Hausa women usually engage in 
some form of enterprise; most of 
their profits are invested in their 
children’s marriage expenses. 
Working at home, a woman, right, 
weaves a mat for sale. This woman 
is a co-wife to the woman shown with 
her daughter, below right. As 
Muslims, Hausa men may have up 
to four wives, who often call on one 
another’s children to perform 
household chores. The young girl 
carrying a tray on her head, below, 
has small quantities of goods for 
sale — bouillon cubes and packets of 
salt, sugar, and detergent. Children 
usually trade on behalf of their 
mothers or other adults but they 
may also earn money from 
their own small investments. 
than girls in their play activities. By 
the onset of puberty, boys have begun 
to observe the rules of purdah by re- 
fraining from entering the houses of 
all but their closest relatives. In gen- 
eral, especially if they have sisters, 
older boys spend less time than girls 
doing chores and errands and more 
time playing and, in recent years, go- 
ing to school. Traditionally, many boys 
left home to live and study with an 
Arabic teacher. Today many also pur- 
sue Western education, sometimes in 
boarding school. Although the tran- 
sition to adulthood is less abrupt for 
boys, childhood for both sexes ends 
by age twelve to fourteen. 
As each generation assumes the re- 
sponsibilities of adulthood and the re- 
strictions of sexual separation, it must 
rely on the younger members of so- 
ciety who can work around the purdah 
system. Recently, however, the intro- 
duction of Western education has be- 
gun to threaten this traditional ar- 
rangement, in part just by altering 
the pattern of children’s lives. 
The Nigerian government is now 
engaged in a massive program to pro- 
vide Western education to all school- 
age children. This program has been 
undertaken for sound economic and 
political reasons. During the colonial 
period, which ended in the early 
1960s, the British had a “hands-off” 
policy regarding education in northern 
Nigeria. They ruled through the 
Islamic political and judicial hierar- 
chy and supported the many Arabic 
schools, where the Koran and Islamic 
law, history, and religion were taught. 
The British discouraged the introduc- 
52 
