The Unseen Things: Women, Secrecy, and HIV in Northern Nigeria
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The Unseen Things: Women, Secrecy, and HIV in Northern Nigeria
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Overview
What do HIV-positive women in Nigeria face as they seek meaningful lives with a deeply discrediting disease? Kathryn A. Rhine uncovers the skillful ways women defuse concerns about their wellbeing and the ability to maintain their households. Rhine shows how this ethic of concealment involves masking their diagnosis, unfaithful husbands, and unsupportive families while displaying their beauty, generosity, and vitality. As Rhine observes, collusion with counselors and support group leaders to deflect stigma, secure respectability, and find love features prominently in the lives of ordinary women who hope for a brighter future as the HIV epidemic continues to expand.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780253021519 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Indiana University Press |
| Publication date: | 04/04/2016 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 214 |
| File size: | 399 KB |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Kathryn A. Rhine is a medical anthropologist and associate professor at the University of Kansas. She is editor (with John M. Janzen, Glenn Adams and Heather Aldersey) of Medical Anthropology in Global Africa and her work has appeared in Anthropological Quarterly, Africa Today, and Ethnos.
Read an Excerpt
The Unseen Things
Women, Secrecy, and HIV in Northern Nigeria
By Kathryn A. Rhine
Indiana University Press
Copyright © 2016 Kathryn A. RhineAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-253-02151-9
CHAPTER 1
First Loves
When I was a very young woman, men would compliment me a lot!" Amira, a married woman from Kano in her twenties, described to me:
When they said I was beautiful, I felt as if I was on top of the world. I felt so happy and proud among my friends. Then came my future husband, John. He kept on pursuing me ... it was just a "boyfriend and girlfriend" routine. He would wait on the road outside my house to take me to school. ... He was twenty-eight years old and I was a just a young girl. Let's say around thirteen. He knew that lots of young guys were after me – younger than him. Good-looking guys! He dedicated a lot of time to me so that I would not escape from him. He would take me home after school. His car would be parked right at the school gate. I remember how my principal – who liked me so much – put me on suspension because of this. I was young and intelligent. She did not think John would allow me to focus on school. She thought I was too young for so much attention.
I asked Amira, "How did John show you that he really loved you?" And she responded, "He showered me with a lot of gifts." I prompted her to tell me more. She paused and then continued:
He gave me a wristwatch and then one of those handmade cards by artists. Very big! My picture was inside with loving words and hearts ... I took it to school. When my friends saw it, everybody said it looked so amazing: "This man really loves you!" Then, later on, he bought shoes and clothing. He bought cultural wears [cloth] and he sent a tailor to me. The tailor would come to my house, measure me, and sew different dresses. Shoes, bags, wristwatches, bangles ... and money! From time to time, he gave me 2,000 naira [$14].
"Just 2,000?" I teased, knowing that this was a lot of money for a young woman to receive from her boyfriend. "Then, 2,000 naira was so much!" She answered:
I became the "big girl" in school. Everybody was jealous. My friends and I were eating different kinds of sweets and drinks with his money. We ate snacks so that everyone could see we were rich. ... In my family, I am not from a very big [rich] background, so I did not hide from them the gifts he showered on me. I would give the money to my mother: "Mommy, this is what this guy gave me and these are the gifts." At times, my mother would say, "Open them and share with your sisters."
In the context of Nigeria's HIV epidemic, much attention has been paid to the sexual activities of young people. Men and women between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four account for the majority of cases of HIV on the African continent. Furthermore, young women are more likely to be infected than men. Their disproportionate vulnerability to HIV, scholars have argued, results primarily from unequal gender power relations. They reflect the larger structural inequalities that obstruct people from pursuing safe, mutually faithful relationships. Women may lack the flexibility to make choices or demands on their sexual partners. Older men, in particular, may pressure them into having sex, and their need for money and gifts from boyfriends – their "sugar daddies" – can exacerbate these power imbalances. Such constraints are not only a product of economic inequalities. Religious and cultural norms, which assert that virtuous women must be deferential in their interactions with boyfriends, further affect their ability to protect themselves from HIV.
While these analyses outline crucial social forces shaping the epidemic around the world, epidemiologists' broad brushstrokes cannot capture the complex meanings and motivations surrounding intimacy and sex among youth. Through a series of stories that women have told me about their first relationships, I aim to offer a window into young Nigerians' strategies for navigating desire and love. All of the women in this chapter ultimately tested HIV positive. Few know from whom or when, precisely, they became infected by the virus. My goal here, however, is not to trace the explicit factors that led each of these particular women to contract HIV. Rather, I will show the ways women's negotiations and assertions of agency are caught up in the structural forces that reproduce social inequalities.
As Amira's story above shows, one prominent theme in women's accounts of their adolescent love lives is the ways in which intimacy and exchange are intertwined. Money and gifts play a key role in men's displays of their affection and attraction. They may also express their sincerity and ability to marry. Kudin zance, literally meaning "discussion money" in Hausa, is almost always expected in routine visits from male suitors. They might offer a soft drink, cookies, or candy. It could also be a small amount of money or other token gift. Wealthier men may give larger items such as cloth, jewelry, or even cell phones. There are not always clear distinctions between the money men give women for sex and other kinds of material exchanges between sexual partners in intimate relationships.
None of the women I met over the course of my ten years in northern Nigeria would say they had sex with "clients" for money, distancing themselves from the partnerships of sex workers. They called their partners "boyfriends" and referred to themselves as their "girlfriends." Many knew women that they would identify as hustlers or prostitutes, however. Although rarely openly discussed, houses of karuwai (the Hausa term for prostitutes) were once common across the north. The reinstitution of Shari'a criminal law in northern states has intensified political and religious efforts to close these houses. Nevertheless, most northern Nigerians will point out that rich and poor men alike easily locate sex workers in areas where Shari'a restrictions are relaxed as well as nearby cities, such as Kaduna or Abuja. Sexual affairs between young women and older married men are carefully hidden but common across the north, just as they are across the country and the continent. These relationships may involve exchanges of substantial amounts of money.
Teachers and parents often pressure young women to focus on their studies and not romance. And yet, for some of them, sexual partnerships with men may actually be part of their plans to advance academic and career goals. In Nigerian popular culture, stories abound of women's relationships with a "Mr. Lecturer." Sometimes, they feature professors who coerce young women into having sex with them for higher grades. In others, women are the seductresses. The cunning attitudes and ways in which men and women extract emotional, sexual, and material resources from each other are common themes across a variety of media from sensationalistic newspaper accounts to films and music. Audiences both laud and denounce them as fundamentally "Nigerian" aspects of people's love lives.
Gifts are not static expressions of a man's love, however; they also produce affection and pleasure. A gift of jewelry, for example, allows a man to admire a woman's beauty. As he slips a ring on his girlfriend's finger, he might touch her hands in a deeply sensual way. Another man might give his girlfriend money to go to the salon and style (plait) her hair. Or, like Amira's boyfriend, he may pay for a tailor to sew a dress that he thinks will complement her attractiveness. Women prize gifts of cell phones and call credit in part because they let couples speak in private, out of reach of prying ears. Women cautioned me not to reduce their intimate experiences to sex alone. Sex is one act among an array of exchanges and experiences that they hope will potentially lead to marriage.
Although marriage remains a critical goal for Christians and Muslims alike, the duration of time before young women actually wed has grown in recent years. A number of factors have contributed to this change, including the high cost of weddings, increasing access to higher education, and young women and men's desires for marriages with greater independence from their respective families. Religious leaders and community elders decry upward trends in premarital sex within this period of protracted adolescence in northern Nigeria. Family members intensely scrutinize young women's courtships. Parents may withhold information about contraception and reproduction from their daughters because they believe this knowledge will only further motivate them to have sex. Indeed, most northerners speak about sex in idiomatic terms rather than with explicit terminology, such as the "meeting" between men and women. Young women deeply fear accusations of defiance, greed, or immoral behavior. Furthermore, if their parents learn they have been sexually active, they face much greater sanctions than young men would. Family elders still play formidable roles in determining whether marriages can proceed.
Young men and women not only navigate the need to hide their relationships from their elders; they also hide many things from one another. A man may be married without his girlfriend's knowledge. He may borrow a car from a friend or even wear someone else's clothes when he visits her. He may lie about his job, income, and family. Women say that men are skilled in hiding their true marriage intentions. And they, in turn, hide stories of past relationships, sexual and reproductive experiences, and health issues, among other kinds of information. Women may also lie about their families, education, and homes to cover up the poverty in which they were raised. Few are candid about their desires, as well – especially if they have no interest in marrying these particular boyfriends.
While these acts of deception may seem like serious moral violations undermining the pursuit of "true" love, women know their partners are never fully honest with them. In fact, a woman would be taken aback if a man told her all of his shortcomings up-front. "It would never happen!" one of my friends said with a loud laugh when I asked her this exact question. If a man had no money or was looking for work, for example, she might feel compelled to help him. And yet, I heard countless stories about women who loaned their boyfriends money, only for these men to abandon them as soon as they received it. If a woman knows from the beginning that her prospective boyfriend is incapable of supporting her, she may reject him before they grow too close. However, if she learns these details after their relationship has matured, she might respond sympathetically. This same friend responded that she would then think seriously about whether she could still marry the man despite his flaws.
Women are also reluctant to share too many details about their personal lives when they first meet suitors. They fear men will use this information for malicious purposes. While their apprehension hints at larger inequalities, stories of deception may also be extremely funny. This "dance" between concealment and exposure is a normal experience among young people negotiating love and loss in northern Nigeria. In what follows, I trace women's efforts to project an image of respectability while exercising discretion in their exchanges with men.
CELINE
Gifts solidify social ties as part of specific spoken and unspoken exchanges between men and women. A man's relentless efforts to demonstrate his generosity to a woman he admires and her tacit acceptance of his gifts and attention reveal their mutual interest in one another. Women demonstrate their respectability through displays of timidity or shame (kunya). Shyness, in other words, is not necessarily a sign of their disinterest. During the summer of 2010, I met with a young woman named Celine. She was twenty-six years old and a Christian, originally from Bauchi State. Her narrative about the first time a young man proclaimed his love to her highlights these silent dynamics.
Celine began:
There was this time when I was young – just after starting secondary school. I was at boarding school. At the end of every month, families come and visit the students. So one guy entered the school. As I was walking to see my mother, he spotted me. He asked his younger sister, who was in my class, to get my attention. ... When I approached him, he said he just saw me passing and that he was in love with me.
I asked Celine what she did about this. She said:
I was ashamed! It was the first time a boy talked to me ... I told him, I am coming back. Then I ran away! I went back to the hostel where I lived and thought about it some more ... I reconsidered and said, 'Okay.' When the guy's sister came back, she brought me some money from her brother ... I said that I did not want it and that she should return it to him.
"How much?" I asked. She thought for a moment, "That time it was 200 naira [$1.50]." I pressed her, "Was that a lot of money?"
It was a lot of money for a student. Then, over the next visiting day, the boy came again. He sent for me and I went to see him. He talked to me, but I could not say anything in response. I was so shy.
"How did he show you that he loves you? What did he say? What did he do?" I wanted to know.
He was a photographer. He snapped pictures of me and printed some of them. He gave me his own picture, too. When he came to see me, he would buy me something ... like juice, sweets, and so on. When I saw those things, I would be happy. There were other gifts, like money, and beautiful accessories such as bags, head ties, and shoes.
"So then what happened to him?" I followed up.
Once, he called me to his house. I went to see him and his father was at home. His father saw me, but he did not say anything. He took me into his room and we sat, again, just 'gisting' [chatting]. Then, the guy said, for the first time, that he wanted to do something. I refused because I was a virgin. I left the house. I was afraid. ... He continued to come to my house to see me, but I did not go to his house again. I just did not know what would happen there.
Like most women, Celine began her story of her first love by describing how her boyfriend found her. Surprised that men would just follow girls they admired without knowing anything about them, I asked another woman to explain. She said, if a man sees an attractive woman, he might ask around to see if anyone knows her. He will describe what she looks like, and her neighbors may give him her address. In other instances, one of his friends might give him the number and address of a girl he should meet and he will attempt to locate her. Women hesitate to acknowledge men's attention – initially running away or even denying their gifts, in Celine's case. Most people, in fact, would read these passive communication and body practices as a display of her good character or upbringing.
One-sided conversations, where men talk while women listen, are not uncommon. In fact, by declining to speak to this suitor, I think Celine implied that she was interested in him. "Whatever he says," one friend told me, "is cool by her." The man might begin by telling her, "I like you," and then ask her a few questions. If she is afraid to speak, she would say quickly, "No, you first." The man would give details about himself: the place where he currently lives and where he was born. He could describe his work, such as the name of the business or organization. If he works in a market, he might say what he sells and where he travels. He would also tell her about his family, such as how many siblings he has and whether he was the first or last born or somewhere in the middle.
After speaking for a while, he might ask her again to tell him about herself. If she still does not want to talk, he would continue to ask her questions and she could just nod or shake her head. He might then invite her to have lunch with him. A quiet, young woman like Celine would probably not agree to go initially. But, she would accept gifts, such as juice or biscuits, and thank the young man. She would then show off these items to her friends and they would gossip for hours about him. Gifts provide women the first sign that their boyfriends have feelings for them.
Many women I know claim that they were not aware of their boyfriends' sexual intentions while they were first being courted. Nonetheless, most acknowledged that young men were also motivated to find partners with whom they could have sex. Thus, while Celine claimed to be surprised by her boyfriend's sexual advance in his room, I still suspect that she knew or had a sense that physical intimacy was a possibility, if she expressed interest.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Unseen Things by Kathryn A. Rhine. Copyright © 2016 Kathryn A. Rhine. Excerpted by permission of Indiana University Press.
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Table of Contents
Introduction: Things Unseen
1. First Loves
2. Twice Married
3. Dilemmas of Disclosure
4. Intimate Ethics
5. Hope
Conclusion: Evidence and Substance
Notes
Bibliography
Index
What People are Saying About This
The Unseen Things is a collection of poignant narratives documenting how HIV positive women in northern Nigeria maintain hope and assert agency while living with a highly stigmatized disease. This is an ethnographic masterpiece, detailing how women embody normalcy, particularly as they seek marriage partners in the aftermath of their diagnosis. The book is especially innovative in its rich detail about desire, pleasure and love, and the strategies men and women use to reconstitute relationships after testing positive for HIV. Among the provocative themes embedded in women's accounts is the currency of secrets in the moral economy of gender and kin relations. Rhine identifies the creative ways women attempt to carry out social goals using silence, lies, and indirect speech. The voices of these women speak to the centrality of hope in their pursuit of health, love, marriage, children, and prosperity, often against barriers of structural inequality.