I was recently in Nigeria training two survey teams to implement household surveys for childhood illness. The aim of the surveys was to obtain information from caretakers of children ages 0-59 months who had been ill the preceding two weeks. This was my first trip to Nigeria, although not to Africa. As part of this training we needed to define two key terms: “household” and “head of household.” I was quite sure the situation in Nigeria was not the same as what I am used to in my Bethesda, Maryland neighborhood. I also realized that the people who were going to implement the surveys had to be comfortable with the definitions. So we embarked upon… a dialogue. I projected the following questions for discussion: How are people grouped together? The choices we offered were: The consistent response I got was… “all of the above.” This finding led me to ask: “how many wives can a man legally have in Nigeria?” The responses? “As many as he wants. Didn’t you see the news about the man who had more than 70 wives?” Which was followed by a comment that, in the area where the survey would be performed, people were religious. Meaning that one man would not have more than four wives. At this point, various participants volunteered that one of their colleagues in the training could have only one wife, because if he took another wife she would kill him. All this dialogue, of course, was to make sure that I understood that our survey teams would encounter a range of responses, across various types of households. I got the point, but the question still remained about how to define a “household.” One possibility the respondents proposed was that a household is made up of people who eat from the same pot. Whereupon, we discussed various scenarios. Were there cases of brothers living together, each with multiple wives? Did they all eat from the same pot? The response was: yes, this scenario exists, but in this case the household members do not normally prepare collective meals. Instead, each brother and his own wives eat together on their own. Then I asked if there were ever tenants sharing the same living space with a family. The response was: “Yes, but they prepare their own meals”. After all this back-and-forth, the decision was made that this survey should define a “household” as being comprised of one man with his wife/wives and children. At this point, the dialog got more interesting. After establishing what constitutes a “household,” I then asked: “So…. Who is the head of the household?” The response was “a man.” I replied, “Is it always a man?” “Yes, of course!” I could not contain myself, so I stated, “I am a widow with two sons and I am the head of my household. Does this ever happen in Nigeria?” The response was: “Yes, of course, but a man would still be the head of the household.” Two people laughed and added in an aside, that in my case my brother-in-law would be the head of my household. Whereupon, I stated: “Absolutely not! That would be a terrible idea!” They laughed again, and countered: “OK, how about your oldest son?” “No,” I replied. “… but that would be better than my brother-in-law.” The respondents then stated that the head of household would be the person who was financially responsible for the household. In my case, I would be considered the head of my household – that is, in Bethesda. However, this would not be the case for households being surveyed in where the project works in Nigeria. The conversation turned to a discussion about what happens when the official head of household (a man) is away. From whom could we get permission to conduct the interviews? The response was that usually the man designated someone else to be acting head—and it could be a woman (perhaps the oldest wife or a grandmother). It could also be another male relative. The decision would be that, for purposes of these surveys, the actual head or the designated acting -head would be considered (temporarily) to be head of the household. Having developed practical definitions of household and head of household (and after much shared laughter about our apparent clash of cultural frameworks) we were finally ready to break for tea.
