while my wife would be busy at home to prepare more water for the next day. Since I am involved in two different kind of crops that is the arable and the cash crops, I spend so much time on the farm. The farm is quite big, I have three hectares of farm land; two hectares is used for cash crops and one for arable. It is easy to do because we have some support from the women at home, I am not always at home, my wife makes sure whatever is needed at home most importantly potable water is provided for while I make sure that money through this farming is always available.”
The above narratives show how the men are so busy with their daily activities, and how the women who chose due to culture to stay at home, made it easy and possible for the men to be able to sustain their livelihoods. Livelihoods among the men in the same village (Ile-Oluji) are relatively easy and not affected by the factors affecting the women, because the men have women who are able to manage their homes and take care of the children. Weedon (1997) exposed the discursive strategies used by many of the men in this study in their quest to sustain male hegemony. The hegemonic masculinity concept which is in full play among this community serves as an analytical tool for classifying those attitudes and practices among men that perpetuate gender inequality which involves men’s supremacy over women (Delgado and Zwarteveen 2007).
Almost all the men were into cash-crop (cocoa) farming, which was initially an important part of the Nigerian economy in the 50s and early 80s. The activities or the livelihoods of the men, which have to continue, have left women in helpless positions within their communities and with little livelihood improvement as a result of gender power relations and access to resources (Slater, 2002: 116-129).
their wells referred to by the residents is about 350 feet. The lives of all the residents here is completely dependent on the availability and accessibility of water. Very few could afford their own boreholes because of the cost implications. However, the residents, both men and women, have found adaptability mechanisms around water and ways of coping. A general overview of their livelihood shows that they are adversely affected by the scarcity of water, which has implications for their productivity. It was also observed that their livelihood spreads across farming, trading, teaching, and other (hairdressing, barbers and welders). A closer look shows that, like in Ile-Oluji and across the entire state, farming is predominantly a livelihood strategy, which is generally common among men.
Figure 7.2 shows the impact of limited water supply, most importantly potable water, on the livelihood of the residents and their responses in terms of the kind of livelihood they could engage in. It further shows that 40% of men are into farming, while 5% of the women are able to combine
farming with trading. Trading seems to be more popular amongst the women than the men: 48%
of the women as against 10% of the men are actively in trading. The trading lifestyle of the women in Ose is better than that of Ile-Oluji, because the women here were observed to have bigger shops than those of Ile-Oluji, and their commitment to trading is far greater than that of the other communities.
7.4.1 Water Management and Livelihood Implications for Women
The following excerpts from the narratives of women show how their present roles have impacted on their livelihoods:
NARRATIVE 1
Fadekemi is 61 years old and has been in Ose for over 40 years now.
“Things were not this bad in the past, where the government tap water was on every street, this is like thirty years ago, and even if you like you can even go to the stream to get water. No one goes to the stream to fetch again because the water is highly polluted, and it is not flowing very well again, so we are fully depending on water vendors and few boreholes around. Around here there is only person with the borehole and it has ceased to function for three years now. Everyone around here waits for the water vendor every day to buy water which you do not even know the source, but since we can always take care of it locally, we just have to continue to buy. The most annoying part is that our life is so centred on it because there is no exact time they are coming, you cannot predict, you just have to be around or else you will not have water for that day, because there are a lot of people waiting for the water vendor too, and you cannot ask too many questions about the quality of the water, because there are people waiting to take whatever they are given.”
NARRATIVE 2
Bidemi is a year older than Fadekimi, and she was born here.
“Well I am not very old, because there are still people older than me here, but I will tell a lot, because some of us are not happy, not just with the government, but with the head of this community. I have been taking care of myself since I was twenty-three, and women here are so disadvantage, and this became glaring when the water challenge we are facing started to bite very hard. I can tell you authoritatively that more than 80% of the women here are so dissatisfied with the quality of life they are living, because we also desire the best for our children, yes our own life is over, but these children should not follow this path. One major crippling economic factor here is the scarcity of good water. Imagine when you use the most important part of your day looking for good water, and you are not sure of when it is going to come.”
NARRATIVE 3
Raimi is in her 40s and is married to a farmer who controls large amounts of farmland, where he has both arable and cash crops.
“I even wanted to have a shop outside this house, so that I can go out and come in too, but he will not allow it. Anyway, it is OK but I do not think this is the best, yes I am lucky but I still feel that it is not the best. The bad thing is I have only been to the farm three times, if any bad happens to him, I do not even know the extent to which he owns land. People come here to buy water from us since we have a borehole outside the house, so what I am doing is while the buying of water is on, which goes on all through the day, I have a small shop outside the house that keeps me busy too.
He wants me to mostly attend to the sale of the water, since the neighbours depend solely on it, and we are making some money from it too. But sincerely I want to do much more than this.”
Most of the female participants in Ose were able to voice their dissatisfaction with regard to their livelihood which has been affected by their water challenges. The water challenge here is more difficult compared to the one in Ile-Oluji, because here they have no option of a stream and the water level is deeper. They survive on buying water, and those who can afford it have something close to a borehole. Almost all the women here are into trading, which is all they can do for a livelihood because they spend most of the early hours of the day looking and waiting for water.
They would like to be farmers like the men but cannot be owing to time. Some have inherited farmland but cannot use it and some cannot continue their farming activities because the hired labour on the farm (men) makes little return and can even be seen to be ‘stealing’ part of the land from the women. One of the female participants had to stop farming when she did not have the time to supervise the activities on her farm and she felt she had been cheated badly. Hence, it seems impossible for the women’s livelihoods here to improve, since their livelihoods are based on farming, and it is assumed that this can be done only by the men (see Chikozho and Latham, 2005).
7.4.2 Masculinity in Water Management and Livelihood NARRATIVE 1
Bamidele inherited a large farm from his father. He has been able to keep up with these farming activities because he has a woman who he says has been faithful to her duties in the house including water provision.
“I took over my father’s farming business about twelve years ago, now I am thirty-five, and I think I know better. Most of the things that are planted here are more of the arable and a little of the cash crops. Right out of this house we have a borehole which is the source of our potable water and the one we use for general purposes, but I think it must be affecting others coming to fetch from this water. We are always out very early in the morning to go to the farm, which has
been our habit for ten years, because I have five or sometimes six people working with me on the farm, that you have to supervise and monitor, hence your crops would disappear. My farm is doing very well, except for times when rain becomes an issue that we can do nothing about; such times productivity would drop and less money for us that year. However, generally, we are doing very fine.”
NARRATIVE 2
Isaac is close to 60 and has been engaged in farming for over 35 years now.
“My farm is quite big but due to my age, I cannot keep up with so much activities on the farm, so I have to sell off some portion and put some portion on a shared contract. I have two wives, but unfortunately, they cannot be of assistance to me because, they have an issue that they also attend to every day at home. If you have observed, we are so short of water in this village and that is a huge problem, I am talking about both potable and the water that you want to use for daily activity. They wake up very early in the morning in search of water to buy, and before you would get a good one, might take some trekking. Here I have a large family, well it is not good to count your children, but let me just say I have well above four children and one little girl. Since I do not have daughters that can be of help at the farm and at home, the bulk of the burden for the provision of potable water is definitely on the women, so they always have to be in the house. One thing they are trying to do themselves is to sell, each of them have their shops they look after, the senior wife’s shop is just outside the house while the junior wife’s shop is on the other side of the street, less than 15 minutes trek.”
Isaac pointed out that his success is as a result of his large family that makes it easy to be able to concentrate on making sure his economic strength keeps increasing. He added that his wife “was capable of handling most of the issues at home”. Livelihood for men in Ose is somewhat more
challenging compared to livelihood for men in Ile-Oluji, because the water situation in Ose is a more difficult one. Some of the men here have more than one wife to make their (the men’s!) lives easier. Since they have to buy water both for drinking and domestic use, their lives revolve much more around water than those of the men in Ile-Oluji. Even the participants who have more than two wives would want the women to assist in the farm if possible. However, due to the time and energy involved in collection of water, they are exempt. The participant with the borehole had a different approach to the situation because he hardly had a feel for the water challenges in the village. This male participant is a good example of how water can impact on the livelihood of an individual and consequently of a community. Apart from his farming, his wife managed the sales of the water too, alongside her shop just in front of the house. She was able to enhance her livelihood even though she was in the house (see Pittaluga, Salvati and Seghieri, 2004).
7.5 Livelihood and Impact of Indigenous Water Management on Residents of Ese-Odo