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Marriages and Mobility in Akan Societies: Disconnections and Connections over Time and Space

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The Social Life of Connectivity in Africa

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.

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Authors
  1. Astrid Bochow
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. African Studies Center in Leiden, The Netherlands

    Mirjam de Bruijn (senior researcher, and Professor of African Studies (Contemporary History and Anthropology of Africa) & Rijk van Dijk (anthropologist) (senior researcher, and Professor of African Studies (Contemporary History and Anthropology of Africa) &  (anthropologist)

  2. Leiden University, The Netherlands

    Mirjam de Bruijn (senior researcher, and Professor of African Studies (Contemporary History and Anthropology of Africa) (senior researcher, and Professor of African Studies (Contemporary History and Anthropology of Africa)

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© 2012 Mirjam de Bruijn and Rijk van Dijk

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Bochow, A. (2012). Marriages and Mobility in Akan Societies: Disconnections and Connections over Time and Space. In: de Bruijn, M., van Dijk, R. (eds) The Social Life of Connectivity in Africa. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137278029_7

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