Detoothing

Over the past year, there has been a long running campaign against cross-generational sex in Uganda. This is a picture of one of the more memorable billboards adorning Kampala, highlighting the problem in stark and unambiguous terms.

In his amusing ethnography entitled "How to be a Ugandan" the writer and journalist Joachim Buwembo describes a number of stereotypical Ugandans, including "sex worker". This chapter describes the nature of cross-generational relationships between men and women as being mutually beneficial. An older man befriends a young woman (often a University student) and, in exchange for his gifts and financial support, she becomes his willing mistress. This arrangement did not prevent her from having other boyfriends, nor was it expected to last beyond her student years. However, in recent years, the social acceptance of cross-generational sex has been challenged, in particular through the spread of HIV/AIDS. There is currently a radio advertisement which uses a HIV+ man as an example of why it is so important to "get off the sexual network". Regrettably, however, it takes a great deal more than advertising to change behavioural norms, especially in a country with rampant poverty.

The fact is that many (if not most) young women are subject both to poverty, and to peer pressure to look good, to wear fashionable clothes, to make regular changes to their hairstyles, to furnish their rooms with new consumer durables....... and this requires a source of income. “Detoothing” is a term used by young Ugandan women to mean getting as much financial reward from a man while successfully eluding sex. It is an expression unique to Uganda, to the best of my knowledge. I haven’t heard it used anywhere else I have lived and worked. At least according to the newspapers, it is a fairly common occurrence, often ending badly. Some studies have apparently found that many adolescent girls believe that rape is an acceptable response by men to having been “detoothed” - which is a deeply worrying finding.

On an individual level, detoothing seems rather ridiculous, as opposed to harmful. There is always something faintly amusing (in a rather unpleasant schadenfreude way) about older men pursuing young women with gifts and being disappointed. But in reality it reflects badly on both parties and is certainly not a positive social trend.

However, when there are so many examples of similar behaviour that pervade Ugandan society, it is perhaps no wonder that detoothing is regarded as good sport. Detoothing, at a macro-level, goes by many other names: bribery, corruption, graft, but it pretty much amounts to the same thing. Getting something for nothing. A de-linking in the relationship between financial reward and hard work. To a large extent, I believe that one of the principal factors driving the detoothing culture is the influence of donor organisations, who offer financial and technical support for worthy goals, but all too often allow themselves to turn a blind eye to waste, pilferage and inefficiency in the implementation of their vision of development.

It would of course be wrong to describe donors as being detoothed. It would be more accurate to refer to the process as “milking”. But just as older men are willing accomplices in their own detoothing – in search of a new and exciting sexual partner - so too often are representatives of donor organizations willing accomplices in corruption. The problem is that it isn't really in anyone's interests (apart from the anonymous and remote tax payer, part of whose taxes go towards the aid budget) to expose inefficiency and corruption, just as it's not really in the detoother's best interests - or those of her victim's - to publicise the event.

In the words of the radio advertisement encouraging us off the sexual network, "this is not good".