Rukuba - Settlements



Rukuba villages are generally comprised of a core nucleus densely populated with outlying settlements, which were originally dispersed on rocky eminences around the core nucleus. This pattern slowly changed in the 1950s, when people started migrating to their farms situated in the plains and valleys at the bottom of the rocky outcrops. Village populations range between seventy residents in the smallest ones to more than a thousand in the largest. Manured gardens, often fenced with high euphorbias, are close to the houses. A belt of small fields, usually cultivated by women, surrounds the village; the small fields are less manured, and some remain fallow for several years. Bush farms constitute another field category, sometimes at a distance of several kilometers from the village. People with faraway fields spend several weeks there in the rainy season. Such fields are never manured, except nowadays by an occasional Fulani cattle camp.


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