Creating Modernities through Conversation Groups: The Everyday Worlds of Hausa Migrants in Niamey, Niger

African Studies Review, Dec 2004 by Youngstedt, Scott M

Migrant Hausa men in Niamey consider a kaleidoscopic range of topics in hira groups. Hira is fluid; there are no agendas. It is impossible to predict the topics a hira group will open with on any day, what will cause agreement or arguments, and where it will all end. Sometimes men will revisit a particular topic that they feel needs more examination when they meet the next day.

While there is tremendous variation across groups and individuals, several topics were the most popular in the groups I studied: world and national news, particularly news about politics, diplomacy, war, technology, international celebrities, religion, and football; individual migration histories, which were compared and contrasted; life in Niger in general and in Niamey in particular, especially jobs, lodging, and various social problems; the character and personality quirks of (usually) absent hira partners or other people from the neighborhood. While many participants enjoyed abstract discussions of Islam, most conversations focused on applying Islamic teaching and values to particular, everyday events, people, and situations. A mélange of other topics such as the weather, prices of particular commodities, and hometowns were also commonly discussed. Over the past decade, accelerating access to mass media has increasingly informed opinion and debate about these topics.

Kuka Hira Groups in Niamey

Kuka is home to one thousand mostly Kourfeyawa (singular, Bakourfaye) Hausa farmers who grow millet, sorghum, and beans just north of Dogondoutchi, about 350 kilometers east of Niamey. For twenty-five years the center of the Kuka migrant community in Niamey has gathered in a deeply rutted, slightly sloping, dusty, unpaved public square, about the size of a football field. Streets from all four corners bring a steady stream of auto, motorcycle, bicycle, livestock, and pedestrian traffic through this urban space. Surrounding the square lie six large, rectangular, mud-colored brick compounds and two small mosques. Windowless walls, many in a state of disrepair, face the square, offering privacy to two large relatively prosperous families (one Hausa and one Zarma) and four large struggling families (one Hausa and three Zarma). Between the two mosques, children and goats come to pick through a mound of trash, which can mushroom to a four-foot-deep pile half the size of a basketball court due to Niamey's highly erratic garbage collection system. In the largest open space, though also the most sloped, young men from Kuka and the neighborhood play competitive football games during most evenings. Barefooted or wearing flip-flops, teams of six to a side with Kuka men on each kick a partially deflated half-sized ball toward goals consisting of two cinder blocks, all the while wary of the traffic that crisscrosses their playing field.

Since the 1980s, at any time of day between sunrise and midnight, roughly forty men, three-quarters of them from Kuka, meet in four hira groups dispersed in the square. (This set of hira groups is one of the eight I have studied intensively.) In a shed on one side of the school, the first group of about six regulars operates a motorcycle repair service that has busy days but many days of little work. The second group of eight or so men meets along a street corner where they specialize in making kilishi (sundried meat).