In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

168 6 Going Public ModernWives,Men’sInfidelity,andMarriage inEast-CentralUganda Shanti Parikh It was Isabella’s usually calm demeanor that made her public rampage against her husband and his lover compelling gossip.1 After hearing news that her husband would be taking his lover to Kasokoso (the outdoor drinking area in Iganga Town), Isabella had decided it would be a perfect opportunity to catch the couple “red-handed,” a phrase popularized by Uganda’s tabloid media to refer to catching someone in an illicit sexual act. As the rumor went: Isabella had sat in the bushes surrounding the drinking area for almost an hour, waiting for the couple’s arrival. Once her husband and his mistress had been seated outside one of the grassthatched drinking huts, an enraged Isabella had darted from her hiding place and violently attacked the mistress with a long-handled cooking spoon while screaming profanities and accusations at the startled couple. The chaotic scene had drawn quite a crowd as the husband and other evening drinkers tried to pull the incensed wife off the mistress who was subsequently rushed to the hospital with blood dripping down her face. The sheepish husband had returned home after several days in hopes that Isabella’s temper had cooled. The story quickly spread through town. Since Charles’s return from military duty on the Uganda-Zaire border about a year earlier, rumors had been circulating about his sexual trysts with women in town. I, however, had not heard of the rumors when I began my interviews with Charles.2 During our interviews, he repeatedly declared his love and appreciation for his wife, which I had no reason to doubt. When I asked him what he does to show his wife love, he included the English phrase “being faithful,” which is part of Uganda’s well-known “ABC” HIV prevention mantra (“Abstinence, Be faithful, and Condom use”) and a central vow in Christian marriages. His answers about love and fidelity demonstrate the flexible meanings and demonstrations of love, and how in some situations love for a wife can co-exist with extramarital relation- Going Public 169 ships with little conflict. Similar to findings in Smith’s chapter in this book, many residents in Iganga are tolerant about men’s extramarital sexuality as long as it is conducted within acceptable parameters and in ways that do not threaten their economic and emotional bond with wives and their own social reputation. Isabella had surely suspected her husband of having dalliances since returning from the military, I was told by several mutual friends. During an interview earlier in the month, Isabella had spoken hesitantly when asked if she had ever suspected her husband of having an extramarital lover. “It’s possible,” she had responded quietly, after a thoughtful pause, “for I don’t know everything Charles does or everywhere he goes.” But like many respectable wives, Isabella had not taken public action or spoken easily about his affairs to her friends, deciding instead to preserve her reputation as a respectable middle-class woman as well as the reputation of her marriage.3 Over time, however, Isabella could no longer willfully ignore her husband’s brazen indiscretions without risking that her public silence would be taken as an endorsement of his behaviors or as her own weakness. If taken too far, such nonresponse would have eventually raised questions about her own self-respect and desire to protect herself, both of which are promoted as constructions of modern selves in development discourse and public health campaigns in Uganda. When Charles’s philandering exceeded acceptable parameters for men’s extramarital sexuality and became too blatant to ignore, the normally reserved and restrained Isabella was forced to react. Had Isabella been a poorer woman in the village or simply an ababulidho (common woman)—who, it is assumed, have less social prestige or respectability to lose—or a woman with an already sullied social reputation, her public outrage against her husband and his lover would not have been such a tantalizing piece of gossip. But, as explored in this chapter, public demonstrations are now considered less and less socially improper, even for middle-class women, and are becoming a useful and sometimes necessary strategy for them to maintain their own reputations as modern women. While it might be tempting to wonder if this research project prompted Isabella to become more vigilant about her husband’s infidelity, I doubt that it had such a powerful effect. Rather, as I demonstrate...

Share