“Opportunistic Waiting”: Tea and Young Men's Gatherings in Pikine, Senegal

Abstract

Toog (sitting), rey temps bi (killing time), and xaar (waiting) are expressions that characterize the current predicament of young males in Pikine, an urban area in the Dakar region of Senegal. These young men, who gather together daily in the koñ (i.e., a hangout at a street corner), emphasize this predicament as only a temporary circumstance of life, which I conceive of as "opportunistic waiting." Overall, the local societal atmosphere makes young men feel under constant pressure to achieve something in life in order to become full-fledged responsible men, an endeavor that is obstructed by a plethora of factors. However, in Pikinois society, "waiting" can also be seen in a positive way as an indicator of social status, as it signals that one is not so poor as to accept every kind of work. This paper, based on ethnographic research conducted over a period of eleven months between 2011 and 2013, assesses "opportunistic waiting" as a meaningful constructed temporality offering sociability among young men who are all in the same situation of not being able to become social adults. [Immobility; Mobility; Waithood; Youth; Dakar] City & Society, Vol. 31, Issue 2, pp. 208-226, ISSN 0893-0465, eISSN 1548-744X.

Entangled navigations: Intergenerational care relations in neoliberal eduscapes in Benin

“…But contrary to what Jeffrey et al (2008) have stated for India, and others have called ‘waithood’ (Honwana, 2012; Prothman, 2019) or even ‘boredom’ (Masquelier, 2013), Issaka as well as Yarou’s sons and others are constantly engaged in activities that can be described as ‘hustling’, or ‘navigating’ (Christiansen et al, 2006), in a constantly changing environment of open-endedness and contingency (Bledsoe, 2002). This way of actively seeking and building futures under uncertain, open and changing conditions has also been called a source of possibility (Häberlein and Maurus, 2020; Martin et al, 2016; Stambach and Hull, 2017).…”

“…These navigations in openness cannot be described as ‘waithood’ (Honwana, 2012; Prothman, 2019) or ‘boredom’ (Masquelier, 2013), even if they often imply waiting for possibilities or chances, or that the trajectories towards adulthood sometimes take a long time. They nevertheless imply hustling and checking and, as can be seen with regard to concrete biographies, the constant search in uncertain and changing conditions of openness.…”