Rural African communities
The rural African environment today, in spite of remaining the most important center of national agricultural production for most African nations, is in a state of decay. Unfortunately, this decaying does not self-terminate. Many little skilled rural migrants to the city are forced to return to the rural areas after many years of sojourn: usually after their informal sector operations no longer serve them very well.
Poor Recreation Opportunities
Stories by people who had experienced the bustling full and rich lives back in their villages in the 1940s, 1950s, or even 1960s but who today, several decades later, find the same villages most uninviting abound. Many villages are increasingly transforming into tired, sullen, isolated, lifeless, song -less and dreary places; exhibiting the aspect of a condemnatory where the old and poor rural folks are kept.
Lives of rural folks are often dominated by the rhythm of the agricultural season at least more than the lives of their compatriots in the fairly big towns and cities. Most travel no further than a few villages that neighbour their own in a year. Most have little or no opportunity of engaging in any programmed leisure or recreation activities.
A number of factors are thought to be responsible, including economic, religious, and demographic. Entire communities of rural folks simply do not have the luxury of the time, health, and financial resources required for recreational activities within. The religious factor has also drastically cut down on the proportion of the native rural-born who provide and participate in amusement, recreation, and fun through annual religious cum traditional festivities.
The understanding by many of the requirements of their Christian or Muslim religious identity has been a cause for abandoning
Deteriorating Access to Recreational Opportunities In Typical Rural African Communities. A View.
festivities and celebrations that served as part basis for many occasions of competitive and non-competitive community games, sports, and avocational activities for both young and old.
Such erstwhile traditional seasonal occasions for sports are held to be incompatible with some aspects or tenets of the new religions. Also, considered significant and relating to economic and other factors is out migration into urban centres of rural youths in search of the increasingly illusive greener pastures
Conclusion
Many live lives that see them out on their farms on a daily basis, leaving them no free time for refreshment. For one, there is no application of technology to ease the rigor of manual labor and the all-season round physical presence of the farmer who must weed and otherwise tend to his/her crops must be maintained if harvests are not to go to ruin.
Second, the probability of making a worthwhile harvest that can sustain the farmer some of the way through the year meant that the usual relatively flexible post harvest period, when attention used to be directed towards carrying out rites, ceremonies and festivals must now be converted to some other activities that could bring in some income. Farm incomes are generally small due to the undervaluation of unprocessed farm products, and second because subsistence farming without the use of technology produced very little, anyway. Tedium, low harvest, and poor farm income often translate to poor diet and poor health, situations that further throttle the possibilities that rural farmers are able to integrate regular recreational activities into their regular lives.
Such erstwhile traditional seasonal occasions for sports are held to be incompatible with some aspects or tenets of the new religions. Also, considered significant and relating to economic and other factors is out migration into urban centres of rural youths in search of the increasingly illusive greener pastures
Conclusion
Many live lives that see them out on their farms on a daily basis, leaving them no free time for refreshment. For one, there is no application of technology to ease the rigor of manual labor and the all-season round physical presence of the farmer who must weed and otherwise tend to his/her crops must be maintained if harvests are not to go to ruin.
Second, the probability of making a worthwhile harvest that can sustain the farmer some of the way through the year meant that the usual relatively flexible post harvest period, when attention used to be directed towards carrying out rites, ceremonies and festivals must now be converted to some other activities that could bring in some income. Farm incomes are generally small due to the undervaluation of unprocessed farm products, and second because subsistence farming without the use of technology produced very little, anyway. Tedium, low harvest, and poor farm income often translate to poor diet and poor health, situations that further throttle the possibilities that rural farmers are able to integrate regular recreational activities into their regular lives.
F. J. Kolapo
