ABSTRACT
It is 7.30 a.m. and the knocking on the door to our compound, albeit somewhat timid, does not stop. I am fighting sleep as well as the desire to just turn around and ignore Aliyu. Getting enough rest is a challenge at Sabuwar Ƙofa, Kano city, Nigeria, where heat and mosquitoes make it difficult to find sleep in the evening and where the morning call for prayer from the neighbouring mosque unfailingly wakes me at dawn. This is, of course, not Aliyu’s fault, and I know the boy, whose schedule starts on some days with Qur’anic lessons before the morning prayer, is getting even less sleep than me. Nonetheless, this morning I wish he wasn’t there knocking, waiting to be let in to start his three-times-weekly morning cleaning round. Once he starts work, I do, too. Not that there was necessarily any work awaiting me at 7.30 a.m. in the morning. But sitting down idly with a cup of tea or even breakfast, while Aliyu, maybe fifteen years old at that time, sweeps up fallen leaves, bent over his straw broom, then mops the linoleum floor of the veranda, now kneeling down with his rug, then takes out the rubbish? The mere prospect makes me uncomfortable. Which serious researcher with a minimum awareness of power relations employs their informants as domestics, minors of age at that?! Knowing, in the abstract, that poor young people in poor countries probably cherish opportunities to work under decent conditions for decent wages – even if they are research subjects – does not assuage my unease. So I find myself something to do, wash dishes, sort papers that didn’t need sorting until then, pretend to have urgent computer work – anything really. Sometimes I even help sweep and mop, which obviously defies the purpose of employing somebody to do that. I know it is silly, and it does not efface my privilege. I sometimes wonder what Aliyu thinks of my contrived morning hustling.
