In relation to planning, it would appear that the process of planning is of paramount importance for all of those who live in the villages, regardless if one is married or not. However, planning is of specific importance for those women who are classified as being co-wives and whose husbands live in the villages, as it is these women who are required to share the labour of their husbands with another woman, even if, as discussed previously, it is women who do nearly all of the work in the gardens.164 Socially it is men who are responsible
for ploughing the gardens and also for digging the gardens if there is only a hand hoe available.165 Thus the labour of a man, albeit limited, is actually
164 I talked to several men who were polygamous but did not reside permanently in the
villages. These men were employed as either civil servants or teachers. It is these men who have one wife who resides in the village and another with them at their work station.
165 During my time in the villages I never saw a woman using a plough. I did though observe
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important for crop production. The relevance of good planning when one is a co-wife is discussed by Adogn Paula.
“You, as a woman need to plan what to do. So if my husband is with me for five days, then he’ll work with me for five days. If I haven’t planned in advance what we’ll be doing, then things will not get done.”
What is of interest with this quote is that not only is the process of planning important, but also that it is the woman’s responsibility to plan and to be organised rather than their husband’s. It clearly shows that women, especially Adgon Paula, have some power within their homes and that it is they who are in the position to influence the process of food production. I asked Adgon Paula if she thought that her having to share her husband was problematic to her food security. She was resigned to that; that is what life is about. I would like to propose that women in polygamous unions at key times of the farming season could almost be classified as either being FFH or de jure households as the labour of their spouse is divided. If there are no resources available to hire men to plough the gardens and there is only a hand hoe available, then those women in polygamous unions will be faced with the same difficulties as those women who are on their own. Even if Adgon Paula is resigned to her family situation, the fact that she has the freedom to decide what to produce and to plan was a positive thing. It also shows that the patriarch does not have full control over her agency. What Adgon Paula found difficult, as did other women that I interviewed who are co-wives, was the fact that when there is more than one wife the plot size that one has access to decreases. The problem is, even if the land that a woman has access to decreases, women are still expected to produce the same quantities of food stuffs, as if they do not, they will not be fulfilling their gendered role as food producer. As previously discussed, if a woman fails in one of her roles, she could be classified as being an unsuitable wife and could risk her place within the household.
As I was in the villages during the dry season and the beginning of the rainy season, (this being, as noted in Chapter Four, between late December and
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April 2014) I was in a fortunate position to observe how various families were prepared and organised for the onset of the first rains. There were several families who were clearly still in the mind frame of the dry season, (insofar as the amount of work that men do goes from minimal to nothing) especially those where there was a conjugal patriarch. On more than one occasion I saw large groups of men still relaxing and drinking under trees or drinking and playing cards at the local bars when the land was ready to be cleared and then subsequently ploughed. I would argue that those men who are in conjugal unions are more likely to take a relaxed view to the clearing of their gardens and the subsequent digging, as ultimately they know that their wives will do the work as if they do not, their wives will not be fulfilling their socially constructed gender roles, and neither will they be able to feed themselves and their children. This supports what Rwot Moses said about the fact that a home can have a lazy man, but not a lazy wife.
Also, as noted by Samuel , “men, well they can be lazy and they drink, they think more about leisure time than they do to work, they don’t concentrate.”
This is further supported by Ben Layo:
“Planning is important, you need to be ready, and your garden needs to be ready. There are too many people who are now lazy, they sit and drink under the trees, and their gardens are not ready. The dry season just seems to go on and on. If you don’t plan then you will have a poor harvest.”
As I was not able to spend a full season in the field I am not able to say if this had an impact on this year’s food production. However, those who were ready for the rains were definitely at an advantage as the crops were planted on time. Not only is planning important, but so too are the capacities of the individual and the resources that a family has access to. For a household to do well, it is also believed that there needs to be two very hardworking adults in the
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household, of which a wife is one. If women are on their own and have small children and no help, then they are the most vulnerable of married women.