ABSTRACT
A village headman has no rights over land outside his village, and even within a village there are strips of bush from which a new garden can be cut. Soil beside trees is considered to be especially rich, as to some extent are the sites of former villages. Coffee-growing on any scale is usually undertaken by people living away from the villages, except for the Protestants who have been encouraged by their missionaries to plant coffee in their villages. Within the villages there is some trade in handmade objects such as pottery, sleeping-mats, and sticks for stirring mush, and there are quite a number of bricklayers, carpenters, and tailors who have acquired European skills which bring them money. The contemporary social structure with the instability of village sites and village populations, the marked emergence of the elementary family, and the non-existence of economic activities and rights associated with corporate groups, is consistent with growth of cash crops by shifting cultivation.
