Each family grouping in a village has its own compound of mud huts: a man will live in one of the huts, and his wives and children will occupy the others. The huts are arranged in a circle, with walls closing the spaces between them. A courtyard is thus created – the common family area, where cooking and laundering take place. The main gate can be boarded at night, creating a pen in which the household animals can be kept safe from plunder and, in the past, predators. (“Wait, the animal pen and kitchen and laundry room are all one…?” Yep!)
Compound house in the villageThe traditional structure for homes in the villages has been copied in the towns, with concrete taking the place of mud. These are the city’s apartment buildings, with several households occupying the various rooms and living as one family in the shared space. Africans value community and relationship over privacy and individuality, so doing their cooking and washing in public doesn’t faze them as it would Americans. Neither does sharing their space with animals. ;)
Goat in the kitchen
Compound house in the village
Great post! I can still remember the kernels of corn drying on the ground in the middle of the compound of huts during the fall in Ghana - along with the animals, kids, laundry, and everything else.
ReplyDeleteI always think that would make a very interesting basis for a novel -- life in a compound house. I wonder how the household actually runs -- is one wife in charge of all the others? Do all wives raise all children, or do you keep up with your own? Do you share your clothes, or separate them by wife-and-children? Does the man spend a lot of time in his compound?
ReplyDeleteAgain, it's funny to me that African life is so much more "like the Bible" than anything we've ever known here.
-- SJ
Sara - there generally is a favorite wife (the youngest and prettiest), and from my observations, people do lay claim to the clothes they wear. In fact, they wear the same shirt again...and again...and again. Sharing would probably be a smart idea; but I guess people find what fits them and wear the items out.
ReplyDeleteWomen do usually care for their own children, although there is more community involvement than in the States. Here the whole village does pitch in to raise a child. Men generally are out in the fields from planting season to harvesting season, and then hang out with each other playing games and talking politics between times. The men did all sit in the gates in the Bible, didn't they? We just rarely think of their wives, who were working busily at home while the men pontificated in the shade.
Jacob definitely had his favorite (young, pretty) wife, didn’t he? ;)
The ideal life here seems to be--if you believe movies and real estate ads--a big private home with private spaces inside it; a bedroom for each person, with tv, computer, and phone and attachments, plus the other electronic necessities of life; a really fancy kitchen where the only cooking seems to be for "entertaining" and an elaborate dining arrangement for storing dishes and tableware too precious to use. It all reminds me of C.S. Lewis's "The Great Divorce" where everyone kept re-locating into ever more remote space.
ReplyDelete