A Drummer's Testament

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Chapter III-8:  Family and Lineage

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Terminology of the family in Dagbon; the differences of family, line or door, and tribe; the importance of knowing the family and the role of women and drummers; relationship of the lines of chiefs and commoners; how chieftaincy doors die


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Supplementary material

Firgures and Genealogical Charts


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Contents outline and links by paragraph

Family terminology

Terms of address extend the sense of family

Family, line, and tribe

Knowledge of the family

Example:  Alhaji Ibrahim's lines

Example:  family doors of Yendi chiefs can die or shift

Chiefs and commoners

Conclusion


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Proverbs and Sayings

A family is one thing, but its talks are many.

A human being is in four parts.

If you take an older person to be your father, it will help you and help him too.

The talk about the family is two talks, because a family can extend and become wide, and a family can separate and become different.

The family is near, and the line is far.  As for your family, you know it, but as for your line, you will know it to your extent.

The women know the family more than the men.

Apart from a drummer, a woman knows the family more than anyone.

Some say that the school has come and opened the eyes of Dagbon, and others say that it is school that has come and killed Dagbon.

Not asking has spoiled the way of living of us Dagbamba.

A grandchild knows the family more than his father.

When women gather, they are talking family talks.

We are two people who show the family in Dagbon:  the drummers and the women.

If women were not in a family, the family would die.

It is at a funeral house that we Dagbamba know the family.

If drummers and women were not in Dagbon here, the family would have been dead.

Any time you see a drummer in Dagbon here, if he's really a drummer, he knows the talk of people's families.

A family is just like a tree standing outside with many branches.  How a tree lives and dies, this is the same way a line moves.  Some part of the tree will become dry and dead, and some part of it will be wet and growing.  You will see that some part of the tree has many branches, and another part of the tree will not have many branches.  This is how a family is.

In Dagbon here, every Dagbana is a chief's grandson, and every Dagbana is a commoner.

Inside every commoner is the strength of chieftaincy, and the strength of chieftaincy is the commoner.

We are all from the bone of chieftaincy.

In Dagbon here, if you want to call the chief, you will call him “my grandfather.”

A family is like a tree with branches.

If you are eating a chieftaincy in Dagbon here, it doesn't show that your child is going to eat your chieftaincy.

Their fire has died.

The meaning is that they lit fire and gave to them to go and look for a way.

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Dagbani words and other search terms