A Drummer's Testament
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Boys' work in the villages: farming, gathering food for domestic animals; festival markets: working for one another; relationship to father for support of courtship
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Contents outline and links by paragraph
Introduction
- 1. this topic joins to other previous topics
Work that young boys do
- 2. farming from four years old; look after animals; weaving
- 3. “monkey-waiters”: use wooden drum to drive monkeys away from farm; now not common
- 4. carrying hens and fowls to the farm
Catching termites and ants to feed hens and fowls
- 5. types of termites and ants
- 6. how the boys catch tambiɛɣu
- 7. how the boys catch yoba
- 8. how the boys catch wurikoo
The children's work and suffering
- 9. besides farming, collect firewood and grass to sell; how they help one another
- 10. if mistreated, children run away to other relatives; some work in town
- 11. boys do work with strength, but less work than girls; cannot say who suffers more
- 12. after eating at night, the boys sit with their fathers or with one another and tell stories
How the fathers help to get wives for the boys
- 13. the boys farm and work for their fathers until matured; fathers will help find wives for them
- 14. the good name of the father helps the boy to get a wife
- 15. if the boys do not work for their father, they will have difficulty to get a wife on their own
- 16. getting a wife is very difficult for village boys, even for grown young men
- 17. Muslim belief that father should get wife for son is not always standing; role of money
- 18. formerly not the case, but now even villages use money and not character when getting a wife
- 19. if a child does not help the father, the father will not help the child
- 20. a child who helps the parents will have respect to get a wife even if the parents are dead
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Proverbs and Sayings
Talks come to meet one another.
Not having a child does not fear the hen-room.
If you have such children, they are more than old men.
The boy who gets a wife is someone whose father has a good name.
And if someone wants to look for something, it is his good name that he will use to get it.
God says a child's father should find a wife for him.
God doesn't know that we search for wives with money.
if you have a child, you will be looking at the child.
You will have a child and the child hears your mouth.
if you give birth to children and you are farming, you should try to force your children to be doing farming work.
Children who are good, they are putting down their goodness for themselves.
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Dagbani words and other search terms
- Musical terms
- balankon, balankona (balankɔŋ, balankona)
- dawuli
- kokro [sound of knocking]
- Names and people
- Alhassan (Ibrahim)
- Fuseini
- Miscellaneous terms
- Bugim Festival (Buɣim Festival)
- calabash
- housepeople
- jangulba
- lorries
- maalam
- maalams
- nosugu (nosuɣu)
- pesewas
- tambiegu (tambiɛɣu)
- timpana
- tuubaani
- wurikoo
- yoba
- zana
- Towns and places
- Dagbon
- Savelugu