Village Life

A village is a cluster of families who have built their huts near each other. If you lived there, you would know everybody in the village. In fact, you'd be related to everybody! A village develops over many years as generations of a family grow up and make their own homes near their brothers and sisters and cousins.

When a family expands over many generations, and fills many villages, do you know another word for that very big family? A tribe.Congo has about 250 tribes in the country. Other African countries have tribes too.

Are there tribes in North America? Who are they? The peoples (people groups) we call Native Americans, or First Nations in Canada, are tribes.

But back to the village in Congo. Besides the huts where the families live, villages usually have a school and most have a church. In many villages the school only teaches the first two grades. After that, kids have to go to another town to finish the rest of primary school. Some go on to secondary school, and they have to go farther away.

Some villages have a clinic, where a nurse can take care of some sicknesses and accidents. People from other villages in the area have to walk to the clinic, or other people need to carry them if they're sick.

Some people have gardens where they grow some vegetables. The will eat some of them, but they also try to take as many as they can to market and sell them. The people in the  villages have very little money, so they try to earn some in any way they can.

The picture at the top shows a village in Congo, seen from a small airplane flying over it. The second one shows family and neighbors by a village home. You can find out more about life in the villages in other places in the Family Room, includingthe rest of the sections here in What Is Your Roof Made Of and in the room called How Much Can You Carry on Your Head?