A West African Spider-Man and the Enduring Concept of "the Stranger"

The footage was dramatic. The "Spiderman of Paris" quickly scaled four floors to save the four-year-old boy dangling from an apartment balcony. But the New York Times headline read, "Paris 'Spider-Man' Saves Young Boy. Cue Debate on Migrants." The heroic actions of Mamoudou Gassama, a recent migrant from Mali—without papers—immediately placed migrants from West and North Africa at the center of a national conversation about what France owed its immigrants, what those immigrants owed France, and what they could or should expect from the people of France and their government. Gassama's courageous and resourceful act "began to play into Europe's fraught and polarized debate about outsiders, immigrants and refugees."¹ The shoe was suddenly on the other foot, because West Africans had dealt with the migration of Europeans and other "strangers" to West Africa for centuries.

Historians of West Africa have long noted the significance of "the stranger" to West African history. This theme emerges from the long histories of cultural mixing and exchange between cultures from four different continents in the Atlantic world. George Brooks was one of the first to call attention to the "stranger" and how they had influenced West African societies even before the arrival of Europeans.² Sara Dorman and colleagues continued this focus on the stranger and their interaction with the modern nation-states of West Africa.³ This issue of the Journal of West African History reinforces this theme and adds to our understanding of the historical nuances that have rendered unto us the incredibly diverse and dynamic present of West Africa—a present often defined by the actions of "outsiders, immigrants, and refugees." These are histories of migration at various scales: national, regional, and international. This issue demonstrates that they have persisted throughout the colonial and postcolonial eras. West Africa remains a diverse and dynamic region.

In this issue, Mariama Marciana Kuusaana is the first to draw our attention to a history of migration at the national level with "Colonial Labor Policy and North–South Migration in Ghana." Kuusaana brings us a wonderful social history of mining labor migration from north to south in Ghana. Relatively bereft of natural resources, northern Ghana had little to provide the colonial economy except for its human resources. Until 1927, this migration was forced and included only males. After 1927, however, the migration would become voluntary and include women as northerners willingly moved south to take advantage of increasing financial opportunities. Kuusaana demonstrates that southern Ghana has generally benefited at the expense of the north from this migration. There are many reasons for this disparity, but one is thought to be the lack of investment in formal education in northern Ghana as compared to the south. As Kuusaana concludes, "the human cost was huge" for this migration. Though it helped forge a nation, it meant that northern migrants inherited "the unfortunate legacy of the early migrants, working as 'hewers of wood and drawers of water' … in … jobs as porters … casual laborers and other menial jobs in Southern cities like Kumasi and Accra." Kuusaana is resigned to conclude that the situation now defies "any form of remedy."

Kalala Ngalamulume draws our attention to these dynamic histories with an article title that points to movement—an "itinerary" of possible health-care strategies available to the people of Saint-Louis: "Beyond Resistance: Therapeutic Itinerary in Saint-Louis-du-Senegal between Indigenous and Scientific Medicine, 1820–1920." Ngalamulume tells how the "myth" of Mame Coumba Bang, a genie or mermaid at the entrance to the Senegal River, affected Senegalese perceptions of health and medicine vis-à-vis the gris-gris of various marabouts and the European approach to medicine and health care practiced by French settlers and colonial officials. Through Mame Coumba Bang and other traditional forms of health care, Saint-Louisans had a diverse arsenal of health-care options at their disposal throughout the colonial period. Ngalamulume refers to this menu of options as an "itinerary" for health care, with the possibility of shuttling between colonial medicine and traditional healers, depending on the situation and...