ABSTRACT
Notwithstanding the fact that young women are primarily drawn to bar work out of economically defined needs, a search for ‘money’ or a ‘job’ as they themselves phrase it-bar work being one of the few job opportunities for uneducated and penniless women-the contention of this chapter is that by engaging in salaried work there is also an element of wanting a more ‘independent’ and ‘exciting’ life. The Swahili word uhuru (from huru emancipation, free from slavery) is synonymous with ‘freedom’ and used with particular reference to a country’s independence from colonial rule (for example, Uhuru ya Tanzania). The term is also used colloquially with reference to individual or personal freedom and frequently employed by the women of this study for why they ‘broke away’ (-pata uhuru) to come to Namanga. As they live singly away from
their kin, are financially autonomous and sexually not constrained by spouses, the life of bar women, concomitant with other single, incomeearning women, contrasts dramatically in terms of male control to that of married women (cf. Cooper 1995). The choice of women to live singly severely challenges male authority which, in large parts of East Africa, used to be rooted in a marriage institution giving men precedence over women.
