A Drummer's Testament
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Modern trends in work patterns; the Dagbamba resistance to education and “white man's work”; guide to development of the region; water and dam maintenance; commercial and traditional agriculture; sources of local labor, sources of local decision-making; bullock farming and group farming
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Contents outline and links by paragraph
Travel and modern work
- 1. formerly Dagbamba farmed and did not travel
- 2. in modern times, people travel easily
- 3. white men brought different types of work
- 4. young man could work for wages; different from farm earnings
- 5. example: road work; chiefs got money and gave to workers
Drummers have more work
- 6. drummers work more often, get more money
- 7. drumming work formerly less frequent; how it has changed
- 8. what they earned formerly; money used to go farther
- 9. money economy inflation; get more but spend more
With education, fewer people farm
- 10. formerly Dagbamba did not send children to school; didn't trust white men
- 11. Dagbamba now see benefits of white men's ways; children want schooling; no time to farm
- 12. both ways are good because of population; census count is low
Farming for food better than commercial farming
- 13. farming cannot feed the whole modern population
- 14. olden days farming was better for Dagbon because farmed for food, not to sell
- 15. government helps commercial farmers, not traditional farmers for food
- 16. villagers still farm yams; cannot farm yams with tractors
- 17. Dagbamba were farming before tractors were brought to Ghana
- 18. development agencies should help small traditional farmers
Negative effects of modern farming: grinding machines, fertilizer, tractors, corruption
- 19. effect in Dagbon of grinding machines
- 20. effect of tractors and fertilizer
- 21. formerly used animal feces for fertilizer
- 22. fertilizer not available or not sold at correct price
- 23. corruption cannot be stopped
- 24. corruption was not there in olden days; now it is everywhere
- 25. animal feces is better than fertilizer
- 26. tractor farming makes people feel weak and lazy
- 27. returning to olden days fertilizer and techniques; burning
- 28. other fertilizer from rubbish
Need to help traditional farmers
- 29. get local leaders from among the small village farmers
- 30. help those who cannot hire tractors
- 31. need Peace Corps or CIDA or USAID to help instead of government people
- 32. government people need bribes
Water
- 33. for water, need wells, boreholes, dams; cannot trust government to do the work
- 34. separate the water for cows so that the water for the town is good
- 35. people will help with the digging because will not be cheated by government
- 36. get foreign aid workers to be watching the work
- 37. after a few years the villagers will not agree to cheating
Organizing village farmers for traditional farming
- 38. helping villagers with farming; axes, hoes, cutlass
- 39. the villages are different; the leader is not necessarily the chief
- 40. in some towns the chief has one mouth with the townspeople; Nanton an example
- 41. villages and towns have farmers' leader or young men's leader; gather people
- 42. getting the leader from the town; communicate about the project in advance
- 43. give minimal money for agricultural inputs
- 44. if no funds available, do market-day farming; not group farming
- 45. credit problems with banks, which support large-scale farmers
- 46. farmers will use traditional ways of farming
- 47. do bullock farming where possible; another way to avoid tractor problems
Summary
- 48. the small farmers are not following the group farming practices but need inputs
- 49. the goal of farming help should be consistent with traditional food farming
Conclusion
- 50. transition to family and household topics
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Proverbs and Sayings
Dagbamba say that if you want to eat food and you boil it, it is better than the food you roast.
Now we have come to the time of money.
As there are many people, we also are beating the drums more.
As we have come to the time of money, our money is not standing again.
If you enter into trouble, you will see how you will work it, but if you have not entered, you don't know how you will work it. You have to enter into it before you can know how you will catch it.
Water: that is life.
If a person does not get water to drink, they are deceiving you: you can't eat food.
Life: the head is water.
They made water, and made life.
A stranger cannot know a town.
It is the town child who knows his fellow town child.
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Dagbani words and other search terms
- Chiefs and elders
- Nanton-Naa Sule
- Nanton-Naa Issa
- Nanton-Naa Alaasambila
- Names and people
- Afa Abukari
- Afa Adam
- Afa Aduna
- Fatawu (Ibrahim)
- Miscellaneous terms
- Afa
- bambara beans
- borehole
- cedis
- Damba
- feces
- gboru [sound of a tractor]
- groundnut, groundnuts
- guinea corn
- gungon (guŋgɔŋ)
- kalabule
- lorry, lorries
- namings
- narga
- neli nɛli
- pesewa, pesewas
- striga
- threepence
- witchweed
- wublim [Striga hermontheca (Del.) Benth.; also S. brachycalyx]
- Cultural groups
- Dagbamba
- Dagbana
- Fulani
- Gurunsi
- Towns and places
- Dagbon
- Diari
- Galiwe
- Kanvili
- Kumasi
- Kumbungu
- Nanton
- Nyankpala
- Savelugu
- Tampion
- Tolon
- Voggo
- Upper Volta
- Yendi
- Ziong