7.3 Livelihood and Impact of Indigenous Water Management on Residents of Ile-Oluji 169
7.3.2 Masculinity in Water Management and Livelihood
Men are referred to as ‘lords’ in the various study sites. They have access to everything that supports their livelihoods such as farming loans from the government, land opportunities for farming, and ready markets for the sales of farm produce. This makes it easy for the men across the community of study to be able to sustain their livelihoods and engage in farming where their socio-economic power is increased.
The following narratives are excerpts from the men about livelihoods and water management:
NARRATIVE 1
Josiah
Early in his life they depended solely on the stream for water but from about 30 years ago, they have been using wells as their primary source of water.
“I built a place here and brought my wife and my first son. One big challenge we have had from that time till to date is the issue around water. Our water is not too good for drinking unless we carried out some measure like the use of various local materials, we cannot just drink it like that.
When I first got here, we go as far as three or four kilometres to the streams to get water, but now about fifteen years back, we have like two or three wells that we are still managing here which is not enough for us.”
NARRATIVE 2
Jacob
Jacob gets his water from the well primarily and the stream. He feels that they have been forgotten by the government, so they have to survive doing the best they can and using all available methods.
“I am a farmer and I have made a lot of money from cocoa farming such that I have three of my sons who have graduated from the university, that were trained from the profit and earning of this farm. I also started the primary school in this village, because I have the teacher basic training certificate. Since we have children and they cannot go into the town for schooling, because then, there was transport, to go to school in town would require trekking about ten if not more kilometres.”
NARRATIVE 3
Samson
Samson is a cocoa farmer and inherited all the water management approaches used in this village.
His own approach is to boil water from any of the sources and pour it into the fired clay pots.
“We had to start a primary school then which started with just three children, and now they have primary one to six. What we do is plant cocoa, employ some local security to watch it most important during harvest, because there had been times before we started to use local guards, when you will come to the farm and you will meet nothing on your farm. It is a lot of work because one thing is to farm and have them matured such that the pods are properly kept so that you can have a good sale.”
NARRATIVE 4
Adekunle
Adekunle, who also came into the village when he was young, has been actively involved in farming all his life. He also relocated from the town and came into the settlement to assist his father before he passed on. Now he is fully in charge through inheritance of his father’s farm. He plants both subsistence and cash cocoa crops.
“We are really so busy, because this work requires a lot of attention, monitoring and supervision.
We set out into the farm as early as 6:00am and we come back before 5:00pm. This kind of work is not for lazy people see how long we stay in the farm; my wife brings our breakfast and lunch together when she is coming. She does not stay too long so that she can go and do other things at home. We have made some money from this work, although we still have a challenge that we are coping with, which is even better now, and that is water. We fetch the one we can take to the farm
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).