Work and leisure in modern Nandi: preliminary results of a study of time allocation

This paper reports the preliminary results of a study of time a al locat ion conducted among the members of eleven typ ica l rural households in Nandi D is t r i c t . The study used the method of random v i s i t s pioneered by Barker and Wright and recently popularized in soc ia l anthropological research by Allen Johnson. Numerical data on amounts of time spent in various work and le isure a c t i v i t i e s by people of d i f f e rent age and sex categories. ' The fo l lowing conclusions emerge from analysis of this data: N Nandis work r e la t i v e l y short hours in agriculture as compared with many other Kenyan and African peoples, but longer work hours would probably to substantial ly increase product iv i ty ; women and men work approximately equal hours in cult ivat ion and probably always did—unlike the case of " idea l type" pastoral ists in which women are much more responsible f o r cult ivat ion than are men; when the care of cat t le i s taken into consideration as a part of basic agr icultural production, adult women and men s t i l l work approximately equal hours; women's t o ta l work occupies substantially more hours than does that of men, but most of this d i f ference is accounted f o r by housework; the work of children in the rural Nandi economic system is extremely important and can hardly be over-rated-at most ages children of both sexes spend more hours involved in work ac t i v i t i e s than do adult men; adult women are very minimally involved in chi ldcare, which is primarily the work of g i r l s , part icular ly those between the ages of 7 and 9; the work of boys is mainly cat t le care; most younger adults of both sexes are involved in cashgaining activit ies—men spend substantially more time in such ac t i v i t i e s than do women; older married women, but not men, also frequently do work f o r cash, primarily brewing; women's part ic ipat ion in community a c t i v i t i e s , such as Harambee pro jec ts , is extremely l imited, unlike many other areas of Kenya* Typical divis ion of labor in the t rad i t iona l past i s described, and there is discussion of the changes which appear to have taken place. The paper also describes the community in which the research was conducted, including i t s basic socio-economic characterist ics as revealed by a random sample household census.