PATOLOGIAS MÁS FRECUENTES (2011)

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Plate 14: Scene of a street layout at Orogun. The vicinity is located within Ibadan North Local Government Area (IBN), Ibadan, Oyo State (Source: Cecilia Owolabani: Fieldwork,

2011)

The participants residing in Beere and Mapo are located at the core centre of the city and their houses are generally built with either mud or sandy blocks plastered with cement and covered with rusted corrugated iron roofs. The poor environmental conditions that characterize these two areas make the rent charged for single or double-room apartments cheaper and affordable to a higher percentage of poor and illiterate low income earners. The participants residing in Molete, Apata and Orogun are representatives of the lower and medium income earners, whose homes are located within the larger parts of the city. The prominent attributes of these areas are paucity of moderate and affordable apartments, illegal conversion of residential buildings to commercial uses, and street trading, among others.

Most of the participants residing in the afore-mentioned areas have large to moderate number of family members in single rooms, a room and an adjoined living room, or 2-3 bedroom apartments. The derelict features of most of the bungalows include limited or no waste disposal system, poor drainage, roads, lack of kitchen and toilet facilities, a near total lack of basic amenities like water, electricity and barely furnished rooms with shabby or crappy, cheap furniture and electronic appliances.

4.5.2 Rubrics of the Observed Child-Rearing Practices among Parents in Formal Employments

In some households, children are roused from sleep with jingling of bells announcing Morning Prayer sessions, but in some, early risers make it a point of duty to wake others or individuals would wake up with the aids of their personal alarm devices. In a few households,

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early morning prayers are often said by all members of the family while some parents encourage their children to observe individual prayer time within the confines of their rooms.

Children that participate in congregational prayer session often greet their parents before or after the activity while those permitted to observe theirs individually could go into their parents‘ rooms to purposely greet them or do so when they accidentally meet or when they must have finished preparing for school. In homes where children are trained to be fully involved in domestic chores, the next call of duty is for the grownups to assist their mothers with the early morning chores and when cases of waking up late arise, some of their tasks are sometimes left undone. In the elite homes, domestic chores are attended to by home helps.

The conveniences attached to the architecture of some of the elite residences make the task of preparing children for school easy for most of the parents, who are often exempted from supervisions in the case of grown-up children. In some of the homes, children are commonly served beverages or light food like noodles (one of children‘s favourite) in the morning while some get prepared roadside foods for breakfast. And if they are unable to eat breakfast before leaving the house, their meals are often packaged in various types of food flasks/plastic plates, water bottles and food baskets which are taken to school. Nursing mothers also make it a point of duty to pack their babies‘ basic needs such as extracted breast milks, processed baby milks and cereals, pampers, feeding bottles, hot water (in flasks), clothing, among others, in baby bags before leaving home in the morning.

As early as 6:30 to 8:00am, babies of 8-12 weeks old, toddlers and children of different ages in the company of their parents or extended family members would leave their homes to be on their way to child-care centres and schools (Plate 15-16). Most of the middle or low-income earning parents (mostly mothers) often strap their babies or toddlers to their backs while scrambling with their handbags, nursing bags and ―food-baskets‖ to board vehicles to their various destinations (Plate 17). Similarly, those without strapped babies/toddlers are usually accompanied by their young or old children in small and large numbers (holding or strapping school bags with ―food-baskets‖) dashing out early to board public vehicles. Those with large number of children sometimes make arrangement with tricycle drivers or motorcycle taxis to drop their children in school.

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Plate 15: Parents dropping their children in private Nursery and Primary School at Adenuga Street, New Bodija, during early hours of the day. (Source: Cecilia Owolabani:

Fieldwork, 2012).

Plate 16: A mother dropping her child in a child-care centre at Jericho, during early hours of the day. (Source: Cecilia Owolabani: Fieldwork, 2012).

Plate 17: A strapped toddler (strapping his school bag), with his mother on their way to a child care centre. (Source: Cecilia Owolabani:Fieldwork, 2012).

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The take-off time to school often depends on children‘s resumption time and the distance needed to be covered from homes to children‘s schools, baby care centres or parent‘s workplace. In cases where the distance to children‘s schools is far and could cause parent‘s lateness to work (especially those with private or official vehicles), their children are occasionally left with neighbours heading in the direction of their children‘s school or whose children also attend same school. Such deeds of favour are often on a prearranged basis and are exercised interchangeably. Few parents who could not afford private cars, or who do not like to seek favours from their neighbours, usually make arrangements with commercial cabdrivers or school buses to convey their children to school with monthly or daily payment of service charges.

The children are in schools or child-care centres until varied closing times. Those in secondary schools close around 2:00-3:45pm daily while majority of them hang back until 5:00-6:00pm for extra classes before returning home in the later part of the evening. The official closing hour for those in nursery and primary schools is 1:00pm but most of them are similarly involved in extra tutorial classes until 4:00pm. Private drivers, cab drivers or bike men in company of domestic helps, family members or parents often pick up a few children as from 1:00pm. Most of the children, especially toddlers and babies, stay within the child-care or school premises until their parents are available to collect them after close of work and this varies from 5:00-7:00pm. Some of the children also leave the school premises early, and have their lunch at their home, but those involved in extra classes usually go to school with enough food that could sustain them till closing hours while some are given feeding allowances that take care of their basic needs throughout the school hours. Sometimes, a few of them are provided with both, and the amount varies from minimum of fifty to maximum of five hundred Naira (#500.00), depending on the parent‘s financial status.

When children return from school, they are involved in various activities that often start off with the act of completing their school assignments (after lunch). Afterwards, they are free to play within the confinement of their compounds or play computer games, watch television programmes, play with toys, have interactive discussions among themselves, listen and dance to both foreign and Nigerian music, surf the internet with their mobile phones or computers and study, among others (Plate 18-20).

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