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Ijokun Village as a Case Study of the Dynamism of the Concepts of Wealth and Poverty.
By Lateef Oladeji of Gem Business Ventures
In its characteristic manner of journeying in time and space, my mind landed at Ijokun village of the early 1960s, and immediately placed before me the vivid picture of Baba Owolo. Baba Owolo was an enviable personage of our environment and time of those years. By our standard then, he was very rich and wealthy. His house and household stood out in elegance and aloofness.
Baba Owolo’s house was a mud house with thatched roof, but it was simply different. The walls were formed into an arc at the frontage but the massive building was predominantly rectangular. How the walls, crudely plastered and painted, looked beautiful with an assortment of colours, extracted manually from certain leaves! What of the floors? They were always refreshed with the best cow-dung material. The few of us little children who managed to scrape up some friendship with Baba Owolo’s children and wards had the rare privilege pf seeing his wooden beds and cotton-and-feather-stuffed mattresses. What an elegance to behold! Only a wealthy man like Baba Owolo would have such a massive architectural masterpiece with marvelous wooden furniture, including foldable chairs and long benches, all “imported” from the city.
I remember clearly that the entire household of Baba Owolo’s had none of a television set, radio, music box, electricity, telephone, etc. Yet, to us, he seemed to lack nothing. From the way he looked contented and carried himself with an air of superiority, he seemed not to be aware that he lacked much, if not anything at all. As far as we, including him, were concerned, such items were not known or heard of before or they were not of much relevance to our own environment. As such, they were not missed. Our lives revolved around farming, hunting and craftwork. We were either working on our farms or in the bush, or were in the village resting, sleeping of enjoying some local games or folklores. Our lives were really very sweet, or so we had thought. We got the first hint ever that we could be lacking certain things the day the “government people” (as we used to call government officials) visited our village on feasibility tour, with a view to siting an elementary school there. The first rude shock came when Baba Owolo’s offer of his big “parlor” to host a meeting with the officials got turned down immediately the latter stepped into the house. The way they were pinching at their noses gave us a surprising clue. They were very uncomfortable with the “sweet smell” oozing from the cow-dung-polished flooring. The meeting held eventually under a tree outside. By the time the school buildings started being erected the more modern way (with cement blocks, corrugated iron roofing sheets, cement-plastered walls, concrete flooring and fanciful paints), it had dawned on us that we lacked a lot of things, as our simple lives of contentment had been assailed and destroyed. When the headmaster of the school brought his bicycle, gas lamp and “bush radio” into the village for the first time, and moved into his “posche” official house, Baba Owolo looked much smaller to us. A truly wealthy and modern man had emerged in the headmaster, to be aspired to and envied at Ijokun. A new dimension to our concepts of wealth and poverty was added when Pa Ijadu’s son, Amuga, came visiting from the city, bringing along a “music box” (the gramophone of the “His Master’s Voice” fame). For the two weeks that Amuga spent with us, it was fun and enjoyment galore. We were not surprised when his father requested him not to take the gramophone back to the city. Obviously, Pa Ijadu had also acquired an elevated status in our eyes – but not for long. Something we villagers heard them call “Udongi” brought about another higher level to adore and envy. I later learnt that Udongi (so called after the chairman of the government’s salary and wages review commission of the early 1970s) drastically improved the compensation system in the public service, paying huge arrears into the bargain. This explained why the teachers in our midst suddenly earned an elevated recognition among us. The radio-cassette players which they were now able to own, catapulted them instantly above Pa Ijadu, whose gift gramophone had suddenly become obsolete to us. The chain of changing levels lengthened and Ijokun village has shifted drastically in its perceptions of wealth and poverty. With each new development, be it technological, institutional or cultural, Ijokun gets farther and farther away from its original contentment equilibrium. The Ijokun scenarios highlighted above show vividly how the twin concepts of wealth and poverty are not static but vary with time and place/environment. In more specific terms, the perceptions of wealth and poverty vary inversely or directly with certain factors, including: · Technology- leading to the availability of some new goods, services and methods, on the one hand, and to the obsolescence of the old ones, on the other hand.
· Civilization and cultural changes -leading to the need to acquire new things and abandon old ones.
· Education (including traveling) - leading to greater awareness of new things and possibilities elsewhere.
· Fashion changes- effects similar to those of civilization and cultural changes.
· Government Policies- could induce income redistribution, income creation, capacity building or destruction.
· Occupation/ Location- most rural-based occupations attract lower incomes but the residents have fewer items to spend on.
· Attitude- the feeling of contentment blots out the sense of lack. In a few cases, poverty or wealth is in the mind. Finally, it is pertinent to mention that all the modern definitions or concepts of poverty (or wealth) are based on measurable material things, such as income, volume of goods and services consumed and so on. In actual fact, there are a good number of non-material and non-measurable items that go a long way in determining or adding to the levels of health, happiness and fulfillment. They include healthy environment, freshness of food and water, security of lives and properties, strong family and communal ties, good neighborliness, free flow of traffic, the spirit-lifting effect of nature and several others. All these are available in better quantities in the rural areas, such as Ijokun village, though these rural areas might rate very low in material terms. There is the need, therefore, for a means to be devised for capturing these non-material items so as to have a truer distribution pattern of wealth and poverty in time and space.
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Contributor's Note
This article is a symbolic representation of the observations I have made of several real people and their changing status and importance in the society, largely brought about by emerging civilization and development.
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This intel was contributed by gembiz
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