"Eyes Have No Curtains": The Moral Economy of Secrecy in Managing Love Affairs among Adolescents in Northern Tanzania in the Time of AIDS

This article concerns how the Meru in northern Tanzania manage their love affairs. It explores the cultural logic of secrecy in sexual life by focusing on how young people manage multiple and concurrent love affairs in a morally acceptable way, which, in turn, facilitates a thriving atmosphere for the spread of infection and disease. AIDS-prevention campaigns have not "simply" placed sexual life on the agenda, but have also made sexual life a public affair. Yet, although people's sexual life and their management of intimate relationships have become increasingly troubled with the AIDS epidemic, the campaigns have made little headway against the epidemic. Drawing on my longitudinal fieldwork, I will argue that HIV-prevention programs do not resonate with local practices and principles for managing intimate love affairs, including codes of secrecy, (sexual) "shame," and "respectability."