© 1996 William R. Stein
This is a picture of some of the women and children who were my neighbors. The occasion is the festival ending the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. Halima, the woman with the green head covering, was one of my favorite people. All the village women would pass her gossip, which she would then pass on to me. She wasn't from the village, so she wasn't as hesitant to share information with me. Unfortunately, toward the end of my time in the village, her husband, one of the schoolteachers, decreed that she could no longer leave their yard in the daytime. This cloistering (called koubli in Hausa) was a fairly common thing for village men to do to their wives, but it was particularly painful for me to have it happen to a good friend.
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