Family house compound. Jos Plateau, Nigeria

"The plateau landscape is in marked contrast to the rest of Nigeria. It is an area barren of trees, dotted with large bare rocks and carrying the many scars of its mining operations." [Neiers, M.de P., 1979: The Peoples of the Jos Plateau, Nigeria. European University Papers]. "Mud is an extremely unstable building material in a climate like Northern Nigeria with high rainfall and repeated rainstorms. The most common building type is still the circular hut with mud walls and steep, conical thatched roof with eaves that direct the rainwater away from the mud wall. It is the hut type used by the non-muslim peoples of the Jos plateau and has probably been in use in the Western Sudan for some two thousand years or more." [Moughtin J.c., 1985: Hausa Architecture. Ethnographica Limited]. This photograph was taken when Eliot Elisofon was on assignment for Westinghouse Film and traveled to Africa from October 26, 1970 to end of March 1971.