“Marriage helps you settle down with one person, it saves you from chasing from one girl to another. It also makes you responsible, because you have someone to caution you, if you’re not doing right”.

For young men in Jinja (eastern Uganda), entering a relationship represents a step in a project of self-amelioration. Marriage, in their words, help “organise” a man’s life  - to make him serious, to teach him to “plan”. Relationships thus become projects of self-care, voluntarily embarked on, that turn young restless men in “organised” ones. 

“with marriage, you keep yourself away from problems like sickness [i.e. HIV/AIDS]; when you are together with your partner, there are many things you can avoid in your life. Also, when you are married you can develop yourself”

BIO Anna Baral’s research explores intimacy, love and marriage as forms of “projects” that enable the imagination of better future selves. It is based in Jinja (eastern Uganda), where love projects often involve migration and mobility for work and tourism. Aim of the research is to understand how geographical mobility and ideas of “elsewhere” inform couples’ emotional and material projects