Women's Work

I am awoken each day by the rhythmic vibration and hollow sound of my neighbor pounding her wooden mortar into a large pestle, the weight of her body turning millet into flour. Some days it seems that I can feel the ground shake first, rather than hear the deep beats over the wall. But as I slowly rise out of my slumber, echoes of the same sound drift in from concessions all over the village. This is typically how each women's day starts, with her husband rationing out millet or sorghum grain to the household to be turned into a thick porridge called tuwo or mixed as flour into goat or sheep milk making a milkshake type drink called hura.

Oftentimes, if there are multiple wives in a household (the Quran allows up to 4), the younger wives will do the pounding while older wives may help with the wash, sweeping or cooking, or leave the concession to forage for firewood or food for their sheep and goats. In many households, girls are kept home from school in order to help with the burden of the chores. Their schedules reflect the rising heat of the day, with the most strenuous chores done earliest and the mid-afternoons saved for rest and conversation under the largest shade tree.

It is during these rest times that many of my friendships have taken hold. As it is paramount in Nigerien culture to greet people, I have made it my habit to go around and sit with groups of women during these rest times. Unfortunately, many women have been cloistered by their husbands which restricts them to their concessions unless their chores require them to leave to fetch water or collect firewood. It is no surprise then, why women often linger at the well or plan long walks into the bush with other wives.

Nonetheless, however, it is true that firewood is very difficult to find freely and too expensive to be purchased regularly (50 cents $US for a daily supply). Many of the desirable fuel or home construction trees are protected in Niger, necessitating frequent full day hikes to collect the essential supplies. Reducing wood fuel usage is a project goal for Peace Corps Natural Resource Management volunteers for several reasons. Restoration of the land requires the planting and care of trees as opposed to stripping them from the already poor soils. Also, the less time women and children need to spend foraging for wood, the more time they have for income generating activities or attending school.

Accordingly, one project for moving toward this goal is teaching women to build improved cookstoves that use less firewood and burn more safely. I implemented this project during my first few months when a high level of Hausa language ability was not neccessary and mud was readily available as people repaired their homes before rainy season. Many women had already heard of improved cookstoves and a few had built them in their concessions. The way they work is to build a traditional three rock stove with the pot on it, wrap the whole thing in about six inches of mud mixed with manure, ash and millet shaff, and cut a door to set the wood in. All the villagers know how to make the mud and many have stories about how their children tipped over pots or their sarongs got burnt in the flame.

With the help of two women who have incredible effort and previous knowledge of building cookstoves, we taught thirteen women how to build and care for them. The success and sustainability of this project is evident in the number of requests we received from other women to train them and now we have plans to hold a competition with one trained woman paired with one untrained woman to demonstrate both their teaching and construction abilities. A new set of pots or a sarong will be the prize to the winning pair!

(photo index: Abu, her baby Rahila tied to her back and me making mud bricks for our cookstove; looking over my neighbors wall to friends pounding and cooking; Abu and Fatima with their finished cookstove)