapters of Part Three,
how the main cornblesser through the Gudule lineage was seen as Gaske's brother. We will
learn how descent from the same father and mother, and also twinship, was used by specialist
lineages to construct ritual entitlement for giving blessings from a celestial above and a
primordial below, in the form of cosmological pairing based on descent. Cutting the roots of
the sun, at the moment when the sun was setting in the other world, only to rise again in this
world, is an image which could well be perceived as a legendary expression of that link.
We will discuss the role of specialist lineages in a separate chapter, and how important they
were for the Dghweɗe culture of ritual blessing, not only to promote fecundity but also to
maintain peace and unity or to avoid attacks from outside. In the context of this, specific clan
medicines played a role, owned by the various specialist lineages. In the context of collecting
oral data on that subject, I also came across the belief that Zedima had been a Gaske
rainmaker, a view which underpins the legendary importance of Zedima as the one who
controlled rain and fecundity on the Dghweɗe massif.
The story made me think of the ethnoarchaeological narrative my colleague Nicholas David
constructed, because he wanted to give some social context to the archaeology of the DGB
sites. David invents his tale in face of the unusual large stone structures of DGB1 and DGB2,
and how a new hierarchy might have established itself by using them as platforms for ritual
interaction. He invents a leader who calls for special action because of the desperate need for
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