Marriages and mobility in akan societies: Disconnections and connections over time and space

Abstract

At the Central Market in Kumasi in Ghana I befriended two women, Auntie Emi and Sister Afia, both in their mid-thirties and living apart from their husbands who were in the United States. Auntie’s husband had left her soon after they got married and the birth of their now ten-year-old son. In the first two years, he sent money but then stopped doing so and she had heard nothing for five years. The two women expressed their longing for a new husband and a second child but were faced with the situation that, as married women, they could not go out in the evening for a beer without becoming the target of gossip.