LIVING ON WATER- Lagos community where women, children hawk, school on water

By SEGUN AJIBOYE and INNOCENT DURU
The setting was Neolithic in nature and the life styles of the inhabitants are reminiscent of tales from moonlight and how people lived in primitive days.

For the residents of Makoko, a riverine slum on the mainland of Lagos State, living has not so much changed from what they inherited from their forefathers even though they are living in a cosmopolitan city like Lagos State.

Few meters away on the mainland, Makoko seems more like a community taken from a storybook with its story set in the Stone Age.

And like the men of the Stone Age, inhabitants of Makoko have confirmed the truism that necessity is indeed the mother of all inventions. Faced with the unique nature of their environment, the people have risen up to the challenge, conquering all the challenges confronting them.

While the children on the mainland go to school in buses fitted with air conditioners, children in Makoko go to school in rickety canoes, popularly called ‘school bus’ in the area. And for them, the cold breeze that hover around the area is better than all the air conditioners in the world put together. While their peers take lectures in neatly built concrete classrooms, Makoko pupils take lectures in a one storey plank building erected on mosquito infested waters.

And if you are wondering if it is ever possible for the women itinerant traders to hawk food and other wares on the foul-smelling water like their counterparts on the mainland do, you will be shock to see the women display their wares in well-cut canoes and moving from one end of the community to the other. In fact, there is no daily need product that is not hawked on the water.

Checks revealed that sales alcohol on the waters is one of the most thriving businesses in the area as most of the men who would have spent good part of their day on the high sea return home to relax at the water side to warm their bodies with different brands of alcohol.

The water was a beehive of activities when our men visited the community recently. It was interesting to see momentary traffic build up on regular intervals because of the innumerable canoes plying the area.

Apart from pockets of refuse that littered the face of the water, human excreta of various sizes, shapes and colours also occupied different parts of the river banks with some of them swimming vigorously as if they were in a competition to get to the shore before the canoes.

Irrespective of the health hazards that are concomitant with waddling in such murky waters on daily basis, the residents remain unruffled. Rather they see life in the putrid water as better than living on land since they have no difficulty getting all manners of fishes at no costs from the waters. Movement of the residents especially pupils and female hawkers from one part of the community to another is only by canoe.

As the some of the pupils hopped into one of the canoes that convey them  from home to school everyday, one of them called Tom mistakenly had his books thrown into the water. With his bare hands he parted the waters as if swimming until he took the books out. After removing them, he found out that two of the books had been stained by human excreta that was heading for the shore.

Rather than abandon the books, Tom took some water from the dirty water and smiling, he washed away the excreta before continuing his journey.

Asked why he had to take the risk of washing the excreta away with his bare hands instead of throwing the books away, Tom replied that he saw nothing wrong in what he did. He said that the water serves as a play ground for them in spite of all the rubbish in it. Aside from that, he added that he did so because he would not be able to get another book until it was time for them to be given free books by the school.

He explained that they do not pay any fees or buy books or biro in the school. He said if the school does not give books to them, they would not be able to buy because their parents are very poor. The parents according to him are more concerned about how they would put food on the table for the family than worrying about buying books for the children.

 “There is nothing wrong in what I have done. I only used the water to wash away the shit (excreta) that stained my book. As far as we are concerned there is nothing wrong with using this water because it ordinarily serves as a play ground for most of us. When rain falls, we always dive into it to swim. It is in this water that we all leant how to swim. The youngest child in this community knows how to swim very well because we all acquire the skills naturally in this water. 

“Apart from that I cannot throw the books away because I don’t have other note books to replace them. It is our school that gives us books and other things we need to use for learning. We don’t pay school fees too. If I should throw the books away, I would have nothing to write in the class until they give us new books.

“I was not going to school before they established our school (Whanyinna Nursery and Primary) school because my parents could not afford to pay my school fees. My parents are poor and are primarily concerned about how to provide food for us. I started following my father to catch and sell fish since I was five years old. I still go out to fish in the evening after closing from school, “he said.

Efforts

Susan a 14-year old secondary school was found hawking locally made sweet in a canoe when she was expected to be in school. She said she had not gone to school for sometime because the parents could not provide her with the money she needed to pay her school fees.

“I did not go to school because I am yet to pay my school fees. I decided to be hawking this sweet instead of idling away at home. Many of my peers that always stayed back at home when they cannot pay their school fees are either pregnant or nursing their babies. I feel that the best way for me to avoid early pregnancy that may end my educational pursuit is to keep myself busy. I make the sweet by myself and even take some of them to school to sell to my friends.

“The canoe belongs to my father. He uses it for fishing and gives it to me to hawk after returning from work. I make about N100 everyday because children and even adults like eating this sweet. If I should wait for them to come to my house to buy it, I would not make much sales because the cost of transportation would prevent them from coming. Hawking on the water is fun because it is not as strenuous as what those who hawk on land go through. They trek several kilometers to hawk their wares but here, we only move about leisurely in canoes to prospective clients’ houses. While the people hawking on land are subject to all manners of harassment and arrests, we go about our businesses here with let or hindrance though we pay some token to the council. The smell from the water is not a strange thing to us. We are used to it but it may be offensive to you because you are a visitor. If you stay here for a month, you would not perceive any smell from the water anymore,” she said.

She however lamented her absence from school because of her parents’ inability to pay her school fees of about N13, 000 a term. “I am not happy that I am not in school. I wish that my school is like Whanyinna Nursery and Primary school where the pupils do not pay school fees and are given all they need to use in the school. My prayer is that God would help my parents to see me through secondary school education. I wish to go beyond secondary school anyway but I doubt if that would be possible since I am still finding it difficult to cope with the demands of one of the cheapest secondary schools in Lagos State. I am not the only one in this condition. We are so many. It is almost impossible for you to see anybody that finishes secondary school and goes ahead to the university in this place. Majority don’t get to go to secondary school after their primary education while the few that manage to go to secondary school drop out along the line. If you look around, you would see that many teenagers in this place have become mothers prematurely,” she concluded.

Jacob, a male resident of the community told our men that the water is a blessing in disguise for the people. He said that it has provided some of the women that would have been jobless with an opportunity to earn a living.

“This water is a blessing to us in this community. If not for the water that made most of us to be gainfully employed as fishermen, what would we have been doing to take care of our families especially now that unemployment is on the increase in the country?

When our wives hawk and get some income, they use it to support whatever we get from our fishing business. When the children return from school and hawk, they use it to support the family too. Some of the women you see hustling here are either widows or single mothers. If they do not do what they are doing how would they survive? It appears we are the poorest to many people out there but I do know that we are better than many people that are living on land. No matter how hard things become we would be able to catch fish to eat and sell but some people out there are not so blessed. The moment things go awry for them, their lives would be shattered. Which ever way you see it, live is good in this place. It is a natural habitat where residents enjoy life in abundance,” he said.

 For Mama Ajei, a food vendor, hawking in canoe has been a very rewarding venture. She told our men that she has been involved in the business for over six years and has not for once regretted it.

She dismissed fears that the stench from the murky waters may pose a serious threat to the health of the people.

“I have been a food vendor in this community for over six years. It is fun and very rewarding to use canoe to hawk. When many people see us from afar, they are tempted to believe that we would never get anything to buy until we get to the land but that is not so. We have everything we want here because we can use the canoes to carry goods from the land and hawk from one part of this community to the other. Our people don’t have to even buy anything from other places because we sell at cheaper prices than they could get in other places. For me, I enjoy what I am doing because the people enjoy my food. I always rent the canoe and at the end of the day pay the owner.

“I don’t believe that the smell from the water can affect the people buying my food. I don’t use this water to cook, so how would it contaminate the food? If you are worried that I hawk food on this water, have you ever been worried about the fish you eat?  Again, if you are complaining that we are either eating or hawking food on water, have you ever complained about those selling and eating food beside refuse dumps? We are used to this environment and there is nothing that would happen to us. Our forefathers started living here long before we were born and did not suffer outbreak of diseases. We have also lived here since we were born without experiencing any epidemic. I am not supporting dirtiness. I have always fought those that dump refuse and defecate in the water because they make spoil it for those of us that earn our living on it,” she said.

Speaking, the traditional chief of the area, Emmanuel Semide said that the establishment of Whanyinna Nursery and Primary school that serves as the only school in the community was done by a Baptist Missionary who came to the area on missionary journey.

The chief said that the missionary has been responsible for the running of the school since he established it.

“Whanyinna Nursery and Primary school was established in this area by a Baptist Church missionary who came to visit me some years ago. When he came, he sought our permission to establish the school and we gladly accepted. After establishing it, he supplies all the children would ordinarily need in school. By so doing, there is no need for the children not to go to school because everything is free. He doesn’t stay in the country all the time and whenever he comes around either alone or with his wife of partners, he stays in my house.

I used to attend Celestial church of Christ but since he stays with me whenever he is around, I started attending his church.

“We are always trying our best to keep the water clean and would continue to put in our best to making sure that it is not messed up. Hawking on the water is not a crime because it saves the residents the stress of traveling to other parts of the community to buy things. While we can see to it that every child goes to school, we cannot stop them from hawking after school hours since we would not put food on the table for them or their families,” he said.