Abstract
In the absence of work opportunities and to confront boredom, un(der)employed young men in urban Niger have created spaces for waiting, known as fadas, where they socialize with friends, play cards, and drink tea daily while engaging in a variety of other pastimes and projects. They often etch the names they give to their fadas in large, colorful and confident lettering on the rugged walls against which they sit in the street: Young Money, Pacific City, Jamming Rasta, Black Warriors, or Imani (faith). By focusing on this relatively recent form of cultural production, Masquelier considers the fadas (or "tea circles”) as aesthetic projects through which locality is materially and socially produced. By writing on the walls, young men make visible their presence in public space while anchoring themselves within a sense of place. In the way they claim public space while simultaneously constituting places of intimacy, the fadas speak to the way the street has become a key arena of youthful masculine sociality. While the large number of fadas dotting the urban landscape appears to signal the victory of insurgent infrastructure over urban planning, one must nevertheless bear in mind how ephemeral this type of infrastructure is. Mindful that inasmuch as the walls of Nigerien towns can be said to tell a story, that story is constantly unfolding, Masquelier reads these aesthetic projects as evidence of the dynamic, performative quality of places.