Field notes Date: 15 June 2012 Time: 13h00 Place: My Classroom
I noticed during the focus group discussions that Azande did not speak about dating or boyfriends. The other girls did, speaking excitedly about dating, love, kissing, fights and presents. But I was told by a teacher that she had a boyfriend! I decided that I would ask bring up the topic around boys and boyfriends in an individual interview. The interview is held in my classroom which seems to be the most private space today. We seat ourselves across each other, she sits on my chair and I sit on a learner’s desk. I have purchased two bottles of coke for
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Azande and myself. I thought that sipping a coke whilst talking would create a more comfortable aura that would be more inviting to conversation. I ask her if she has a boyfriend. She responds that she had a boyfriend but ‘not now’. I ask her to tell to about him.
Azande described the inception and foundation of her relationship as follows:
Azande: I was selling… my Mother was making vetkoek [deep fried buns]… she tell (told) me to go house to house… door to door and sell… He was my biggest customer… He started telling me that he love[d] me…He asked me to be his
girlfriend. And he would give me money...
P.J.: How much?
Azande: About R20 or R15. [$US1—1.40]
P.J.: So you went to him because you wanted money as well?
Azande: Yes. Yes… because I did not have anything to get in school… he was going to give me money.
P.J.: How old was he?
Azande: About twenty something.
Azande did not see her relationship as exploitive, and did not recognize her vulnerability. The
declaration of his love for her and his desire to have her as his girlfriend led her to believe that the relationship was romantic. However, whilst she accepts his proposal, her acceptance was underpinned by the awareness that the relationship would also bring her financial rewards. Her consent also suggested an active engagement with her sexuality and the knowledge that her body was desirous. She established her sexual power in the realisation that she could trade sex for money and use her body as a tool. However, whilst Azande subverted the power differentials in their relationship by deciding whether she would or would not engage in sex, depending on his ability to provide her with money. Her agency was eroded by her “boyfriend’s” manipulation of her poverty stricken status ‘he was my biggest customer’ and age. Monetary exchange was the foundation for the inception of the
relationship, and this is what guided her behaviour within it. This is noted below:
P.J.: What if he did not have any money?
Azande: I wouldn’t go to [have sex with] him!
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Her acceptance of money, however, reinforces the discourse around the materiality of sex, masculinity, and male entitlement to sex—and to the female body as a commodity for their sexual pleasure. However, Azande’s belief that her “boyfriend” loved her suggests that she also viewed the money as “gift giving,” as a way of showing that he loved and cared for her.
As established earlier, other studies have found that gift giving is not unexpected in sexual relationships, but Azande’s age, and her complicity in the relationship, makes it evident that she coupled sex with money: She was clear that if he had no money, she would not “go to him”—and this also suggests that she was wily enough to have established his (albeit meagre) financial status prior to sleeping with him. She colluded in the unequal distribution of gender power, accepting money in return for sex, thereby reproducing a problematic sexual culture that helped sustain gender inequality in transactional sexual relationships. The gains from her relationship were minimal: R15–20 is barely enough money to buy simple items such as cool drink or a pie at school, yet she pursued this money. However, disadvantaged by her age and poverty, she was oblivious to the subtle coercion that played out in her relationship with her
“boyfriend”. This is noted in her meetings with him that took place under the cover of darkness. Clearly, Azande knew that her meetings must take place out of sight and going to her grandmother’s house to watch television provided a perfect foil. While Azande’s youth, age, gender and poverty provided the opportunity for sexual manipulation, it was also clear from the way she described their meetings that she knew her relationship was illicit. For example:
P.J.: When did you meet with him?
Azande: In the night, when I went to my grandmother’s house… I used to watch Generations (a local television series) at my mother’s house and when I was going, he is calling me… there was bush on this side and this side… So nobody could see.
She explained that she was thus able to meet him without her mother’s knowledge, and that what initially began as a relationship based on sexual exchange for money began to evolve into a romantic relationship and became increasingly complex and complicated in terms of enjoyment, sexual pleasure, and the exchange of money. This is also evident in her drawing: