ABSTRACT
This essay explores how young, mostly unemployed, and financially insecure men in Niger cultivate enjoyment at the fada, the tea circles to which they repair to escape boredom by playing cards, listening to music, and drinking tea. As a place where new forms of sociability and belonging are forged by those who are denied work and wages, the fada provides both the material setting and the conceptual framework for considering the forms that happiness takes in contexts of precarity. Through a focus on tea-drinking, card games, and humor, this essay considers how happiness arises out of the distractions that pastimes provide and the distance young men put between themselves and their pains. Happiness, it is argued here, provides a sense of orientation, even when it seems unattainable and, as such, it must be approached through the lens of time. This essay contributes to the anthropology of happiness by considering how people conceive and aspire for the good in the face of uncertainty and privation.
