Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 24
sustainable food production was central. The terrace farming strategies of this key group of
the semi-arid most northern part of the Mandara Mountains were indeed unique.
Perhaps one of the most unique features of Dghweɗe terrace culture of the past is revealed in
our reconstruction of adult initiation, a tradition that had ended by the late 1930s. It shows
how important it was to have a system of emergency food storage ritually embedded in the
culture and that it was dependent on alliances formed along kindred ties. Another aspect is the
complexity of cyclical rituals linked to the seasons, which was a consequence of the high
population density necessary for the labour-intensive farming system. We will show how the
chemical fertiliser promoted during colonial times to replace the traditional animal manure
eventually led to a reduction of ritual density. Guinea corn (sorghum), alternating with millet
and beans as part of the subsistence economy of crop rotation, had the greatest cosmological
significance, but the guinea-corn year lost its bi-annual ritual importance and farming for a
modern market economy increasingly took over.
The terrace fields connected to the farmsteads had been manured with animal dung over the
generations, a practice deeply embedded in their cosmological way of thinking. This was
manifested for instance in the rainmaking and cornblessing rituals as 'blessings from above
and below this world', and every guinea-corn year the travelling bull festival also ritually
renewed the peaceful unity of Dghweɗe. Dghweɗe cosmology was very localised however,
and the family ancestors who had kept the land fertile and passed on their practice were
imagined to also exist locally in multiple mirror worlds below this world. We will see how the
Dghweɗe concept of socio-economic reproduction can be connected to their cosmographic
view of the world which also had a gender aspect, and this will be illustrated in the vernacular
stone architecture we have reconstructed in great detail. The Dghweɗe also believed in the
communal reincarnation of twins, and there were rituals in which twins were brought into the
house after birth by their former parents who had been identified by means of divination.
Mountain tops visible from afar were important cosmographic manifestations, and we will
describe the role of Durghwe, the most northerly rain shrine of the Mandara Mountains,
which was ritually linked to Ghwa'a as the early arrival zone from Tur. Its three rock pillars
were seen as three granaries and each pillar was said to represent one of the three
neighbouring ethnic groups. Durghwe also played a regional role in crisis situations, and in
late pre-colonial times the Dghweɗe of Ghwa'a held the custodianship for such regional
demands. We will also show that in pre-colonial times ethnicity was most likely not the main
factor behind the idea of Dghweɗe belonging. This was connected with the high population
density needed for the continuation of terrace farming, which led to frequent population
pressure and changes in terms of local group formation. We suggest that the locality aspect of
the dense ritual culture might have led to kindred alliances across neighbourhoods, and that
perhaps a shared language played a stronger cohesive role than clan and lineage membership.
There are many more complexities of Dghweɗe culture we will describe, explore and
illustrate, by relying primarily on the interpretation of our oral protagonists rather than on
preconceived ethnographic theory. However we will use my ethnographic research among the
Mafa of Gouzda and Moskota for comparison, to contrast some of the Dghweɗe cultural
variations. We will also point out the many shortcomings in my own ethnographic research,
the full extent of which I did not realise a couple of years ago when I started to write this
book. This means that writing it has also been a learning process for myself as area specialist
of the northwestern Mandara Mountains, and by openly admitting this I encourage the reader
to be critical of my interpretations and conclusions. I nevertheless hope that I have managed
to present this fragmentary history of Dghweɗe culture as a valuable contribution, for the
Dghweɗe themselves and also to fill a gap in wider regional knowledge. The Gwoza hills
have been neglected by ethnographers for far too long, and reconstructing the past Dghweɗe
way of life from oral testimonies will not only serve Dghweɗe survivors but also future
historians who are interested in the Mandara Mountains in their geographical entirety.
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