ABSTRACT
The patriarchal household (eka) is the basic social unit. Physically, the household consists of a circle of huts connected by a fence of live bushes. Every extended patriarchal household is in most respects a single social unit, and one which has considerable independence. It has its own cows, its flocks of sheep and goats, its own fields, spread among those of its neighbours along the slopes of the surrounding hillsides. The various members of a lineage such as the Abahirane have a high degree of social integration. Their mutual relations are much the same as those between actual brothers, especially if the group is small. Lineages are segments of larger patrilineal groups for which the Chiga use a district term. This is the oruganda, the 'main branch'; because the official differentiating criterion for this group is the practice of exogamy.
