Page:Niger Delta Ecosystems- the ERA Handbook, 1998.djvu/231

Human Ecosystems: Okoroba-Nembe banana, kola nut (the long pod, known as Guru), and an "apple" tree that we could not identify; also there are (at Elemuama), but apparently no longer of economic value, cocoa and rubber (Hevea) trees. Livestock includes chickens and goats.

Arable crops include cassava (dominant), yams, cocoyams, Alligator pepper (a cardamom-like plant), capsicum peppers, pineapple and sugar cane. The land is allowed to stand fallow for up to ten years (suggesting that there is no shortage) and when fallow land is cleared, an effort is made to allow any trees that have come up to remain (although infestation of Awolowa weed - Chromalaena odorata - restricts the regeneration of trees): burning is not considered to be necessary, although it is done in the dry season; otherwise debris is allowed to wilt before being dragged into heaps, after which the soil is made into mounds for planting (a typical practise in wet tropical conditions to raise tubers and roots above the water-table).

Other important primary economic activities in the fresh-water ecozone are hunting, oil palm bunch cutting, timber felling and collection of periwinkles from the mangroves. Lesser activities are raffia wine tapping, fishing, and the collection of oysters and crabs from the mangroves.

Secondary industry in the fresh-water ecozone includes: palm oil and kernel production, using primitive methods; sawing; gin distilling from raffia palm-wine; and canoe building

Within the brackish-water ecozone there are the traditional but limited economic opportunities that sustain small communities: fishing, and collection of periwinkles, oysters and crabs; collection of firewood and manufacture of charcoal.

The economy of Nembe, because it is a comparatively large town with little agricultural land and poor fishing, is limited and symbolic are the crowds of youths who hang around the jetties all day in the hope that some one will turn up to employ them. To a limited extent Nembe is involved in the economic activities described above but they are not enough to support everyone. With the exception of periwinkles (and there are mountains of shell - the old towns are built on Periwinkle foundations), all food stuffs are imported and the community is dependant upon cash incomes from four sources. From Nembe people who work in Port Harcourt; from insecure, albeit well paid, work in the oil industry; from local government handouts and wages; and from payments made to a privileged few by Shell.

20.8 THE ENVIRONMENT AS SEEN BY LOCAL PEOPLE

The most striking feature of the Okoroba people's view of their environment is the way in which they relate it to agricultural decline and how they relate that decline to the coming of Shell.

'this used to be a community but things have happened which are bad for health. We used to live to 100 years and over; we grew a lot of food. Then the oil companies came and instead of giving use damages, brought armed forces; and food grew no more because of the oil. It is the same story for the river: no fish. They made communities fight.' 229