PHYSICAL AND SOCIO-CULTURAL FEATURES OF A VILLAGE

PHYSICAL FEATURES OF A VILLAGE

The physical features of a village include: Relief, vegetation, climate and drainage.

1. Relief: Relief refers to the surface features of the land above the sea level. Relief may be grouped into two main classes which are lowland and highland. The relief of any village is mainly located on lowlands. In other words, majority of the villages are located on a fairly low land which is good for human settlement, such lowland enable villagers to build their houses, schools, market, churches or mosque.
2. Vegetation: The vegetation of any village varies from one another depending on their location. Forest vegetation is common to villages located in Southern Nigeria while savannah vegetation are common to villages that are located in the Northern parts of Nigeria.
3. Climate: Climate is the weather or atmospheric condition of the environment over a long period of time. Climate also varies from one village to another. Villages in Southern Nigeria do experience wet or rainy season with lower temperature and heavy rainfall while villages in Northern Nigeria experience dry or harmattan season with higher temperature and lower rainfall.
4. Drainage: Drainage refers to the water bodies like rivers and lakes. While some villages may have rivers or lakes normally of small sizes from where they fetch water for domestic use, others may not have at all. They may have to trek several kilometres before they can get water for their domestic use.

SOCIO-CULTURAL FEATURES OF A VILLAGE

The cultural features of a village include all features which enable such village to exist and allow human activities to strive. Such cultural features include:

1. Market: Market do exist in all villages. Such markets are usually very small and may hold once or twice in a week. Different products such as food items, kerosene and some household materials are usually sold in the market.
2. Settlement: A settlement is a collection of buildings with people living in them. The village settlement may be dispersed or nucleated or both. It is normally linear in shape and have many homesteads. It populate ranges from 50 to few thousands. Their houses are made of mould houses and only few are modern.
3. Schools: Many villages do not have educational facilities like schools. Some people have to trek from their villages to others or town to acquire either primary or secondary education. Very few villages have schools.
4. Infrastructure: Many villages lack basic infrastructures like roads, water and electricity, lack of these social amenities makes life very unbearable in the village. Few villages do have tiny roads which may not be tarred.
5. Religious activities: Some villages may have churches and mosques where they worship while majority of the villages may not have such religious centres.

DIRECTION AND LOCATION OF PHYSICAL AND CULTURAL FEATURES WITHIN THE VILLAGE

There is a wide variations in the direction and location features in a village setting. While majority of the physical features in the village like rivers, mountains, lowland, vegetation are located naturally or by nature, lots of the cultural features are located or made by human activities. Cultural features like school, markets, roads, churches and mosques are normally built by the people or government which may be located in suitable places in the village. In other words, majority of the physical features are created by nature and remain where they are. The cultural features are made or establish by the people and can be located in suitable places within the village.