A Drummer's Testament
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How Dagbamba householders feed their wives and children; types of commoners; rotation of cooking among the wives; how chiefs' wives gather foodstuffs; financial contributions of husband and wives
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Supplementary material
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Contents outline and links by paragraph
Commoners
- 1. chapter will discuss commoners, not chiefs or maalams or rich people
- 2. a commoner: not a prince; not wealthy; without a voice; sick
Those who are sick or poor
- 3. a sick person will not marry; a blind person sometimes marries
- 4. impotent person can marry to provide for housepeople
- 5. some sick people feed their family through alms
- 6. sick person's household roams to find food; wife may leave him
- 7. very poor people; from God; sometimes the children prosper
- 8. other people will feed such commoners and their households
How commoners share corn and guinea corn to feed the household
- 9. calabash measure corn or guinea corn to each wife for a month's cooking
- 10. some typical Dagbamba watch while wife fetches grain from the room
- 11. farmers who have a lot of food can hold wives; soup ingredients there too
- 12. the food lasts because the wives each cook two days before the cooking rotates
- 13. not necessarily a farmer who has enough food for the household
- 14. market traders buy food; differences: marry wives to the extent of wealth
Buying the other ingredients for cooking
- 15. difficult to give examples about money and spending because of inflation
- 16. the wife with cooking gets money for soup ingredients; wives add own money
- 17. sometimes the money is not enough; mother provides for young children too
- 18. rich man's children more likely to steal than poor man's children
- 19. poor man's children do not steal
- 20. good man will give extra money which wives will use for the children
- 21. have to feed everyone in the house; if do not, will lose respect
- 22. some men only give corn and nothing for ingredients; the women suffer
How rich people hold their families
- 23. good way of living: person who uses money to feed many people
- 24. bad way of living: person who does not share money
- 25. children of selfish person are those who become thieves
- 26. useless person asks wives about the costs of things in the market
- 27. rich person is someone with people; not someone with money
How chiefs feed their families
- 28. chiefs give grain, buy meat; does not give for soup ingredients
- 29. chiefs' wives take things from people's farms; make their own kpalgu
- 30. salt given to chief by the market chief
- 31. only some chiefs' wives still enter farms
- 32. chiefs near larger towns do not do it; give money for ingredients
How children eat
- 33. chiefs' wives two-day cooking schedule; leftovers in morning; carry food to farm
- 34. farmers' children: old food or porridge; roasted yams at farm, also food from house
- 35. townperson: gives children money to buy food; if no money, children find for themselves
How household members borrow from and help one another and how the women trade
- 36. difficult to feed everyone; constantly managing money and adjusting
- 37. cooking money only for the wife who cooks; can borrow from the wife
- 38. women get money from trading; husband will help finance the trading
Wives who are very young and other examples
- 39. young wives do not trade until grow older and know the household
- 40. older wives will train the young wife; husband gives her money
- 41. young wife learns the people in the house and how they eat
- 42. a young man's wife is trained by the senior women in the house or father's wives
- 43. householder gives money to wives of young men in the house
- 44. Christians eat by themselves in the house; don't share cooking
- 45. a few Muslim wives stay and trade in the house; husband goes to market; not common
Conclusion
- 46. transition to talk about other work than cooking and eating
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Proverbs and Sayings
For a poor person to feed his wife and children, it comes from God.
There is no one who has ever known everything about a woman.
The time you will get to know everything about a woman, by that time you will be dead.
It is these women who give birth to us, and they have sense more than us, and so we have to fear them.
It is what the heart wants, and how someone gets the means: this is what will let someone feed many wives.
What your heart wants, that is what you do.
The meat you have taken from your father's pot, that is the one you will eat.
The meat that is in your father's pot is the meat you eat.
When a gourd is full, you don't shake it.
The person we call rich in Dagbon here is someone who has got people.
Such a person [who has money but does not hold people], we don't say that he is the owner of his money. The owner of the money is there: when this man dies, the owner of the money will collect his thing.
And so the rich person who is useless, it shows that the money is not his money.
You don't ask your wife the prices of what she buys in the market.
Money has got a lot of talks.
He has patience: that is why he has people.
And so in Dagbon here, it is someone with people who is a rich man. And the person with money but no people, we don't call him a rich man; we say that he is a money man, or we say that he has wealth.
Wealth finishes but people do not finish.
In Dagbon here, someone who has got wealth does not bluff someone who has got people.
The one who has wealth follows the one who has got people. And the one who has got people follows the chief, because the land is for the chief, and if the land is cool, he will sit down. And the chief too is following the maalams. And the maalams will take all their matters and give to God. This is what we know on how our people live.
Someone who suffers does not become useless.
As for a wife, if you marry a woman, it means that she is your mother's child.
The secrets between you and your wife, even your mother will not know it.
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Dagbani words and other search terms
- Chiefs and titled persons
- Daalana
- Dakpema (Dakpɛma)
- Dasaha
- Gushe-Naa
- Sunson-Naa
- Yaa-Naa
- Names and people
- Alhassan (Ibrahim)
- Miscellaneous terms
- bira
- calabash
- cedi, cedis
- chieftaincy
- Dagbani
- dawadawa
- groundnuts
- housepeople
- husbandship
- kpaakulo
- kpalgu
- maalams
- Muslims
- nmani (ŋmani)
- pesewa, pesewas
- Ramadan
- sagim (saɣim)
- salinvogu (salinvɔɣu)
- tarima
- zaga (zaɣa)
- zagnmernmani (zaɣŋmɛrŋmani)
- Towns and places
- Banvim
- Dagbon
- Gushegu
- Karaga
- Lameshegu
- Nanton
- Sagnerigu
- Savelugu
- Sunson
- Yendi
- Cultural groups
- Dagbana, Dagbamba