“You can record this conversation. I am not scared. I always tell them that if you want to be with me, you need to have money. They have used my body for far too long, so now any foreign woman, either from Europe or America, who comes to be intimate with me, has to pay,” Hamad (not his real name) said.
Transactional relationships between foreign female tourists and young Zanzibari men have been a sensitive, contentious issue subjected to sociological research and journalistic investigation for decades.
Economic inequality often gives foreign women more bargaining power against local young men, dictating the direction the relationship will lead.
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