1. Let an all-female Hausa class made up of two groups rehearse the above song.
2. Discuss the various messages in the song. What interests you most in it?
3. Is there anything in your culture comparable to the song?
4. Compare marriage songs in Hausa society with those of other cultures you are familiar with.
5. How many figures of speech in Hausa have you identified in the song? List them.
The language of the beggar and cadger
Two semantically-related but socioculturally different phenomena pervade Hausa society and culture making them almost unique to Hausawa when compared with other Nigerian communities. These are the culture of begging (bara, pronounced as baraa) and cadging (roko, pronounced as rookoo). The point …show more content…
almajirai, for bara) and the maroki (pl. maroka for roko). The maroki is known by an additional name of masarci, a word whose roots may have some connection with masarauta (the palace or seat of power or government, particulary in a traditional setting), because the masarci frequently is a palace or royal beggar. Whether we consider the almajiri or the maroki or masarci and their behaviours in Hausa society and culture, it is evident that both performers heavily rely on their skills in the use of language and communication in order to achieve their goals. But the ways in which each performer displays his linguistic sagacity differs from one another. And this is the crux of our discussion: how do almajirai and masarta of different sociocultural persuasions perform using language as the primary tool of communication within Hausa culture and society? We shall try to answer this question in the rest of the discussion in this section, and we will consider the two phenomena one after the other. We begin with the ubiquitous child-beggar or …show more content…
almajirai from Arabic, ‘muhajir’ or a migrant) is enrolled into the literate profession usually from childhoold and only the male child is enrolled to pursue the migrant life. The almajiri age-range starts from about five years and upwards to about fifteen years or more. He usually is a child who comes from a rural setting, but who often resides in an urban area, where traditional Qur’anic lessons are offered, where he serves as a pupil under the tutelage of an Islamic instructor or malam (pl. malamai). Part of the almajiri’s life and culture during the period he acquires traditional Islamic education or schooling, is the struggle which involves his moving from one family house to another within a settlement, particularly at night, begging for food to feed himself, as his instructor is usually largely required to educate him in the Qur’anic school syllabus