A Drummer's Testament
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Girls' work in the villages: grinding, sheanuts, harvesting; household training; festival markets; early courtship patterns
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Contents outline and links by paragraph
Introduction
- 1. village children get sense from respecting elders and doing work
Girls' early training
- 2. grinding, sweeping, fetching water
The work of shea nuts
- 3. seasonal gathering; go in groups or by houses; early morning
- 4. difficulties: rain, snakes
- 5. stay late; eat when return home; grinding and making food
- 6. not white man's work: the girls can go at different times
- 7. collect firewood; boil the shea nuts and spread them
- 8. shelling the shea nuts; how many they get
Harvesting groundnuts
- 9. groups pick groundnuts for farmers and receive a share
- 10. how they measure the groundnuts and get their share
- 11. cheating in the groundnut picking and sharing
- 12. cheating as a part of farming
- 13. cheating also a part of harvesting rice, corn, and other crops; different from group farming
How the harvesting work helps families to raise the girls
- 14. mothers and aunts use the money from shea nuts and groundnuts to but clothes and take care of the girls
How young girls attend the festival markets
- 15. markets during festival months; important focus for the young girls, from nine to ten years old
- 16. how they carry their dresses to the market
- 17. going around the market; how they dress and prepare themselves
- 18. they go around in groups, with a leader
How the village boys and girls befriend one another at the festival markets
- 19. how village boys ask to know which towns the girls are from
- 20. the village boys get their town's girls to ask about the girls they like
- 21. boy sends his town's girl to greet with porridge and cola
- 22. the girl with a sister or friend will visit the boy; the father and brothers will prepare food; small money when they leave
- 23. how the friends help one another during Ramadan; cooking and gifts
Friendships and early gender relations
- 24. these early friendships help them learn how to treat one another; how the befriending has change in towns and modern times
- 25. the friendship does not interfere with the promised betrothal of a girl; how the situation can get complicated
- 26. how very young children play at husband and wife; tankpɔ' luɣsa: early sex play
- 27. actual sex can damage a girl; treatment for a young girl whose virginity is lost; matter can go to chief
- 28. tankpɔ' luɣsa not a custom; just something children do
Training for marriage
- 29. girls get advice on how to live with a husband
- 30. the work she will be expected to do, and more advice
- 31. the training is informal conversation while doing chores; no time because of constant work
- 32. women do not sit and talk even in compound; working together to prepare food
- 33. brief time for talking is after eating; women teach work, not old talks
Village girls and town girls
- 34. village girls follow their mothers or aunts in work; townspeople buy what they need
- 35. village girls know different types of household work: farming, cooking, grinding
- 36. in towns, everything is already prepared; no work to teach the girls
Women who train girls
- 37. training starts young; women who train girls well get more children to raise
- 38. if a girl is not well trained, sometimes it is the girl's fault
- 39. some women abuse the girls with too much work; girls run away
- 40. people don't give daughters to a relative who will mistreat them
- 41. too much suffering will harm a child; protect from too much heavy work
- 42. some children suffer and do well
- 43. girls work harder than boys
Preparing for marriage
- 44. after menstruation, a girl is considered mature and can marry
- 45. a girl can grow and not be married; no man has looked for her; not a fault
- 46. sometimes the father has not found a husband for a matured girl
- 47. bad spirits can make a girl fear men; medicine to treat
- 48. girl in her father's house can be betrothed to a man who dies; resembled widow
- 49. treated like a widow, with soothsaying stones
Conclusion
- 50. summary: this is how girls live until they are married
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Proverbs and Sayings
The town sense is: “What am I going to do to get money and spend it?”
It is in the work that the village children do that they get their sense.
Everything needs showing.
If you don't ask your dog to catch something, it won't go and catch it.
On the part of farming, villagers don't fear cheating.
Of all the people who are doing work, it is the farmer who has the most blessings.
The day you show that someone is cheating you is the day you will no longer benefit from that person.
Their leader is not anybody apart from the one whose eyes are open.
In some places, it is only the eyes that will talk talks.
Whenever you see a young girl's breasts coming out, young boys will be looking at her.
A girl will not be anywhere and a boy will not also be there.
An old talk does not finish.
It is the woman who covers the secrets of the man.
It is because of strangers that somebody has a wife.
A woman doesn't show her daughter or granddaughter many talks; it is a different woman who will show the child.
A woman hasn't got time to sit the way a man will sit.
A woman's teaching is on the part of work, not on the part of old talks.
A small goat looks at its mother's mouth and eats.
If a fish is dried and you want to bend it, it will break.
If God has not made somebody, and you say you are going to make the person, it won't stand.
The sharing of children is what your heart wants. It is not a debt.
Our old Dagbamba say that it is because of suffering that a child will not grow fast.
The villagers train their children with suffering.
Suffering doesn't kill a person.
Everybody has his luck.
If you are going to choose a man, and you don't cool yourself, you will choose a man and it won't be daybreak and you and the man will leave one another.
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Dagbani words and other search terms
- Chiefs and elders
- Tolon-Naa
- Names and people
- Miriama
- Sanaatu
- Fati
- Yakubu
- Towns and places
- Chirifuyili
- Dagbon
- Jerigu
- Kasuliyili
- Tali
- Tolon
- Voggo
- Wariboggo
- Yogu
- Miscellaneous terms
- alizini
- ampashe
- calabash
- calabashes
- chilo
- chugu daa: (Chuɣu Daa)
- chugu (chuɣu)
- cowives
- Eh (exclamation)
- fufu
- groundnut, groundnuts
- kpo (sound of knocking)
- kunchun (kunchuŋ)
- kunkon (kunkɔŋ)
- mukuru
- Muslims
- neli (nɛli)
- nmankpabli: ŋmankpabli
- Oi (exclamation)
- Ramadan
- sagim (saɣim)
- sakoro: fufu
- sampani
- shea tree (taaŋa) [Vitellaria paradoxa (formerly Butyrospermum parkii)]