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

Abstract

AbstractToog (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.