The immigrant story is a well-known one with Brick Lane and White Teeth recounting immigration to the UK, and innumerable stories of immigration to the US.  With The Association of Foreign Spouses, Marilyn Heward Mills takes a different tack on the immigrant experience–white European women moving to turbulent Ghana for the love of their Ghanaian men.  This is no story of white colonialism.  Ghana of the 80′s is not Alexander McCall Smith’s comfortable Bostawana, full of Mma Ramotswe catching naughty people and red bush tea in every chapter.  This is 198o’s Ghana, which has had three coups in eight years, shortages of everything, and no trains to run on the railroad tracks the British left behind them.  The Western wives find themselves struggling against cultural norms that take affairs and out-of-wedlock children in their stride.  They run out of tea and nice coffee is a luxury.  The TV is censored, houses have to be walled and gated, the water and telephone lines are unreliable, and armed soldiers and bribes at checkpoints are the norm for a trip to the beach.  Most of all, they struggle with every immigrant’s trouble, being different, being from somewhere else.

The women of The Association of Foreign Spouses are:

Margit, a German woman married to a doctor who finds his plans to bring medical care to poor and needy constantly undercut by his budget.  Margit has no time for what she feels is the inefficiency of the people she sees around her and prefers to animals to people.

Yelena, who traveled from Russia to Ghana following her lover’s empty promises and bringing their twin sons so that they could know their father and the Ghanaian part of themselves.

Dhalia, a West Indian Brit dealing with the tatters of her dreams and marriage, and her increasingly violent husband.

And Eva, the main character, satisfied in her marriage to a good man, an architect who spent his teens and early twenties in the UK, with three beautiful children and her garden, her pride and joy.  She thinks her biggest problem is her interfering mother-in-law, but finds instead that her marriage is not as solid as it once seemed.

All of them moved to Ghana and didn’t quite find what they had hoped, yet despite the indignities, the discomfort, and the constant reminders of being a foreigner, even after 10, 12, 15 years of living in Ghana, and wanting to go home and eat mashed potatoes and have a white Christmas, none of them really want to leave.  Not for good.  Finding your home in a foreign culture, that is the immigrant story.

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