GENDER ISSUES

WOMEN AS BREADWINNERS

Most women go through thick and thin to be able to feed and provide for their household and equally see their children through their education. This might not seem strange but the line of businesses some of these women undertake to be able to meet up with their engagements is what matters and the end they wear off looking older than their husbands who where several years ahead before they were married to them.
As I observed in my county Cameroon, in as mush as most men uphold powers and authority as a man, they neglect and avoid those duties and responsibilities a man is suppose to perform as the head of the family.

This is common with those men who migrate from rural settings to township and are able to secure clerical and cleaning jobs which usually not sum up to a comfortable pay check. In effect these men when they decide to marry go back to their villages to get a wife, usually lass. The village fathers knowing he is from the city and judging from his conservative dressing which most of them put on to show off they are from the city and to portray they are financially okay, fathers readily propose and offer their young daughters.
When these women eventually join their husbands, they realize the condition of the man is not as blissful.

They are given money to purchase food and house needs at the market, the money is never enough and if they dare complain the respond from the man is “Manage, this is not the village where you have food in abundance from your farms, here we buy everything.” Situation gets worst when they start making children then the reality of taking the upper hand strokes - they are to be the breadwinner of their household.

To therefore act as breadwinners, especially those women who are determined that, their offspring should have better opportunities than they ever had these women are compelled to engage in tedious and risky businesses like going to the bush market to buy food stuff and retail at town markets. Such women are referred to in Cameroon as ‘Buyyam Sellam’ just from the mere sense that they buy and sell. These women sell foodstuff like plantains, yams, cocoyam, cassava, vegetables, fruits etc.

In Cameroon towns have particular days known as market days, usually twice or thrice a week, or some towns having more than one market have varied days within the week as such that town can have about five market days within the week. Some of the markets operate daily but on market days traders come from around and afar as such commodities and items are cheaper to acquire than in ordinary days.

The bush markets are rural markets where these women buy directly from farmers mostly women too, who till and toil under the sun and rain from dawn to dusk and at the same caring for their babies and toddlers they couldn’t leave behind. If the farm is far they spend some days in the farm house. The ‘Buyyam Sellam’ women leave their homes sometimes as early as 3am depending on which bush market they are going and their line of business from the aforementioned different kinds of foodstuff they deal in. To get to these bush markets some board trucks and others smaller vehicles.

Trucks with single cabins instead of two, three women sit in the front seats and trucks with double cabins instead of 3 women to sit at the back seats about 5 to 6 women cram in while others take their places behind the truck. Even when the truck is loaded, these women can be seen sitting on their goods no matter the distance or the condition of the road.
Those who go by smaller vehicles from my own assessment faces greater risk for, the drivers are usually overzealous as such they careless about the comfort of passengers but how much they could make. In front, the driver share his own seat with a passenger and two others share a seat bring the total to four in front. Then behind instead of 3 there are five or six passengers. That’s not all some people sit on the roof or bonnet of the car and mark you their loads are included. And they are plying on usually curvy, bumpy roads that have not been tarred and these women endure all this to make ends meet.

These women have a target day to get their goods to the market, but things turn sour when the wagon heavy laden with their goods breakdown. If the fault is such that a part need to be replaced the driver will now wait for any available vehicle heading town wards to purchase the part. As such these women will then spend two, three or four days sleeping on the road depending on their distance from town.
The women are compelled to stay and wait around the truck so that their goods would not been stolen. Each of them has special marks on their bags or bunches of plantain to be able to differentiate their goods. If there is no stream around then they stay without having any shower for those number of days. If it is plantains, vegetables or fruit, they stand the risk of working on a deficit, because the vegetables or fruits might get bad or the plantains get over ripe for sale. Some of them go through all these with a child strapped on their back. Before they leave their homes if they don’t have bigger children, then they must have prepared and kept enough food in the house for their husbands and children.

Those who are not into foodstuff business cook and sell food. Again they get up in the early hours of the morning so that by 7, 8, 9 am latest they should be at their selling point. Others who roast fish or fry puff-puff (balls), or ripe plantains (dodo) and cooked beans or pap at night by the road side start by 6 or 7pm latest till the early hours of morning depending oh how lucrative business was on that particular day. Sometimes their children stay with them to help out.

Women without selling points go about from place to place like bars, construction sites, parks carrying their basin on their heads. Such women sell scotch eggs, boiled eggs; cow skin (canda) fried with tomatoes and sometimes prepared also with liver, pancreases (fop-fop) and large intestine also tripes (towel).
Cow skin locally known as ‘canda’ is like a delicacy for those from the English part of Cameroon. Cameroon is a bilingual country and officially speaks French and English. Eight of the ten provinces speak French known as Francophones while the remaining two are known as Anglophones.

There are women who trade on this cow skin only. If they are in small towns where they don’t kill many cows, they travel to bigger towns to buy the skin. When they get back to their homes, they make large fire to burn the hair off the skin. While it is burning they are scraping. Then they will steep it in water for a couple of days. They later clean it until it obtains a yellowish brown colour before they take to the market. Some other women also roast plantain, cocoyam and corn by the roadside usually during the day.

These women undergo all this just to keep life going for their families meanwhile most of their men use their earnings to indulge in drinking sprees, womanizing and socializing. As such, the women assume responsibilities as a mother and father for children whom they have no say to decide on how many they are to give birth too.

Polygamy is also a cultural practice as a result some men marry up to six women or even more. Each woman has the responsibility to provide their offspring and at the same time have specific days to put food on their husbands table. He is less concern on how they manage and go about it after all he is the man of the house- ‘he who must be obeyed’.

By Cecile Enie