In urban surroundings, living space is generally more compressed as compared to village life. It is limited to a number of huts in working-class neighbourhoods for families who have remained polygamic and to one small hut for nuclear families. The residual polygamic approach is facing a scattering of the living space, compelling the various homes of the same male individual to resort to matrifocality and uxorilocality. In a similar fashion, attempts to impose the choice of a partner, according to the highest bidding price offered to the pater familias, remain generally alive in polygamic families. However, the recently schooled youth has turned rebellious against such practices. Women's role in family economics is mainly devoted to food and clothing matters; their illiteracy often compels them to remain in the informal sector. While family hierarchy, based on primogeniture, endures, opposing trends within the families themselves and the introduction of Western systems have a tendency of upending ancestral structures. (translated into english by Alain Seckler)