MARGINAL CONSUMERS

The Nigerien Wodaabe are unquestionably one of the most mobile pastoral groups in Africa. They relocate their camps several times a week and do without any form of housing – unless the mats or plastic coverings that protect their bedsteads and household goods from rain or storm can be considered as such. Thus, at first glance, the Wodaabe seem an unlikely subject for an article on consumption and domestic creativity. Apart from the fact that they seem to participate only marginally in the global consumption of goods, they have no houses to fill with these goods. It will soon become apparent, however, that the Wodaabe are in no way cut off from the global flow of goods. We will also learn that the reason why so few of the latter have found their way into the camps has little to do with the nomadic nature of Wodaabe existence. Being nomads does not make the Wodaabe immune to new consumer attractions. The notion that their material possessions must necessarily be sparse and they themselves impervious to new consumer goods is misleading. The practical constraints that dictate moderation and restraint in their case seem to have only a limited effect.

‘Traditional’Footnote ⁵ Wodaabe furnishings already bear witness to the fact that their owners are far from averse to new things. During their historic migration eastwards, the ancestors of the Fulbe, who now live in Niger, Nigeria and Cameroon, could no longer draw on the services of their own specific handicraft groups or ‘castes’,Footnote ⁶ and therefore abandoned several vital elements of their material equipment, replacing them with products made by other groups. Examples include the containers originally made by Fulbe woodcarvers (lawbe) that have since been substituted by calabash bowls (cf. Dupire 1985). Within this overall development, the material culture of the Central Nigerien Wodaabe underwent specific changes during the twentieth century. In the course of the gradual movement of the Wodaabe from the Sokoto region towards the north, their material possessions began to resemble markedly those of their new neighbours, the Tuareg, and were essentially enriched in the process. The most significant changes in male clothing, however, only occurred in the last forty years – in particular the introduction of trousers and long shirts in place of the customary leather aprons and blanket-like upper-body wraps. The Wodaabe remained attached to their own, one could say ‘un-Islamic’, fashion longer than any other group in the region, and to a certain extent have continued to do so up to the present day. The typical male dress now includes an impressive turban, often made of fine hand-woven and indigo blue dyed material folded in a similar manner to that of the Tuareg and used as a facial veil. Another realm that incorporates elements borrowed from Tuareg culture is the riding camel equipment, such as the saddle, travelling bag and adornments. With the exception of their ceremonial dress, the outward appearance of Wodaabe males is today more similar to that of the Tuareg than of other Nigeri­en Fulbe groups.Footnote ⁷ This appearance is completed by the sword (or ‘cross sword’, Ful.: labbi), which is likewise taken from the Tuareg and has become an indispensable piece of equipment for young Wodaabe males in particular, and part of their ‘ethnic costume’.Footnote ⁸

Borrowings from Tuareg culture are evident not only in Wodaabe costumes and adornment but also in their household equipment. The Wodaabe purchase a significant amount of wood and wicker products made by ­the so-called ‘Tuareg blacksmiths’.Footnote ⁹ Specific Wodaabe variations of these objects have developed in several domains, such as the portable wooden bed (Ful.: leeso), which the Wodaabe like to be particularly tall and massive. It could be argued that by borrowing and partly modifying these items, they succeeded in creating a specific Wodaabe variant within the general framework of an overall desert or Sahara style. While showing a clear preference for Tuareg goods, this variant also testifies to a highly developed aesthetic and symbolic originality, especially when it comes to jewellery and hairstyles – to mention but a few aspects pertaining to personal appearance. Hence the incorporation of things Tuareg should not be regarded as an attempt to imitate the latter, but rather as a sign of remarkable openness to inspiration. This disposition seems related to substantial change: that is, to a new habitat and way of life, as well as to the previously mentioned lack of handicraft specialists who could have acted as guardians of a proper cultural style by preventing the intrusion of foreign items or forms. It was also nurtured by novel forms of contact with the outside world, for the most part interaction with urban milieus, which in turn led to the need for a ‘civilized’ Wodaabe appearance. In this altered state, the Tuareg provided (and still provide) a plausible model – far more plausible than the sedentary Hausa, from whom the Wodaabe (and the Fulbe in general) consider themselves to be physically and aesthetically different.

This should suffice to illustrate that the Wodaabe are certainly interested in new things, and know how to integrate them into their material world. We can go yet a step further. Not only do the Wodaabe fail to produce any handicraft worth mentioning, but they are wholly dependent on trade to satisfy their basic nutritional needs. ‘Consumption’ – if the term is not defined too narrowly and includes the procuring and utilization of all kinds of goods – is a basic necessity for pure cattle breeders. In fact, the Wodaabe relationship to things and the world at large could be qualified as consuming rather than producing.Footnote ¹⁰ The fact that the Nigerien Wodaabe did not switch to agricultural production after suffering heavy cattle losses from severe drought has already been mentioned. Although similar findings have been reported for other Fulbe groups,Footnote ¹¹ and doubts as to whether the cause was exclusively one of cultural resistance are justified,Footnote ¹² the remarkably limited ‘production’ – material creation – in the case of the Wodaabe, should be emphasized. With the exception of daily household chores and animal care, the productive activities of the Wodaabe are confined almost entirely to a domain best described as self-presentation. We will see, however, that this specific production is of major significance and brings about cultural forms that are of special interest in the context of new consumer opportunities and the overall issue of the relationship between production and consumption.

As already seen, the Wodaabe are not averse to the integration of items that stem from others. It is all the more worth noting that relatively few modern goods – goods produced industrially and originating from the Western world – are found in their households. Of the most obvious, two belong to the given consumer classics that have found their way into all African societies, and enjoy considerable popularity, at least with the male members, namely, wristwatches and radios. With the exception of these two items, the goods in question are usually practical objects such as rain sheets, large plastic water containers, or blankets made of synthetic fibre.

These new things can be regarded as ‘unproblematic’ in the sense that they are not related to phenomena generally explored under the topic of ‘consumption’. We are not dealing here with symbolic expressions of identity or different lifestyles (Douglas and Isherwood Reference Douglas and Isherwood1979; Bourdieu 1979). Wodaabe consumption, it seems, is limited to the adoption of specific objects that have no bearing on consumer desires or changes in value orientation. The objects chosen replace traditional items – a goatskin used as a water bag is replaced by an old tyre tube. In many cases these new products are not necessarily superior to the old and therefore do not provoke their complete substitution; goatskins and tyre tubes, for example, are used simultaneously. Not surprisingly, there is a particular readiness for innovation in the practical sphere of daily life which could be described as ‘transport’ or ‘mobile living’. The Wodaabe are primarily interested in containers of all kinds. Mats are another valuable product, as they allow a shady spot under a tree to be transformed into a living room. On the other hand, certain goods belonging to the standard range of rural African commodities are rarely found in the basic equipment of the Wodaabe: very few households own petroleum lamps and not every Bodaado carries a flashlight.Footnote ¹³

Wodaabe consumption of modern or global goods is thus clearly linked to specific practical needs. I would like, however, to touch on an area where this restriction does not apply and where, in spite of the difficulties inherent in high mobility and geographical isolation, abundance and (one is tempted to say) exaggerated opulence is the rule. I refer to female household items, more precisely to certain elements of these possessions. First, however, I will turn briefly to the question of how the acquisition of new things actually takes place among the Wodaabe.

WODAABE EXPEDITIONS

The process of acquisition involves interaction with others, the nature of which can be extremely diverse (cf. Spittler 2002). Thus whether goods are on sale at local markets or chosen for specific purposes far from home makes a difference. Furthermore, the question is on the nature of the act of acquisition. Are the items bought, exchanged, or, as in the case of the Tuareg razzias, stolen?

At the beginning I described the Wodaabe as inhabitants of the periphery, relatively untouched by global commodity flows. The actual region the Wodaabe live in – the northern Sahel and the edge of the desert – can in fact be considered peripheral in this sense, yet the Wodaabe have been travelling to other parts of the world for decades, especially since the Sahel drought of the 1970s. Apart from the constantly growing number of young pastoralists who live more or less permanently in Niamey and other Nigerien cities, more and more Wodaabe now travel to coastal countries during the dry season, many of them to urban centres such as Abidjan and Dakar. During the last three seasons, Freetown and Monrovia became popular destinations. With regard to these travels, it is important to note that the Wodaabe are on the move as traders, but have only one product to offer, namely maagani (Hausa): herbal medicines and magical remedies. The travellers themselves are primarily married women of all ages.Footnote ¹⁴

These seasonal trips to distant places resemble ‘expeditions’, in the course of which goods are procured or ‘discovered’.Footnote ¹⁵ Most of the items I mentioned earlier – blankets, containers, plastic mats, and so on – are acquired during these trips. The Wodaabe also return with clothes and textiles from places as far away as Mauritania. Travels to larger cities could thus in part be described as ‘shopping tours’ – or rather, ‘acquisition tours’, since the new things are not necessarily obtained through the act of buying. The Wodaabe obtain a significant portion of their goods in direct exchange for herbal medicines and charms. In addition, they receive gifts and also ask for certain objects. The range of goods acquired in this manner consists of clothing, household utensils (primarily plastic containers), bags, and certain types of jewellery. Most things are sold immediately; only a few selected items make it back to the camps in Niger for personal use or as gifts for relatives and neighbours.

Whether or not these procedures can be considered ‘consumption’ is debatable, if we assume that the element of choice – of selecting a specific item – is constitutive of the act of consumption. One could argue that the things obtained are for the most part gifts: objects that have not been chosen by the receiver and, furthermore, cannot be consumed – appropriated in the full sense – because they somehow remain linked to the donor and create a specific relationship to him. It will become clear, on the other hand, that the gift/commodity distinction is of limited analytic value in describing the consumption processes we are dealing with here, and not only in so far as the nature of the things obtained is ambiguous, shifting from gift to commodity and back again.Footnote ¹⁶ However, I do not mean to question the relevance of the distinction as such, that is, the idea that the gift is more than a particular mode of commodity exchange (see Appadurai 1986). Instead of entering this classic debate, I would like to move our attention to the concrete process of acquiring goods and demonstrate that the Wodaabe case might suggest a third concept.

In general, including cases where actual buying takes place, the acquisition of goods by the Wodaabe on their commercial trips is not essentially determined by the principle of buying but by the specific nature of their itinerant activities. Earnings from these trips are hardly seen as related to the product offered, that is, as stemming from exchange relations. Instead, they appear to be the result of individual dexterity and of luck, which is, in turn, influenced by maagani, the substances and forces applied by the Wodaabe traveller in the pursuit of his own cause. One could also say that these revenues are a kind of booty.Footnote ¹⁷

Wodaabe travels have indeed much in common with booty trips. Activities in the course of these travels are identified as tigu, a word that denotes a process in which all forms of persuasion, including false promises and cheating, are used to urge someone to buy maagani.Footnote ¹⁸ The Wodaabe themselves describe regions ‘afflicted’ by members of other Wodaabe groups as ‘scorched earth’, where nothing can be had for years to come. The character of these interactions is imparted, as it were, to the objects obtained through them. Both goods received in direct exchange for their own products and those bought during the trip – commodities in the common sense – partake of the nature of booty. These things can be had for nothing (e meere), as some Wodaabe claimed, disregarding the hardship and deprivation they experience during their tigu travels. The goods are not part of a genuine transaction since nothing of real value was given in exchange, that is, livestock did not have to be brought to market to obtain them. It follows that these goods are not adequately described by the notion of ‘commodity’. Although an item may have been bought and its price be widely known, it is still true that it was obtained ‘for nothing’. Hence the exchange value of tigu goods is of minor relevance. By the same token, these goods, in contrast to gifts, are more or less devoid of social weight. They resemble objets trouvés, in that their new owners are, as we will see, particularly autonomous in dealing with them and in bestowing them with significance and worth.

The Wodaabe do not make booty by using force, although they may employ dubious methods. In the perception of the Wodaabe themselves, the decisive factor for success is individual luck in trading (bayre), luck that is enhanced by the magical remedies at the disposal of the tigoowo. These remedies (guufal, nudoral tigu) increase his personal attraction, make his words ‘sweet’ and irresistible. Thus, commercial success depends essentially on the personal magnetism of the tigoowo, on his charm (togu) or charisma. It is comparable to the success or luck of the Malagasy sapphire miners described by Walsh (2003); wealth, both here and there, is attracted by an inner force. The analogy between the two cases does not end at this point, given the fact that tigu, not unlike the search for gems, is a risky enterprise. All maagani sellers can tell stories of the dangers encountered in faraway places. Apart from the usual perils, such as thieves, corrupt policemen and customs officers, the tigoobe are sometimes confronted with collective violence when their remedies turn out to be inefficient or even noxious.Footnote ¹⁹ However, maagani sellers not only face manifold threats, many of them even show a certain predilection for risk; constantly on the lookout for new markets, they venture into regions that are avoided by others: Sierra Leone and Liberia a few years ago, for example.

The parallel between Wodaabe traders and Malagasy sapphire miners is less obvious with regard to the nature of the riches obtained. Maagani sellers do not earn ‘hot money’ that cannot be dealt with rationally but must be ‘eaten’ at once in conspicuous consumption. Although tigu revenues are, as we have seen, used for consumer purposes and the travels as such are often explicitly associated with consumer desires, the Wodaabe do not squander their money or indulge in ‘daring consumption’ (Walsh Reference Walsh2003). Their revenues are primarily spent on the subsistence needs of the family and also used for investment in pastoral production. Wodaabe occasionally say that no good will come of tigu money: that it is not blessed (nde ngalaa albarka) because it stems from lying and deceit (fewre). This estimate refers above all to male tigoobe and their success in trade, and indicates that the maagani trade and the concomitant travels are more compatible with the role of the Wodaabe woman than that of the man and head of the household (cf. Boesen, forthcoming (b)).

As already suggested, the opposite of tigu earnings is income obtained from the sale of animals. Although strictly separate exchange spheres for different types of goodsFootnote ²⁰ do not exist among the Wodaabe, those who sell cows purely to satisfy luxury needs, or as the Wodaabe say, ‘for naught’ (e meere), are regarded as morally lacking. Yet, in recent decades, the Wodaabe have become accustomed to consuming luxury goods: they wear richer clothing, and own wristwatches and radios. At the same time, they have come to believe that the means to satisfy these new needs must come from other sources than are customary. In their perception, this area of consumption is highly separate from the pastoral economy. Here ‘other sources’ are principally profits gained from tigu, implying that the main actors are women, and thus not identical with those involved in the selling of livestock.

The pastoral production of the Wodaabe afforded (and affords) women almost no access to material resources, particularly money, since the marketing of milk and dairy products plays only a minor role in their economy. Women, however, especially elderly women, have been engaged for a long time in other economic activities, providing a sort of seasonal parallel income. Since the first half of the twentieth century Wodaabe women have been travelling to Hausa villages in the south, where they work as calabash repairers, thereby acquiring a substantial part of the annual amount of millet consumed by their families. In addition, they were able to purchase donkeys and introduce a new means of transport into their mobile pastoral economy – an innovation that had some impact on the development of consumer habits. These early ‘travellers’, who set out on a regular basis and not merely in times of crisis, were the immediate predecessors of today's maagani traders.Footnote ²¹ Since the drought of the 1970s, Wodaabe women have become the chief income providers in many of the families and lineages.

In most households consumer goods are primarily purchased by women. They take care of their children's needs, buy clothes and shoes, and secure important parts of the future dowry of their daughters. They provide for their own needs and desires, being, as we will see, particularly interested in specific household objects. Men, too, receive their share. Successful tigoobe return with robes of damask and precious turbans for their husbands and sons; they buy them large radio recorders, and occasionally even riding camels. Here we have the reverse, so to speak, of Veblen's ‘conspicuous consumption’. Yet Wodaabe women also invest their earnings elsewhere. Many of them were able to obtain livestock and have thus acquired considerable wealth of their own.Footnote ²² In general, however, female trade journeys are not presented as economic endeavours but as linked to the newly developed need to procure certain material objects: to a shift in consumer behaviour, and, in this sense, as a necessity. Hence a woman's decision not to undertake a tigu journey could be expressed in terms of, for example, doing without a new pair of shoes: ‘I'll stay at home and mend my shoes’ (mi jooda, mi nyota pade am); repairing old shoes is found preferable to taking on the effort of tigu that buying a new pair would involve.Footnote ²³

Men's tigu activities, on the other hand, are conceived as more deliberate undertakings. In reality it is often sheer need, the lack of milk and millet, that causes the head of the household to engage in tigu. These objective constraints notwithstanding, the Wodaabe often speak of tigu as a kind of disease (nyaw) that takes possession of a person. Even rich cattle owners can suffer from this affliction; when the time to depart approaches at the beginning of the dry season, they have little choice but to join the group of travellers and leave their families and herds behind, hoping to make a fortune in the course of a few weeks or months.

Not every Bodaado is a good tigoowo, so that individual gains from several months of travelling can differ greatly.Footnote ²⁴ Nevertheless, tigu has not brought about significant disparities in the material furnishings of Wodaabe households. The tigoobe, particularly the women, share part of the goods they bring back with their closest relatives, friends and neighbours. This explains why even the Wodaabe who prefer not to leave the bush can be seen wearing indigo-dyed damask, and keep the occasional modern utensil in their household, such as the inox bowls now popular all over West Africa. These new things are not traded among the Wodaabe. While the tigoobe sell most of the clothes and various other items they receive as payment for maagani, none of their customers are Wodaabe. A Bodaado interested in a certain article of clothing could have it for nothing. Hence the Wodaabe never appear as customers, but use middlemen if they are genuinely intent on buying.

Here, too, it is evident that the notion of ‘commodity’ does not characterize these new Wodaabe acquisitions appropriately or, to put it another way, that the increasing contact of the Wodaabe with modern bulk goods does not radically alter their relationship to things. As we have already seen, tigu goods are socially neutral and function, so to speak, in very different exchange relations: in a transaction with an unknown city-dweller, these goods take on the nature of a commodity but turn into a gift on entering the sphere of intra-Wodaabe exchanges.Footnote ²⁵ The monetary value of these gifts is not ignored but, on the contrary, talked about, as in the case of the inox bowls. This value, however, is not an indication of the quality of the relationships in which these goods are passed on.Footnote ²⁶ It should be remarked that although the above-mentioned goods are not traded in Wodaabe communities, trade does take place with other items; these are for the most part costly, and have great symbolic and emotional value. Cattle should be mentioned here, as well as material objects such as traditional weapons or radios, once they have taken on the character of personal possessions as distinct from commodities, or, to borrow a term from Annette Weiner, once they have become ‘treasures’ (Weiner Reference Weiner1992; Myers 2001: 9). Here, the specific nature of the good, its ‘singularization’, does not constitute an obstacle to transaction but is, on the contrary, its prerequisite, while to trade commodities (or to be more precise, ‘neutral’ goods) within the community is considered contemptible.

The conceptual inadequacy of the classic distinction between gift and commodity in the Wodaabe context is likewise evident when we consider the reverse process, the commodification of their own goods by the Wodaabe.Footnote ²⁷ What the Wodaabe sell on their travels or to foreigners is not for sale within their own group. This applies to maagani Footnote ²⁸ as well as to their own labour, to key elements of their material culture such as jewellery and clothing, and to their dances. On closer inspection it also applies to their appearance or physical beauty, since the recent interest in the Wodaabe shown by European and American tourists, photographers and camera teams is strongly related to the particular aesthetic appeal that radiates from their distinctive appearance and performances. It is important to note that, contrary to similar processes of commodification of cultural forms in other communities, in which peripheral genres turn into marketable goods (cf. Erlmann 1993), the Wodaabe offer, as it were, core elements of their self-representation; in recent years young Wodaabe men have appeared on the ‘world stage’ – in cultural centres and at festivals in Europe and elsewhere – performing dances that constitute key socio-ritual events in the Wodaabe context but had hitherto been confined to their seasonal interlineage meetings.Footnote ²⁹

I will now turn to the second aspect or stage of the appropriation process, namely the cultural absorption and integration of new things. We will see that while objects and performances of eminent social and cultural significance turn into ordinary marketable products in a new and different context of exchange, recently obtained ordinary items become part of the innermost sphere of cultural self-reflection, gaining extraordinary aesthetico-ritual meaning in the process.

CONSUMPTION AND AESTHETIC CREATIVITY

In the following I will focus on a domain of material culture that differs from those described so far, where consumer decisions were mainly guided by functional utility. Although the Wodaabe lead an extremely mobile life and are, as mentioned earlier, particularly concerned with the question of transport, they are not completely resolute in limiting material impedimenta. One domain where abundance rules and practical considerations seem highly irrelevant is female household equipment, that is, those material possessions that greatly preoccupy Wodaabe women, inspiring them to be on the lookout for aesthetic improvements as well as innovations. Strictly speaking, we are only concerned here with one particular part of this equipment, namely a collection of calabash containers, wooden bowls, and various types of spoons, mats and flat lids made of palm leaves – to mention only the traditional components. Most of these items serve decorative purposes only and are never used in their real function. Straw mats, for instance, are rolled in sets of ten and sewn together (daage kummaade). The same is true of calabashes, which are likewise arranged in sets and covered with netting (dongal).

To refer to these things as ‘household equipment’ is not quite correct, just as in our culture it would be inaccurate to refer to the rarely if ever used Meissen porcelain as ‘household objects’. However, unlike valuable china, Wodaabe decorative objects do not distinguish themselves from items of daily use. Here, the value of a thing depends on how it is treated, that is, how it is exhibited, and not on its inherent quality or objective value. Apart from a portable bed, the Wodaabe mobile household consists of an improvised shelf on which the above-mentioned objects are arranged in a particular manner and exhibited. The Wodaabe call this collection of goods saga. We will see that saga is of great symbolic value. It is worth noting that the need for change and renewal seems to exist primarily in this domain – albeit a specific type of renewal, one that sheds light on the overall Wodaabe attitude towards the consumption of modern or global goods. A brief description of this domain will also shed light on the collective and public character of consumption among the Wodaabe, and give an idea of the spatial order of their camps, based on the intricate distinction between the private and the public sphere in mobile localities, devoid of walls or other form of protection.

It should be noted that the immediate act of acquiring new things is mostly a collective endeavour as well. Although each maagani seller works for himself and does not share his goods or earnings with others, the journeys are communal undertakings.Footnote ³⁰ The Wodaabe travel in large groups of twenty or more people who are closely related and strongly emphasize remaining a unit. The fact that they encounter the city and its goods and consumer opportunities collectively has a vital impact on their consumer behaviour. Although shopping itself is mostly carried out individually, the acquisitions and earnings are not concealed and immediately become the subject of shared appraisal. The enormous control and explicitly communal establishment and maintenance of practical and aesthetic standards show that the very idea of personal preference or exclusiveness is almost entirely absent in these processes. A preference for the ‘authentic’, on the other hand, cannot be discounted; the Wodaabe have a passion for ‘the original thing’ (Ful.: dimum; ‘the real’, ‘the true’), such as expensive glass pearls, certain qualities of cloth or, for the young men, brass chains similar to those acquired at the markets in Nigeria in their grandfathers’ time. It is, however, not so much the origin or particular method of production that gives these items their authentic quality, but the ‘Wodaabe’ stamp they assume in the act of communal acquisition.Footnote ³¹

Among the foreign objects that make their way into Wodaabe camps are odd and apparently useless articles taken from European second-hand stocks. The drums of discarded washing-machines acquired in Abidjan are an example of the kind of items highly valued by female members of certain Wodaabe lineages. These drums have been part of their saga for decades. Most of the women claim to have no idea of their original function, and are clearly not concerned as to who made them and for what purpose. The drum is a kind of objet trouvé, something taken out of its original context, devoid of information pertaining to the intention of its creator. It is also an objet trouvé in the sense that its value does not consist in its potential market value – Wodaabe women pay only a few hundred francs CFA (less than one euro) for a washing-machine drum – but in the value that arises from putting it to creative use. The things the Wodaabe desire are often ‘valueless’, one might even say ‘trash’. The women, however, consider the drums, just like the empty milk powder packets made of tin-foil paper, small treasures. Both drums and milk packets are transformed into saga embellishments. Used as such, nothing remains of the object's original function and of handlings by previous consumers.

Among the Wodaabe, household items do not constitute an economic capital as they do for the neighbouring Hausa and Kanuri women, whose ‘riches’ likewise consist of tremendous quantities of more or less identical objects, above all bowls and pots.Footnote ³² Most of the things cannot be sold or converted into other goods, and are in this sense ‘worthless’, although the occasional tourist might be willing to pay for them. Nevertheless, some household items are remarkably expensive, indicating an unquestionable connection between use value and market value. The most costly are the portable wooden beds; people pay several hundred thousand francs CFA for these locally made goods. Another example is the camel equipment for men. Unlike the things acquired in Abidjan or Dakar, these expensive items are part of the local system of goods and exchange, where their value is established, as it were, in an objective manner.

Wodaabe value conceptions are still largely untouched by the urban and comparatively modern milieu from which the tigu objects originate. The question of whether the foreign origin of washing-machine drums and similar goods is irrelevant to their significance in Wodaabe households or whether it actually imbues the objects with a specific quality or power is difficult to resolve. The saga occasionally includes less obscure foreign items, such as toy cars and aeroplanes, which would seem to favour the second proposition: one might be tempted to claim that abundance is brought into appearance not only in the form of countless large milk calabashes, but also through obvious symbols of Western power. It is quite evident, however, that most of the new objects in question are raised to the rank of saga elements because they possess a highly revered quality in the genuine aesthetic value system of the Wodaabe, namely, brightness or luminosity. Wodaabe women previously managed to achieve this quality by whitening their numerous calabash bowls with chalk. The integration of chrome and pieces of tin into the saga ensemble – hubcaps, bicycle lamps, parts from old irons – essentially serves the same purpose.

It is this quality of brightness or shine that the Wodaabe endeavour to achieve in their personal appearance as well. Here, too, they make use of new elements. Today, the Wodaabe prefer brocade-like fabrics or cloth that shimmers like satin. The parallel between household and physical appearance also crops up in other contexts. The public dowry exhibits (koorol suudu or dongal) held by the members of certain lineages, which frequently include a large number of modern, shiny items, are arranged in a long row facing the setting sun. In this sense they resemble the Wodaabe male group dances, especially the yaake, which are linear configurations enacted in the direction of the sun, thereby enhancing the brilliance of the dancers’ eyes and teeth which are exhibited in striking grimaces.Footnote ³³ In both cases what is presented is, so to speak, illuminated by the sun or reflects its rays. Shine and glow are also one of the most valuable qualities in the Zebu breed of cattle owned by the Wodaabe. The brown fur of the animals is particularly gleaming and their enormous, lyre-like horns are impeccably white. Hence the new elements are more than shiny adornments; they belong to a category of things that the Wodaabe claim as theirs due to the described aesthetic quality. This shine and luminescence is characteristic not only of their animals but, as shown in the yaake dance, also of themselves. There is an affinity here that renders the foreign objects instantly familiar and allows them to occupy a prominent place in the cosmos of things proper to the Wodaabe, while their original function and meaning are left aside.

The creative accomplishments of Wodaabe women and the most important form of female self-expression – a complement, as it were, of the male self-embellishment in a dance performance – is found in the set-up and presentation of the saga. This form of self-manifestation is intensified during the annual worso meetings. Not unlike male dances, the female creations are examined and appraised. In some Wodaabe lineages the same takes place during the previously mentioned dowry exhibits when a young wife moves into her husband's family after the birth of several children. This public display of goods provides an opportunity to demonstrate material strength, an aspect that has undoubtedly gained significance in recent decades. It is no coincidence that the wife's material endowment has become the focus of collective self-celebration, especially in those lineages that practice tigu as a primary source of income, and where consequently women in particular dispose of a substantial cash income. Notwithstanding this ostentation of wealth, saga also has aesthetic and symbolic meaning. The magnificent arrangements, illuminated by the setting sun, are not only the pride of the women and their families; through them, the lineage and ultimately the entire Wodaabe community are on display. Here, once again, the female expositions are comparable to the beauty of the adorned dancers and the splendour of the cattle herds. It is precisely this aspect, namely, the quality of the household goods and thus of the female sphere and its forms of expression as a medium of collective representation that deserves special consideration. Here we encounter a fundamental difference between the Wodaabe household and the otherwise comparable material opulence of Hausa or Kanuri homes.

Exhibition forms differ in both cases, depending on the nature of the domestic space and the notion of ‘public’ and ‘private’ space. As mentioned above, the Wodaabe have no shelter whatsoever and, at the most, protect themselves and their belongings with plastic sheets in the case of rain or storm. Wodaabe abstention from using any form of physical shelter, one that would also offer adequate protection from the sun, is evidence that the suudu represents family living space to a very limited extent only. Wodaabe camps are, in fact, strictly divided into female and male spheres. The suudu is not merely a taboo zone for male strangers, it is avoided almost entirely by male family members, including husbands, during the daytime. While Wodaabe women spend their leisure time with their children and perhaps female visitors in the suudu area – usually sitting under the improvised shade of a cloth spread out – men spend their time west of the camp under the shade of a tree or a shrub. The male sphere is known as daddo. Daddo is also the name given to young people's evening meetings in the bush and, above all, to the interlineage meetings that take place during the rainy season, usually referred to in the literature as gereol. The word thus denotes the idea of a primarily male public – the opposite of suudu, the private realm associated with women and female activities.

The Wodaabe camp is also home to the livestock, primarily the cattle. People and cattle live here in particularly close proximity, since there is no physical barrier between the two – unlike the case in the family camps of the Tuareg and other Fulbe groups, where leather tents or huts made of straw mats are used. Wodaabe animals are not kept in corrals overnight nor are they tied up. Instead, they graze without supervision and circle widely around the camp. Yet they do have a place of their own within the camp where they rest in the evening and early hours of the morning. Like daddo, this place, which is known as dudal, is situated to the west of suudu. Dudal also refers to the herd itself and to the encompassing unity of people and animals, that is, to the family including cattle (cf. Bonfiglioli 1988). Similar to suudu, the dudal space is closed to outsiders and even close relatives.

The Wodaabe camp is governed by rigid restrictions, although there are no physical barriers and the view is completely unobstructed. Suudu and dudal, the women's area and the cattle area, are forbidden to outsiders and in particular to men. The purpose of these rules is not concealment. Wodaabe women do not live in seclusion, but enjoy a high degree of freedom of movement. They often visit the markets in nearby villages and, as mentioned earlier, many of them undertake long trips without male accompaniment, spending several months each year in large coastal cities. It is not, as in other Muslim societies, female honour that is at stake here. We come to the same conclusion in the case of dudal: the intention is not to hide the cattle or protect them from potentially envious looks. A large herd of magnificent animals is a reason to be proud and a joy to everyone's eye. Approaching strange animals at wells and watering places presents no further difficulty.

The spatial restrictions do not relate to the inhabitants of the space – women and cattle – but to other, less tangible qualities. Suudu and dudal are the refuge of the family and its property, and provide women, children and livestock with shelter; at the same time they are places of the symbolic and magic preservation of fertility and prosperity. With regard to dudal, suffice it to mention the fire around which the animals gather at night, a replication of the mythical fire once used by the ancestors of the Fulbe to draw cows from the water and bind them to humankind. The principal symbolic element of suudu is saga, the entirety of the household goods, decorated by the women and arranged according to an exact prescription. The symbolic association of calabash bowls with cattle and their well-being is unmistakable: milk must not be stored in or consumed from other vessels. Another element of saga worth mentioning here is the variety of ropes and ties, in particular the so-called boggol gacungol, an intricately plaited rope used to secure the load on the pack-ox when moving. For the Wodaabe, boggol gacungol is a symbol of their way of life: a material representation of movement, unity and continuance.

The centrepiece of saga is kaakol (or eletel), a compact construction of up to seventy centimetres high, made by the women from wickerwork and a special rope – another, much smaller version of boggol gacungol. When moving camp, kaakol is secured to the back of an ox or a donkey and transferred to the new camp ahead of the family. The symbolic content of this object remains a matter of speculation.Footnote ³⁴ It is quite clear, however, that kaakol also has a magical function; it contains substances known as fungo, which are responsible for the growth of the herd. Hence kaakol and saga as a whole could be regarded as a shrine, a magical means and aesthetico-symbolic representation of the link between humankind and animals. In this function, saga represents both the innermost centre of private domestic space and the public manifestation of individual and collective identity. As we have seen, this innermost sphere of expression is not closed to new elements, but offers a specific idiom for their appropriation, or their dissociation from external agents and meanings, namely the idiom of shiny embellishment and self-representation.Footnote ³⁵

In his essay on Muria Gond in Madhya Pradesh, Gell writes about ‘adventurous consumerism’ – as distinct from ‘unimaginative consumerism, which only reiterates class habitus’ – an ‘ability to transcend the merely utilitarian aspect of consumption goods, so that they become something more like works of art’ (Gell Reference Gell and Appadurai1986: 114), recognizing therein an expression of cultural vitality. Wodaabe consumer habits can be seen in a similar light. The Wodaabe integration of the objects described could be interpreted as creative appropriation of the foreign. Since these new things do not fulfil a practical function but seem to have a purely aesthetic value, the outcome of such integration could even be looked upon as new artistic creations. On the other hand, Wodaabe consumer behaviour could be judged in quite different, more sober terms. The Wodaabe do in fact remain on the periphery of global trade relations; rather than participating therein and acquiring new goods, they carry off mere fragments, are content with bits and pieces or trash. The Wodaabe themselves experience this ambivalence. While camping on the streets of Dakar or Bamako, the tigoobe cannot totally ignore the gaze of the city dwellers, who, as they have repeatedly observed, regard them as have-nots living on other people's scraps. At the same time, these Wodaabe evoked in their conversations the image of the worso meetings, where their cattle herds come together and their beautiful saga assemblages gleam in the sun – riches the inhabitants of the city know nothing about.

The extreme marginality of Wodaabe urban existence should not be seen as sheer deprivation and suffering; their miserable street camps are chosen and self-created places that guarantee a high degree of independence and social freedom (see Boesen 2007a). This freedom is, as it were, a condition of booty making. Living on the street with minimal equipment the Wodaabe are – in both a real and an ideal sense – always ready to move on (or, at times, to run away). The radical limitation of exchange relations with the inhabitants of the city goes with relative freedom – the freedom of the stranger who does not share the same moral and aesthetic values and norms – and can thus be understood as a social strategy. By the same token, what is described as ‘booty making’ implies an attitude of socio-cultural refusal; it permits, as we have seen, a remarkably autonomous apprehension of (foreign) things and facilitates their ‘Wodaabeization’.

The consumption practices of the Wodaabe resemble those of other mobile pastoral peoples, such as those of the Samburu described by Holtzman (2003), in that they exhibit a high degree of selectivity, remaining immune vis-à-vis the attractiveness of most new consumer articles. At the same time, however, the Wodaabe are essentially consumers, in so far as their inclination and capacity for production is extremely limited. Their consumer attitude is not confined to the acquisition and use of modern bulk goods but embraces any kind of product acquired from others, ranging from vegetables gathered by Hausa women in the pastoral grazing area to leatherwork fabricated by Tuareg blacksmiths or rich cloth from Mauretania.Footnote ³⁶

Despite their fundamental consumer attitude, the Wodaabe have hardly developed into modern consumers, since their consumption practices do not so much imply socio-cultural differentiation and new forms of expression or identity but can, on the contrary, be understood as a constant struggle for cultural intensification. In the innermost realm of culture we observe a continuous search for enhancement. This is at its most manifest in the saga creations, but also applies to the phenomena of male beautification briefly mentioned above and the purity of the Wodaabe cattle breed. Wodaabe efforts to intensify ­and make visible are directed inward; they address the Wodaabe community and seek resonance only there.Footnote ³⁷ Although the Wodaabe have decided on a ‘civilized’ look – they were still wearing leather aprons when they came to Dakar in the 1960s – their present-day appearance in the cities expresses a remarkable indifference vis-à-vis urban standards and opinions. While they dress in magnificent damask robes for festivals at home in the bush, they literally wear rags in the urban centres of Bamako or Dakar. Only one single decorative item adorns the female tigoowo – a miniature saga known as lepe'ol, which is a set of several round, often lovingly decorated containers used by the female tigoobe to carry their merchandise as they move through the streets of the city.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My gratitude goes to the German Research Council (DFG) for the financial support of my field research among the Nigerien Fulbe-Wodaabe.