ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the reasons for shifts in marriage practices in northern Mafia Island, a rural area of Tanzania. Women stated a preference for marriage to a man with no other wife, but would agree to a polygynous marriage if there seemed little alternative. Women's views of polygyny tended to be somewhat different to those of men. Virginity was considered important in the first marriage of a woman, and evidence in the form of the blood-stained bridal sheet was exhibited to relatives after the consummation. While most men and women will marry at some stage in their lives, the trend is likely to be one of adults of both sexes spending at least part of their adulthood in the single state. In some of the old coastal towns, including those on Zanzibar, wealthier men would have supported their wives economically, and the latter often practised some form of seclusion, including the wearing of the local form of veil, the 'buibui'.
