In colonial times, during the dry season, the Zarma went to Gold Coast (now Ghana) to earn money they needed to pay the many taxes imposed on them by the French. By visiting the Kumasi region, in fact they followed the track of their warrior ancestors who, in the late nineteenth century, had scoured the area; Babatou, the most famous among them, is celebrated by the griot genealogists in their stories and as a character in a film by Jean Rouch. According to the French ethnologist (1955), the trip to Gold Coast was then a true test of initiation. Thenceforth the Zarma have kept on leaving home to move to coastal countries (like Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire, Benin) and the man who today stays put in the village is often frowned upon by his peers. Unless he is wealthy, his authority decreases; as Bonkaano, a thirthy year old resident in a Zarma village, so aptly tells me: "You know, all the men migrate, only women and the old remain in the village. So if I have nothing and I'm not leaving, I'm not a man. " The South-South migration is therefore a part of a long history; it marks the Zarma social landscape. The character of the migrant emerges in the narrations of griot genealogists and historians and in songs by young girls as well as married women; the latter now praise the migrant who gives them a better social status while regretting his absence when he is slow to come back. It is mainly in reference to these women's songs that I propose to examine the ambiguous figure of the migrant, sometimes praised for what he offers on his return, sometimes wanted back because separation gets to be too long and quieter.
Singing the absence, praising the return: issues concerning migrants in Zarma-land (Niger)