The Labourers

Bula bends down with a hoe in his hand. He has been dragging the hoe across a stretched of weeds for about five hours. His sinewy big arms move in tandem with the blade of the hoe. Occasionally he stands and wipes the torrent of sweat flowing from his forehead. Then he will bow and continue with the work. His legs are soiled by the heaps of the loam on which the weeds thrive on. He yawns revealing brown stained teeth, and shoves his hand inside his pocket. Bringing out a big kola nut,he cut it and threw it inside his mouth.

He is one of Alhaji Jauro’s children, the oldest of the male offsprings . The rest, like him, are on the other side of the farm. Each of them busy weeding his portion, afraid that the dusk will come without his clearing it. They are on the farm since morning, and, as ussual, they will not leave it untill dusk come. After dusk, they will retire to their three separate rooms until the next day.

The children have their rooms outside the main house. The custom dictates that the female and the male siblings are to reside in different chambers. Only the boys are outside the house,but the ladies are staying in their mothers' rooms.

Alhaji Jauro has four wives. The first has nine children; five are males. The second has seven; six are males. The third and the fourth each has three respectively, three males from the third and one from the fourth.

He is a Fulani man- from the far north. After the demise of his father- the late Hardo- he inherits a herd of cattles- about three hundred in number. Fifteen years ago, one hundred of the castles were rustled. He manages to gather twenty five cattles through donations from his fellow herdsmen for commiseration on the lost of his cattles. The Fulani people possess a bovine affinity the way Arabs are to camels. Consistent with the Fulani tradition, it is demeaning to be found wanting in the possession of cows. Fame, status and power are gained only through the possession of cows.

The cows are milked in the morning by the wives. The milk will then be processed into Nono. This is how they make the Nono. The milk will be heated untill it boils. Then a little of a fermented one will be applied on it. The milk will change into thick yellowish substance immediately . This the wives will carry in large calabashes to the market. That's how the wives and their daughters make their money. 

It is in the month of May and the rain has started pouring down in torrents. The children are tired of working on the farm. It’s a drudgery. To till and weed their farms, the Fulani people prefer to use crude implements . Alhaji Jauro bought fifteen hoes from a blacksmith in a nearby village. Till today, the people regard machines as cursed on thier lands. If there is a famine or crop pestilence, they input it to machines and the white-man's fertilizer. He shared the hoes among his fifteen children. Each of them takes care of the hoe like a baby. Without a good one , working on the farm is a hell. Every time they go to the farm, each of his sons will be allocated a portion on the farm to weed, and the work is cutthroat. The earlier you finish your work the more status you accrue from your father. Now and then a wife will be given to an industrious worker. Though the eldest son superintends over the group, yet the diligent ones are more valuable in the group. Only if he is hardworking, the leadership of the group can be switched to the dilligent among them.

The farm is big, about twenty hectares wide. He cultivates maize, guinea corn, and millet on the farm for his large family. But he also sells the remaining grains in the market to buy ingredients for food. Cows are meant to reproduce and to be preserved. They are only sold if they contracted a disease or if he is wedding or marrying out one of his children.

In the dry season the farm is occupied by the herds of the cattles. In the evening , when the children return from the herding , the cattles are stationed in the farm by the house. Later their dungs get accumulated and serve as fertilizer on the farm. In the rainy season, they changed pens, and the previous ones become a farm.

The children work on the farm. They sow the seeds, plough the soil, and remove the weed until the crops are ready for harvest. Their break comes only when there is an incident;when it rains heavily the children expect to remain at home or when one of them is weak, he stays at home. When there is an event in the house like marriage or naming ceremony, they also stay at home.

Today the whether is cloudy and the children expect a rainfall. The sky is dark and covered with a blanket of cloud. In a day like this, the children look out for their father to allow them to remain at home. Because when they go out and work in the rain, they will be sick and it will affect the crop yield at the end of the season.

Bula raises his head and peers at the eastern horizon. Suddenly he hears heavy droplets of rain patering the young crops and he announced "Everybody should hurry up and get back to the house. We are finished for today!"

They hurried out of the farm each holding his hoe. And suddenly the rain increases in quantity. Before they reach their huts, they get wet. They enter their huts and change their clothes.

Made of mud, the huts are round and big. The children sleep on bamboo beds. On top of which lie mattresses. The local mattress is a motley of sacks joined together with a mammoth opening. From the large mouth opening, a stack of hay is stuffed inside the sack. The sack is then sewn with a pin and a thread to give a shape. Each of the three huts has five of the bamboo beds and mattresses.

The floor is a beaten earth, smooth and dusty. Around the corners of the room are rodents' holes. Roaches and bedbugs also infested the rooms. No electricity and televisions. Paraffin lamps are hung on the walls of the rooms.

The children reclined on their beds hoping that the rain will not abate. In their minds they hope it will rain forever so that they will never return to the farm. The sanctum of the huts give them a peace of mind.