Transactional Sex, Early Marriage, and Parent-Child Relations in a Tanzanian Slum

This is a self-archived version of an original article. This version may differ from the original in pagination and typographic details. Author(s): Title: Year: Version: Copyright: Rights: Rights url: Please cite the original version: CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Transactional Sex, Early Marriage, and Parent-Child Relations in a Tanzanian Slum © 2016 Ethnologia Europaea Published version Stark, Laura Stark, L. (2016). Transactional Sex, Early Marriage, and Parent-Child Relations in a Tanzanian Slum. Ethnologia Europaea, 46(1), 76-90. https://ee.openlibhums.org/article/id/1178/ 2016 Museum Tusculanum Press :: University of Copenhagen :: www.mtp.dk :: [email protected] TRANSACTIONAL SEX, EARLY MARRIAGE, AND PARENT– CHILD RELATIONS IN A TANZANIAN SLUM Laura Stark, University of Jyväskylä Transactional sex has been recognized as a major factor in the persistence of HIV/AIDS in Sub- Saharan Africa, yet it also has implications for the persistence of poverty. Using interview data collected between 2010 and 2015, this article examines how Muslim families in Dar es Salaam are affected by transactional sexual behavior.1 Examined are motives for transactional sex, how poor families view the purpose of marriage, and religious teachings and cultural beliefs about the onset of adulthood. Familial strategies to ensure provision for daughters and to improve the family’s socio-economic situation are impeded by the fact that in a context of high unemploy ment, transactional sex of ten represents the only path to female economic self-sufficiency, which of ten results in the family being encumbered with the financial burden of unwanted pregnancies. Keywords : sexuality, Tanzania, Islam, family, poverty “We know we are making sin, but we also believe there is forgiveness,” says Sharifa,2 a 30-year-old unmarried Muslim mother of two children who attends the mosque daily, speaking of the sexual practices in her neighborhood. During seven fieldwork visits between 2010 and 2015, I inter viewed 211 Sunni Muslim women and men living in two low-income or uswahilini areas of Dar es Salaam about how they or others in their neighborhood have engaged in sex outside of marriage, which is condemned by Islamic moral codes as fornication (zina in Swahili). Transactional sex, in which girls and young women engage in sexual relations with men in return for money and material gifts, is widely practiced by the youth in this predominantly Muslim area. Examining the impact of transactional sex on families is important because despite the fact that many young persons who engage in transactional sex are dependent on and under the authority of parents, grandparents, and other relatives, most research on transactional sex has focused solely on young persons themselves.3 Parents and grandparents have strong opinions about young people’s sexual behaviors because many see it as their religious duty to monitor their children’s behavior. They attempt to tightly control children’s opportunities to spend time with members of the opposite sex because it is assumed that when a boy and girl are lef t alone together, sexual activity is the inevitable outcome. It is therefore important to address the larger context of the nuclear and extended eThnologia euroPaea 46:1 laura stark 2016: Transactional sex, early Marriage, and Parent-child relations in a Tanzanian slum. Ethnologia Europaea 46:1, 76-90. © Museum Tusculanum Press. Ethnoologia Europaea :: Journal of European Ethnology 46:1 E-journal Copyright © 2016 Ethnologia Europaea, Copenhagen :: ISBN 987 87 635 4507 5 :: ISSN 1604 3030 http://www.mtp.dk/details.asp?eln=300378 76 Museum Tusculanum Press :: University of Copenhagen :: www.mtp.dk :: [email protected] family4 and how transactional sex fits into, or works against, the strategies employed by such families for improving their material circumstances. In this article, I adopt a cross-generational framework for analyzing transactional sex and ask: How do young women and their families in two Tanzanian slum neighborhoods negotiate the moral and affective landscape of transactional sex? What outcomes are feared, and why? Source Material and Research Setting My study focuses on two adjacent sub-wards in Tanzania’s most populous city, Dar es Salaam, which I call Kijito and Mahalikavu. 5 These neighborhoods have some of the worst living conditions in the city, and meet the United Nations’ (UN-Habitat 2010 : 14 –15) criteria for a slum.6 Many residents live hand-to-mouth and earn only enough money each day to eat two small meals. As in Dar es Salaam as a whole, Sunni Muslims comprise the majority of the residents in these two subwards. Although no official statistics exist for religious self-identification in Tanzania, estimates by a local government official in one subward put the proportion of Muslims at 75–90 percent.7 Mahalikav u contains ten Islamic schools or madrasas and six mosques. Kijito contains two madrasas and one mosque. Semi-structured inter views were conducted in these subwards primarily in Swahili with the assistance of female interpreters.8 Due to a culture of sexual shame in East Africa in which talking about sexual matters tends to be heavily tabooed9 and expectations of female respectability can make it difficult for young women to talk about their own participation in transactional sex, I did not ask interviewees directly about their sexual activities. Instead, I used the method of third-person elicitation in which interviewees are asked about what others do, what people in general say or believe. Some interviewees nonetheless described their own personal experiences in these interviews. The primary method of data analysis employed in this study was contextualized thematic analysis of the interview material. Kijito was the first area I visited, in March of 2010. It is bounded on one side by a main road and on the other by a small river. The interior is inaccessible to automobiles, and the only vehicles that occasionally enter the paths and courtyards between houses are pushcarts and narrow three-wheeled taxis (bajajis). Entering the neighborhood from the main road, I encountered houses built of cement, arranged haphazardly and connected by outdoor yards and open spaces where bedsheets, clothing, and brightly-colored kangas10 were hung to dry, children played barefoot, and women cooked food over charcoal fires. Although garbage and waste cover the uneven ground, the smoke from these charcoal fires provides the predominant smell in the dr y season. In the rainy season, the ground becomes a morass of foul-smelling water and slippery mud, and flash floods pose a constant danger to human life and propert y. Despite being located near the center of a city with a population of nearly five million, the predominant impression of both Kijito and Mahalikavu is that of a rural village ; palm trees sway in the quiet breeze, punctuated only by the occasional blare of music from a radio, and only a few residents can be seen walking or carr y ing out daily tasks in the open spaces between houses. Corn and local vegetables grow in these open spaces, goats are tethered to trees, and chickens roam the grass, pecking at edible pieces of garbage. Tanzanian society places a high value on decorum, confl ict-avoidance and self-restraint,11 and many residents are proud of the peaceful atmosphere and spirit of cooperation among neighbors in their area. As I and my interpreter passed through Kijito every morning, residents tended to be reser ved but many greeted us politely, while children often waved and shouted “mzungu !” (white person) when they saw me from afar. When they walked past us, however, children greeted us with the respectful greeting for elders (shikamoo, literally, ‘I hold your feet’). Due to the intense heat, interviews in the subwards were generally conducted mid-morning. Key informants in both neighborhoods found interviewees for me beforehand so that when my interpreter and I arrived in the morning and seated ourselves on the handwoven mat placed under a shady tree or on the porch of a house, people began to arrive to be eThnologia euroPaea 46:1 Ethnoologia Europaea :: Journal of European Ethnology 46:1 E-journal Copyright © 2016 Ethnologia Europaea, Copenhagen :: ISBN 987 87 635 4507 5 :: ISSN 1604 3030 http://www.mtp.dk/details.asp?eln=300378 77 Museum Tusculanum Press :: University of Copenhagen :: www.mtp.dk :: [email protected] interviewed in ones or twos. Inter views lasted one to two hours per person. Transactional Sex in Africa : Causes and Understandings As the AIDS pandemic continues to ravage many parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, African sexualities have become the focus of intense surveillance, and transactional sex has been recognized as a major factor in the continued persistence of HIV/AIDS in Sub- Saharan Africa.12 Because most of the existing literature on transactional sex is focused on public health outcomes, it is important to define what I mean by the term. Transactional sex is not the same as prostitution. Instead, it is better viewed as a continuum with sex work at one extreme and provision from a primar y male partner (permanent boy friend, husband) at the other.13 Although according to Islamic teachings, any sexual activity occurring between persons not married to each other (zina) is seen to be unlawful, many interviewees described zina as both “normal” and “every where” in their neighborhoods, due to the “hard life” (maisha magumu) of residents. My interviewees used the concept of zina to refer to any kind of sexual relationship outside of marriage, and such relationships are always transactional. In other words, a man who is not a relative would never give money to a woman without the expectation of sex in return, and a woman who gives sex for free is laughed at by other women. A key observation made by recent ethnographic literature on transactional sex in Africa has been that these relations are not merely instrumental, but are often embedded in complex fields of emotion, with the giving of money or gifts from boy friends to girlfriends or husbands to wives representing an act of caring, commitment and love (e.g., Cole & Thomas 2009 ; Hunter 2010 : 199). Whereas from a Eurocentric perspective, romantic love and pleasure are the only acceptable motives for engaging in sex, and materially oriented uses of sexualit y are strictly tabooed and embodied in the image of the prostitute,14 in African cultures love and money are much more “entangled.”15 Money is not necessarily seen as the cold, rational instrument of exchange that it is in Europe and North America, but instead as an expression of caring and affection, as the best gift that a friend or relative can give.16 In my interview data, for instance, male and female interviewees explained that when young men offered girls a small sum of money or a meal in the expectation of sex, girls understood this to mean “he really loves me.” Some men, too, understood their gift to be motivated by “love” (see also Poulin 2007). Although there is still little research on the histor y of transactional sex in Tanzania, it appears that this practice was already a focus of concern among researchers in the late 1980s following the debt crisis and neoliberal economic reforms which contributed to high unemploy ment throughout Sub-Saharan Africa (see Rwebangira 1998). Many of my inter viewees, however, blame the rise of transactional sex on the spread of what they call “globaliz at ion” (utandawazi): new ideas and images linked especially to sex and pornography and conveyed through television, videos,17 and more recently, mobile phones (Stark 2013). Because the vast majority of Africans never owned landline phones, mobile communication in particular has transformed many areas of social and economic life in Africa, and has facilitated premarital sexual activity among Tanzanian youth. Since boys and girls are not allowed to be seen by their parents or grandparents spending time together, mobile telephony offers young people the possibility to keep their relationships a secret. It also allows them to maintain relationships outside their immediate neighborhood and gives them access to a wide range of new sexual contacts. Children were described as able to hide their phone calls from their parents because parents are often unfamiliar with all of the phone’s functions. Mobile phones are affordable even among the very poor in Sub-Saha- ran Africa, and are easily obtained by children and youth through theft, gambling, and participating in children’s rotating savings groups (Stark 2013). Some adolescents in Kijito and Mahalikavu even have smartphones – or borrow them from friends – through which they access Facebook, Whatsapp, Twitter, Instagram and other social media sites. Secret sexual relationships were, of course, possieThnologia euroPaea 46:1 Ethnoologia Europaea :: Journal of European Ethnology 46:1 E-journal Copyright © 2016 Ethnologia Europaea, Copenhagen :: ISBN 987 87 635 4507 5 :: ISSN 1604 3030 http://www.mtp.dk/details.asp?eln=300378 78 Museum Tusculanum Press :: University of Copenhagen :: www.mtp.dk :: [email protected] ble prior to mobile phones. Interviewees explained that boys or girls might send handwritten notes to their object of desire through a child or friend of the intended recipient, or a boy or man might hang around the house of a girl or married woman, tr ying to remain unobtrusive until he caught her eye, at which point she would make an excuse to her parents or husband to leave home and fetch water or go the marketplace, and signal for her lover to follow her. However, these methods of subterfuge were time-consuming and risky: the love-smitten lurker could be noticed, or the note could be read by its messenger, who might gossip about it to others, or take it directly to the girl’s parents. Notes could also be accidentally found by parents or teachers. Mobile phones, by contrast, have provided a widespread and clandestine means for the youth to circumvent the restrictions placed on their sexuality by their elders. In addition to the rise of mobile communication, a number of other factors have also contributed to the prevalence of extramarital sexual activity in low-income areas of Dar es Salaam. As little as a generation ago, many Tanzanian girls tended to marry soon af ter puberty,18 but now girls enter secondary school at approximately the same age as they had earlier married, so that education has lengthened the period of premarital adolescence for girls (see also Mensch et al. 2001). Another major factor is poverty: interviewees reported that some girls begin engaging in transactional sex already before puberty, between the ages of nine and twelve, because their families cannot provide sufficient food for them. Female poverty, in turn, is closely linked to economic gender inequality, since even chronically poor Tanzanian men have better access to informal wage labor than do women (Plummer & Wight 2011: 378). Historically, men in Sub-Saharan Africa have possessed greater economic power and resources than women and have been expected to fi nancially support their wives and families, an expectation still predominant in Tanzania today (Silberschmidt 2004 ; Hunter 2010 ; Wamoyi et al. 2010 ; Plummer & Wight 2011: 211). At the same time, severe unemployment19 has made it impossible for many African men to provide long-term for female partners in the context of marriage, and many young men have been unable to provide for the children they father (Silberschmidt 2004 ; Chant & Evans 2010 : 354). While most men still seek to be providers, this providership tends to take the form of more precarious, short-term sexual relations with women (Hunter 2010 : 190). My interview data suggests that women’s economic dependency is also reinforced by cultural norms and expectations regarding proper gender roles. A lthough interviewees reported that attitudes were changing among the younger generation, some unskilled women said they would feel ashamed to do the same physically demanding work that is available to unskilled men, for example in construction or transportation. When I asked 29-year-old Susana20 and 27-year-old Rehema21 the intentiona lly provocative question of why men in Dar es Salaam have more money than women, Susana answered: men can do any kind of jobs, even heav y jobs. Someone can say to a man, “go and dig there or carry that load,” a man can do that but a woman cannot. Men know how to plan, but women do not. [Inter viewer: why not?] They just cannot… [she visibly struggles with what to say next] They feel ashamed. In a separate interview, 20-year-old Ramadhani made a similar point from a male point of view: As you know, men and women are different. The work which men are doing is very hard. Women cannot do it. Women are staying home or selling food in the neighborhood. Men are working harder than the women could ever do. Many men have education, they know to save money and build capital. […] Another thing is that men cooperate among themselves. One man can loan money to another, but for women it is different, they might fear that their friend will not repay the loan. But men are always helping each other, fi nding jobs for each other. But women cannot do this.22 When I asked male interviewees why men in their neighborhoods seem to have more money than eThnologia euroPaea 46:1 Ethnoologia Europaea :: Journal of European Ethnology 46:1 E-journal Copyright © 2016 Ethnologia Europaea, Copenhagen :: ISBN 987 87 635 4507 5 :: ISSN 1604 3030 http://www.mtp.dk/details.asp?eln=300378 79 Museum Tusculanum Press :: University of Copenhagen :: www.mtp.dk :: [email protected] women, 27-year-old Samuel explained that “here [in Mahalikavu], the man thinks, ‘I have to work hard for a good life’ while the woman thinks, ‘I have to wait for a good man.’” Samuel’s cousin Joseph elaborated : Men want to work hard, and ladies feel they have to wait for men to bring home money. Women feel they cannot do the same hard work as men, and that they should stay home, men should go to work and come home in the evening and give money for the household’s needs. One finds very few women who are capable of asking their men for capital to set up a business, saying “I now want to do something,” so the men must work hard to take care of the family.23 In terms of income generation, the primary alternative to transactional sex in Kijito and Mahalikavu is small-scale neighborhood vending, in which women are exposed to fi nancial risk, ex haustion and exploitation by customers, suppliers, and neighborhood thieves. Interviewees thus spoke of transactional sex as the easiest way for girls and women to obtain money, and described how girls of ten become involved in transactional sex after being offered money by men. Men might offer 2,000 Tzs (=1€) to a poor girl the first time, and if rejected, offer 5,000 Tzs the second time, and finally 10,000 Tzs, enough to buy her food for nearly a week. For women with only primar y or secondar y school education, few viable alternatives exist. Training as a nurse, seamstress, pharmacy assistant, or teacher could provide more opportunities for women in these neighborhoods, but even secondar y school education, not to mention post-secondary occupational training, is often too expensive for many poor families. A Cultural Ideal of Self-Sufficient Adolescence In discussions with interviewees, one topic that came up repeatedly was the question of where parental responsibilit y for children ends and where adult independence should begin. In traditional notions of puberty as marking the beginning of adulthood, a Tanzanian child is seen to be an independent adult, able or wanting to “depend on herself ” (anajitegema mwenywe) at the age of fifteen or sixteen. In the context of widespread urban povert y, these older cultural expectations still prevail in some families due to the difficult y of supporting children financially. Especially in families unable to afford to send their children to secondar y school,24 sons are expected to find work af ter primary school, and daughters are expected to find either work or men to provide for them (see also Plummer & Wight 2011: 134, 203). Selemani, aged eighteen, commented on this by say ing: A few families think that after primary school the children have grown up. If a daughter then comes to her parents to ask for something, they say, “you have grown up, you need to fi nd your partner and ask him, it is not my business.” People from the Gogo and Makonde groups feel this way, and don’t put their children back in school af ter primary school.25 26-year-old Amira described how some parents consider their daughter to be an adult after she reaches mid- or late adolescence, “and even if they hear that a daughter has four boy friends, they don’t care, because they think that if they take back responsibility for that girl, it will be heav y for them.” When I asked what she meant by “heav y,” she elaborated: “these parents are poor, so when the daughters go out and come back and bring 10,000 Tzs [=5€] or 20,000 Tzs to the parents, the parents are happy. So the mother might say to her daughter, ‘ be careful not to lose him.’”26 Inter views revealed that some young persons had themselves internalized ideals of adolescent selfsuf ficiency and sought to be independent from their parents at age fif teen or sixteen. 19-year-old Mohamedi27 argued that even if some parents still view themselves as responsible for their children af ter primary school, the children themselves may think that “they should start to take responsibilit y, and don’t want their parents to take care of them, and have quarrels with the parents.” 30-year-old Simon made a similar observation: eThnologia euroPaea 46:1 Ethnoologia Europaea :: Journal of European Ethnology 46:1 E-journal Copyright © 2016 Ethnologia Europaea, Copenhagen :: ISBN 987 87 635 4507 5 :: ISSN 1604 3030 http://www.mtp.dk/details.asp?eln=300378 80 Museum Tusculanum Press :: University of Copenhagen :: www.mtp.dk :: [email protected] Most of the young people, after finishing primary school, don’t want to continue their education, and even if they have an opportunity to do so, it might be that the family has a lot of problems, not enough money for food, so they choose to try to get a job and help out their families instead of continuing their education […] Some girls want to get married after seeing the situation at home, no food at home, they want to responsibly help their families, they otherwise feel a burden to their parents.28 For women in the neighborhoods I studied, autonomy and self-sufficiency represent cultural ideals which they strive to achieve in the eyes of their neighbors and kin. Poor women are expected to display to their female neighbors and friends an economic self-reliance that can only be obtained through their sexual links to men. Married women, too, are expected to demonstrate independence from their parents by not asking them for money. Having a male partner is thus crucial for women’s sense of self-respect and independence in her relations with older relatives and other women (see also Plummer & Wight 2011: 204). Although women in Kijito and Mahalikavu strive to create bonds of friendship and cooperation with neighbors, some women told me that they would feel ashamed to ask for help or borrow money from a neighbor. Zainabu29 feared that if she asked for help from neighbors, “they will start to talk that I don’t have any money today, and so forth.” 29-year-old Jamila and 44-year-old Tumaini gave similar explanations: … our life depends on men. They come to you and lie to you and get you pregnant and go away. We do that because we need money. And that is how we raise our children, by using the money of the men. In Dar es Salaam, it is hard to go every time to a neighbor to ask for help, “please give me salt.” They might be talking about you in a certain way, that you are always going and asking for help. Here they start talking about you if you ask twice or three times. Even if you just need salt, so you have to start looking for money.30 If there is no food for my “children” [including nieces and nephews] on a given day, I say to them, “go to your beds and sleep today, but don’t tell anybody that we don’t have food, I will find a way to get money for food tomorrow.” Because I don’t want to ask anybody for help. [Interviewer: W hat would happen if you asked for help?] When you go there and ask for help, they may give to you, but after you leave, they say to others about you: “did you see her, she came to ask for help. Even her children did not have any ugali [=porridge] today.”31 Zena made a comparable point regarding adolescent girls, when I asked whether or not girlfriends will encourage a girl to fi nd a rich boyfriend : If a girl even borrows skin oil from her friends, and if there are three girls together, they might say, “you are always borrowing from us, why don’t you find your own boyfriend with money? You need to find a good boyfriend.”32 Zena’s anecdote brings up an important factor repeatedly mentioned in the literature on transactional sex: the role of peer pressure (see Moore et al. 2007; Maganja et al. 2007; Wamoyi et al. 2010 ; Plummer & Wight 2011: 132–133). From my interview data it was clear that both parents and adolescents considered “ bad groups” (vikundi mbaya) to encourage inexperienced girls and boys to be sexually active. Boys are said to be urged by peers to talk about sex and watch pornography, and to be laughed at if they do not have a girlfriend. Girls are said to be encouraged by friends to seek out male sexual partners who can provide them with beauty products, nice clothing and salon hairst yles33 in order to display the sort of sophisticated urban appearance seen on billboards, television and the Internet. 19-year-old Faiza described the situation as follows: Nowadays the young girls go out with men as old as their fathers, a poor girl might have girlfriends in a bad group who say, “do you see my blouse, it’s like Oprah’s! ” Then the poor girl follows them to eThnologia euroPaea 46:1 Ethnoologia Europaea :: Journal of European Ethnology 46:1 E-journal Copyright © 2016 Ethnologia Europaea, Copenhagen :: ISBN 987 87 635 4507 5 :: ISSN 1604 3030 http://www.mtp.dk/details.asp?eln=300378 81 Museum Tusculanum Press :: University of Copenhagen :: www.mtp.dk :: [email protected] clubs to meet old men. And the girl sees that it is true, she can get what she wants.34 Female inter viewees explained that girls in school spend much of their time talking about boys and sexual relationships. 15-year-old Maisha, who had been abandoned by the 25-year-old father of her baby when she told him she was pregnant, described how she became involved sexually with him in the first place : When I was at school, there was a group of men hanging around the school and he approached me […] He gave me money, 2,000 or 3,000 Tzs [=1 or 1.5€] when we met. We were together only a short time. Afterward, he refused to help me […] Before I met that man, I was talking about men with my friends instead of studying. We were talking during class time, during break, the other girls talked about their boy friends and said: “you are stupid that you don’t have a boyfriend.”35 In the research literature on transactional sex, peer pressure is not usually viewed as a means by which adolescents seek independence. Yet what the participants of “ bad groups” in my interview data seem to be doing is urging each other to find the quickest path to autonomy and status in the eyes of others. For girls, this means finding a male provider who can help her project an outward image of dignity and self-sufficiency among her female peers. Whereas girls learn from older women in puberty rites (unyago or mkole) that true self-respect (kujiheshimu) means sexual modesty, many of these older women are themselves materially dependent on male providers (husbands, brothers, sons), and these links to men give them respectability in the eyes of their neighborhood. For many younger women, however, this same respectability can no longer be achieved through marriage, since many men can no longer fulfill the cultural ideal of paying brideprice or providing for a wife after marriage. This means that transactional sex is the only avenue to respectable self-sufficiency lef t to younger women. The option of transactional sex, however, is explicitly opposed to the teachings of Islam. In Kijito, the 50-year-old religious leader or shehe36 of the mosque expressed the view that the youth who engage in zina are surrounded by devils (sheikwani) because they know they are doing wrong. According to him, the proper punishment according to Islamic law for anyone – male or female – engaged in zina is to be beaten a hundred times with a wooden cane in a public place “ by someone very strong.” However, he pointed out that this does not happen in Kijito because Tanzanian secular law forbids such punishment. Although this shehe and another teacher at a madrasa both spoke of zina in tones of resigned disapproval, lay Muslims, by contrast, never mentioned punishment for zina in their interviews. In fact, lay Muslims made it clear that premarital sexual activity is so widespread that it is hardly remarked upon. They explained, however, that the youth struggle internally with the moral contradictions between Islamic doctrine and their own sexual behavior. Some young women spoke of asking God for forgiveness, but others mentioned that “if we follow Islam, we may die poor.” Despite the fact that the majority of the world’s Muslims live in conditions of extreme poverty,37 current anthropological literature on Islamic morality and piety tends to depict Muslims as enjoying apparent freedom to make voluntar y choices between moral alternatives. As can be seen from the above examples, religious commitments by the poor exist alongside the needs to both survive and project an external image of dignity in the face of severe poverty – needs that are often seen to justif y morally questionable forms of income generation. The resultant complex forms of Muslim identity should not be seen by the researcher as flawed, incomplete or inauthentic. Instead, religious moralities themselves need to be re-examined as inherently contingent, ambiguous and lacking coherence (Schielke 2012 ; Dahlgren & Schielke 2013). Dilemmas of Early Marriage Many of the cultural ideals and norms described here for Muslims are also shared by Christian residents in the area I studied, but Muslim families experience eThnologia euroPaea 46:1 Ethnoologia Europaea :: Journal of European Ethnology 46:1 E-journal Copyright © 2016 Ethnologia Europaea, Copenhagen :: ISBN 987 87 635 4507 5 :: ISSN 1604 3030 http://www.mtp.dk/details.asp?eln=300378 82 Museum Tusculanum Press :: University of Copenhagen :: www.mtp.dk :: [email protected] themselves as being under additional expectations and pressure with regard to sexual behavior. Although premarital sexual activity is tolerated by the community, many parents experience great anxiety over the sexual behavior of their children. According to both Islamic and traditional Tanzanian teachings, parents are expected to provide moral guidance as long as their children are in their care, and are seen to be responsible in the eyes of God for their children’s behavior. Musa, a teacher in a local madrasa, explained : In Islam it is not allowed to do zina or for the parents to keep quiet while the young person is still “in the parents’ hands” (mikono ya wazazi) […] The parents interfere because they fear God’s rule and what the Quran says about these things. They fear they might be asked by God af ter they die about when they saw something bad, why they didn’t do something or say something. Because the Prophet said that when you see a bad thing, you must either remove the bad thing by taking it away or by saying something about it, or by feeling angry about it in your heart.38 In Kijito and Mahalikavu, a common solution to the contradiction between the moral dictates of Islam and the poverty-driven ideal of self-sufficiency in mid-adolescence has been marriage for girls at an early age. Especially parents who have migrated to Dar es Salaam from the predominantly Muslim Swahili coast of eastern Tanzania are more likely to pressure their daughters to marry immediately upon completion of primary school at age fif teen or sixteen.39 The idea that marriage is a natural life event following puberty is supported by both Islamic teachings and African cultural norms,40 but an equally important motive for girls’ early marriage is poverty, as parents seek a financially secure future for their daughters (and, if the groom is wealthy, for themselves as well), as Omari and Ali explain: The parents who push their daughters to marry, they are poor, the father might just have a small business selling mangoes outside his door, he doesn’t have enough money to put his daughter back into school [after primary school]. So if someone comes and offers to marry his daughter, he says okay. Another thing: when the daughter marries, the father thinks that maybe life will be a little easier, because now the son-in-law will help him with money. These parents feel that it is a heav y burden to take care of the daughter – if she marries, it is easier for them to take care of themselves.41 Some families push the daughters into the marriage because they are poor. And if the girl doesn’t want to marry, the family might say, okay, now you will know, now you have to take care of yourself, fi nd your own food, money, etc.42 Parents urge their daughters to marry early in part because girls are perceived to have more “needs” than boys in the form of clothing, toiletries and cosmetics. They are also seen to have fewer opportunities to find work in construction, transportation or auto repair, for instance, that would help them pay for these needs (see Plummer & Wight 2011: 134, 202, 378). 19-year-old Hassan explained this situation from the perspective of his own experience : For me, if God wishes that I have a daughter someday, she won’t get married after primar y school, but some parents may force or push her after primar y school to marr y, because girls have a lot of needs and parents don’t want to pay for them […] Girls may need clothes, they go hungr y more easily, maybe in their home there are meals only twice a day, so they think to marr y. Men have money, for example a man can have a lot of channels to make money, it is lucky to be born a man. So for me, even if only tea [=breakfast] is offered in my home, it is enough for me, I have other ways to get money and feed myself. For example, I can get day work in construction jobs, even from private individuals. At work I might get tea in the morning, lunch in the midday, and even take money home to my parents.43 eThnologia euroPaea 46:1 Ethnoologia Europaea :: Journal of European Ethnology 46:1 E-journal Copyright © 2016 Ethnologia Europaea, Copenhagen :: ISBN 987 87 635 4507 5 :: ISSN 1604 3030 http://www.mtp.dk/details.asp?eln=300378 83 Museum Tusculanum Press :: University of Copenhagen :: www.mtp.dk :: [email protected] Skinning the Goat and Pulling the Load: Transactional Sex among Youth in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. AIDS Care 19:8, 974–981. Mensch, Barbara, Wesley Clark, Cynthia Lloyd & Annabel Erulkar 2001: Premarital Sex, Schoolgirl Pregnancy, and School Quality in Rural Kenya. Studies in Family Planning 32:4, 285–301. Moore, Ann, Ann Biddlecom & Eliya Zulu 2007: Prevalence and Meanings of Exchange of Money or Gifts for Sex in Unmarried Adolescent Sexual Relationships in Sub-Sa- haran Africa. African Journal of Reproductive Health 11:3, 44–61. 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Wamoyi, Joyce, Daniel Wight, Mary Plummer, Gerry Hilary Mshana & David Ross 2010: Transactional Sex amongst Young People in Rural Northern Tanzania: An Ethnography of Young Women’s Motivations and Negotiation. Reproductive Health 7:2, http://www.reproductive-health- journal.com/content/7/1/2/abstract, accessed June 6, 2012. Wight, Daniel, Mary Plummer, Gerry Mshana, Joyce Wamoyi, Zachayo Shigongo & David Ross 2006: Contradictory Sexual Norms and Expectations for Young People in Rural Northern Tanzania. Social Science & Medicine 62:4, 987–997. Laura Stark is Professor of Ethnology at the Department of History and Ethnology, University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Her research interests include gender theory and poverty in urban Africa. ([email protected]) eThnologia euroPaea 46:1 Ethnoologia Europaea :: Journal of European Ethnology 46:1 E-journal Copyright © 2016 Ethnologia Europaea, Copenhagen :: ISBN 987 87 635 4507 5 :: ISSN 1604 3030 http://www.mtp.dk/details.asp?eln=300378 90