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3 Deborah Pellow From Accra to Kano: One Woman's Experience In 1984 economic deterioration and other related forces induced Hajiya's husband , a trader, to relocate his expectant wife and their five children from Accra, Ghana, to Kano. This northern Nigerian city was foreign neither to Hajiya nor him: both are Hausa from families who hail from the Kano area; he has traveled frequently to Kano on business; she has periodically visited her father, a wealthy businessman who lives there; and their fourth child, at the age of three, was sent to Kano to stay with Hajiya's stepmother two years before the family's move. Their connectedness and familiarity with Kano has thus been considerable . Nonetheless, Hajiya complained bitterly about the move to Kano. "I was born Accra, married in Accra, bore children in Accra. In Accra, too, I did my business.... In Ghana I have everything; here I do not." This chapter is based upon research carried out in Accra, Ghana, in 1979 and 1982. On both occasions, I was supported by a Syracuse University Senate Research grant and in 1982 additionally by a grant from the American Philosophical Society and the Appleby-Mosher Fund. The Kano material was collected during the summer of 1984, when I participated in the Advanced Hausa Language Seminar held at Bayero University, sponsored by Stanford University. I presented my ideas for this essay to the Women's Studies Faculty Seminar, Syracuse University, in October 1984, and the paper itself at the African Studies Association meeting, October 1984. I am grateful for the comments given on both occasions, as well as those by Roberta Ann Dunbar, Barbara Lewis, Ronald Cohen, Frank Salamone, and my two editors, Catherine Coles and Beverly Mack. I alone am responsible for any errors. 50 PELLOW/ From Accra to Kano 51 What initially appeared to me as an unfortunate personal situation is in fact considerably broader. The personal is reflective of the larger cultural realm; it is intertwined with a whole configuration of cultural elements-a configuration which differs from Accra to Kano. In this essay, I explore the varying influences of the two social environments upon this woman from both the personal perspective-how she experiences them and talks about them-and the perspective of society and culture-the organization and structures that differentiate the two. I begin with a description of her living situations, as that is what she brought to my attention. I take into consideration the social and spatial differences between her Accra home and the new one in Kano. Is it the lack of room, the absence of her belongings, the distance from female kin, that were unsettling her? I then take a step back and consider more generally issues of what it is to be Hausa, Muslim, and a woman in both Accra and Kano. Is it the prevailing Muslim ethos in Kano, the rule of seclusion, the inflexibility of roles that Hajiya disliked? Finally, I explicate the lack of overlap between the two living situations-the incongruencies of a cultural sort which are experienced and played out idiosyncratically. The Nima Homefront Alhaji owned his compound in Nima, a shabby section of Accra, infamous for its dirt and overall conditions of poverty. (He also owned a recently completed house in one of the newer Muslim areas, Darkuma, where he had planned to move his wife and children.) He and his family were very much a part of the zanga community: he whiled away free time in street corner conversation with male friends and neighbors. As the wife of the house owner (uwar gida), Hajiya had respected status in her compound and in the neighborhood as well. Their Nima home was located at the end of an unpaved road so badly rutted that few chose to drive on it. The rusted carcasses of cars and trucks lay abandoned along the roadside. Their dwelling, however, was comfortable and well equipped. The family of six (the three-year-old child lived with Hajiya's stepmother ) occupied one corner of the compound, which included three and a half rooms-a sitting room, a master bedroom, Alhaji's room, and a foyer where the children slept on mats. In her bedroom, Hajiya had her dowry (kayan aaki), a wall-sized glassed cupboard full of porcelain tureens (see Cohen 1969; Schildkrout 1983). More of her "things for the room" (fancy dishware and iridescent pyrex bowls) graced the sitting room, alongside the refrigerator, a blender, pasta machines, a settee...

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