Question 13
Read the passage carefully and answer questions 13-18:
Bida is the capital of Nupe land: An ancient and alluring walled city of round clay houses with pargeted walls, sometimes painted in bold red or black designs , and arranged in quarters according to their owners’ crafts. For Bida is a nest of craftsmen, still organized into hereditary guilds. The houses stand in clusters, their small farms round them; although the soil looks light and sandy, everything grows; groundnuts, guinea corn, rice, cotton, beans, tomatoes, maize. The guildsmen, however, do not cultivate; they are too busy. Every day except Friday-for Bida is a Muslim city they start at dawn and ply their craft with speed and skill until about four O'clock. No trade union here, no regulated hours, no shop stewards, no five-day weeks: and those who work wages draw about one thousand naira a day. And yet they manage,and do not seem in the least oppressed or exploited. On the contrary, these glass-workers, bead-makers, weavers, brass-and silver-smiths are honoured citizens of Bida, higher as it were, ranking only below the Fulani aristocracy.
The glass-workers are perhaps the most spectacular. In the hut’s centre is a sunken furnace, its clay wall built up about a foot above the ground. A boy feeds it continually with logs; it is a moloch of timbre. Another, or an apprentice, works a leather bellow by means of two sticks. He pumps these two sticks up and down with a rhythm fast and regular and seems to continue for hours without a break. This work must be very exhausting, but the boy or youth never falters, for roar and flow. Some of the raw material derived from melted-down bottles, of which the dark-blue and amber medicine bottles are the most popular.
Bida is the capital of Nupe land: An ancient and alluring walled city of round clay houses with pargeted walls, sometimes painted in bold red or black designs , and arranged in quarters according to their owners’ crafts. For Bida is a nest of craftsmen, still organized into hereditary guilds. The houses stand in clusters, their small farms round them; although the soil looks light and sandy, everything grows; groundnuts, guinea corn, rice, cotton, beans, tomatoes, maize. The guildsmen, however, do not cultivate; they are too busy. Every day except Friday-for Bida is a Muslim city they start at dawn and ply their craft with speed and skill until about four O'clock. No trade union here, no regulated hours, no shop stewards, no five-day weeks: and those who work wages draw about one thousand naira a day. And yet they manage,and do not seem in the least oppressed or exploited. On the contrary, these glass-workers, bead-makers, weavers, brass-and silver-smiths are honoured citizens of Bida, higher as it were, ranking only below the Fulani aristocracy.
The glass-workers are perhaps the most spectacular. In the hut’s centre is a sunken furnace, its clay wall built up about a foot above the ground. A boy feeds it continually with logs; it is a moloch of timbre. Another, or an apprentice, works a leather bellow by means of two sticks. He pumps these two sticks up and down with a rhythm fast and regular and seems to continue for hours without a break. This work must be very exhausting, but the boy or youth never falters, for roar and flow. Some of the raw material derived from melted-down bottles, of which the dark-blue and amber medicine bottles are the most popular.
Which of the following is true?
Objective