Water is essential for human existence. The scarcity of water has a lot of effect on the environment, while it can lead to death and loss of different organism in the ecosystem, its health implication cannot be overemphasized. Egede is a town in Enugu State where scarcity of water has made the people to devise a means of storing water outside raining season. The people store water in different sizes of clay pots as seen in the picture. Some of these pots contain over fifty liters of water. In this compound, they have over hundred clay pots well arranged for water storage. For the water to last long in a particular compound, the number of containers, usage and the number of people in a family determine that. In this community, one may infer that the number of pots in a given compound can directly say how long the people have been living there, and the number of generations that have lived in a particular compound. Worrisome is that a community such as Egede has no pottery tradition, yet the made extensive use of pots. Meanwhile, the advent of plastic big tanks has created an alternative for water containers in Egede. This may have affected the source of livelihood of people who depend on pot making to survive. This pot arrangement can be used in the movie production of traditional settings of Egede society; while its advantage in the demonstration or practical class in history and archaeology is worthy to mention.
The government has tried to suck a borehole for the community.
Don't you think that this is a big heritage?
Excellent write up
ReplyDeleteIt is indeed a cultural heritage, unique to the people of Egede. this heritage gives an insight on the climate and vegetation pattern of both the past and present inhabitat of Egede town.
ReplyDeleteThis research can also further in study of settlement patern of Egede, since the pots are seen to be in a congested form showing that the people all come together to collect water from the pots.
Nice write up.