household duties for the first week and check in on
her as she gradually resumes her household tasks.
This sharing of the minutiae of daily life is highly
characteristic of women’s friendships as is the fre-
quent intersection of female kin (relatives) and
non-kin (friends). One of the few to study friend-
ship in Africa was Paul Riesman who examined
personality formation among the Muslim Fulbe of
Burkina Faso. He comments on these matters when
he elucidates the Fulbe proverb, “giDo yaaye
womnata BiDDo”(It’s the mother’s friend who will
make the baby dance). He explains that playing
with a baby by bouncing it on one’s lap and tossing
it up slightly is known as “making the baby dance”;
thus, a true friend is a person who will help not only
the individual but also one’s relatives, represented
by the image of playing with the child (Riesman
1992, 118).Islam and the conventions of
friendship: the example of the
Muslim Hausa
Muslim Hausa women in Sub-Saharan Africa are
bound by social convention – believed to derive
from the prescriptions of the Qur±àn – to entertain
friends only in their households. Married women
should be attractive only in their homes since their
husbands will blame them if any other man finds
them attractive. To decrease the odds that this will
happen, formal visits between friends take place
after nightfall, which also coincides with the end of
the workday and the completion of daily chores.
Married men generally are not close to their
wives nor women to their husbands. Men tend to
stay out of women’s quarters in other homes and
only rarely enter these quarters in their own homes.
They feel freer in visiting older sisters and other
female relatives than they do in visiting younger sis-
ters. In these female quarters, then, women have a
great degree of freedom from male scrutiny and
censure. Visits are one way that Hausa women
develop and maintain their own networks as well
as their ongoing involvements in their extended
families. Religious ceremonies such as marriages
and naming ceremonies are constant events in
Hausa communities and provide other opportuni-
ties for women to meet, develop connections, and
exchange information without any male presence.
Through these networks they influence develop-
ments in their wider communities.
Women’s visiting networks have become espe-
cially important in the contemporary urban cen-
ters, places such as the barracks of Kano, Nigeria
studied by Katja Werthmann. The barracks area of
Kano is part of the new section of town and the196 friendship
layout of houses is quite different from that in the
Old City of Kano. In the Old City there is a clear
division of public and private space and women’s
spaces are safely away from the public gaze. The
barracks houses, however, do not afford this pri-
vacy. The old entrance hall is gone and there is no
public space to replace it. Moreover, the outer area
is not shaded as in traditional houses so men spend
their days near mosques or in other areas where
they can more comfortably meet. Women are
almost the sole occupants of the neighborhood for
much of the day and have used this opportunity to
more fully develop their friendships. Because the
women living in this neighborhood of Kano come
from all over Nigeria there is a virtual absence of
women’s kinship networks. Instead, women have
replaced these local kin networks with ones of non-
kin friends throughout the city and reinforce these
key support relationships with systematic visiting
practices.
The ties of kinship and of friendship may inter-
sect in other contexts as well. Hausa life cycle cele-
brations illustrate this point. Men and women
remain separated for most of the events. For exam-
ple, the bride is never present at a Hausa wedding,
while the groom is typically present if the wedding
is his bride’s first marriage. The woman receives her
guests and gifts at her father’s home. Her female rel-
atives and friends take care of the preparations for
the celebration. The bride recites verses from the
Qur±àn in a display of her piety and knowledge in
front of her relatives. As she does so, her female
friends are there to support her, but traditionally
hidden from view until the women join together in
their party afterwards. The women then announce
the marriage to the larger community by taking
cakes and other treats home with them, thus
spreading the news of the marriage through distrib-
uting a female-associated domestic product, pro-
cessed food.
Gender segregation and celebration with friends
also characterizes Hausa naming celebrations. The
naming ceremony for a newborn child has two
parts. In the early morning, the ceremony occurs at
the mosque. It is for men only and here the baby
receives its name. Then there is a later celebration
that begins late in the morning. This ceremony is for
women only. It generally gets loud and festive and
takes up most of the remainder of the day. There is
ceremonial drumming, performed by Hausa males
who are allowed in despite the restrictions of pur-
dah. They begin with Hausa style drumming but
move to a more generic Muslim style as the day
continues. Then music fills the air and women
dance with one another. They have the time to