ents, but other relatives — grandpar- 
ents, aunts, uncles, and stepmothers — 
and adults living in the same house 
as servants or tenants may call on 
a child for limited tasks without asking 
permission of the parents. Like other 
Muslims, Hausa men may have up 
to four wives, and these women freely 
call on each other’s children to per- 
form household chores. Even strangers 
in the street sometimes ask a child 
to do an errand, such as delivering 
a message, particularly if the chore 
requires entering a house to which 
the adult does not have access. The 
child will be rewarded with a small 
amount of money or food. 
Adults other than parents also rep- 
rimand children, who are taught very 
early to obey the orders of grown- 
ups. Without ever directly refusing to 
obey a command, however, children 
do devise numerous strategies of non- 
compliance, such as claiming that an- 
other adult has already co-opted their 
time or simply leaving the scene and 
ignoring the command. Given chil- 
dren’s greater mobility, there is little 
an adult can do to enforce compliance. 
Besides working on behalf of adults, 
children also participate in a “chil- 
dren’s economy.” Children have their 
own money — from school allowances 
given to them daily for the purchase 
of snacks, from gifts, from work they 
may have done, and even from their 
own investments. For example, boys 
make toys for sale, and they rent out 
valued property, such as slide viewers 
or bicycles. Just as women distinguish 
their own enterprises from the labor 
they do as wives, children regard the 
work they do for themselves differ- 
ently from the work they do on behalf 
of their mothers. When Binta cooks 
food for sale, using materials she has 
purchased with her own money, the 
profits are entirely her own, although 
she may hand the money over to her 
mother for safekeeping. 
Many girls begin to practice cook- 
ing by the age of ten. They do not 
actually prepare the family meals, for 
this heavy and tedious work is pri- 
marily the wives’ responsibility. But 
they do carry out related chores, such 
as taking vegetables out for grinding, 
sifting flour, and washing bowls. Many 
also cook food for sale on their own. 
With initial help from their mothers 
or other adult female relatives, who 
may give them a cooking pot, char- 
coal, or a small stove, children pur- 
chase small amounts of ingredients 
and prepare various snacks. Since they 
Older children do a lot of direct and 
indirect teaching of younger ones. 
Here, a boy who attends primary 
school demonstrates at home how to 
write in English, using chalk on the 
cement pavement of the courtyard. 
Children make most of their own 
toys, and sometimes sell them to 
other children. With the author as a 
steady customer, these boys set up a 
“company” to manufacture toy cars, 
trucks, and airplanes from tin cans, 
bottle tops, and plastic box tops. 
50 
