Exchange Is Not Robbery
More Stories of an African Bar Girl
- Contents
- Review Quotes

Prologue
Procedures to Protect Identities
A Note on the Text
Part 1: The Life in Ouaga
1. A Stranger at Home
Love That Makes One Sick
The Story of Woman
Getting an Identity Card
Virginity as a Fatal Disease
2. Working Girls
Working at La Tringle
Mama Gets a Boyfriend
The Village Nightclub
Mama Amma and Her Two Boyfriends
Limata and Her Old Man
The Short Big Man Who Liked to Dance
Part 2: The Human Face of Neocolonialism
3. Fucking French People
The French Nightclub
The French Ashawos
The Godfather
Not Crazy, Just Stupid
4. Konkonsa Research
Mr. Heh-heh-heh
The Belgian Prisoner
Interrogations
Hope
Shetu and Philippe
The Trouble with Frogs
Part 3: Hawa Contextualizes Her Life
5. Papa’s Sickness
Transition: Money Matters
Country Roads at Night
The First Useless Child
6. The Big Fight in the Family
The Two Wives
The Big Fight
Interlude: Big Brother
The Big Fight (Conclusion)
7. Life with Father
Issahaku and the Fulani Thieves
Papa’s Mouth
Children Who Steal
Tales of Groove
How Papa Managed
8. Village Comedies
The Sense of Villagers
Introduction to Western Civilization
A Strange Case at the Chief’s Court
How Children Get Sense
Good and Bad Strangers
Special Tea
Pro-pro Ghana Babies
Papa and the Tigernut Lady
Special Agent
9. Young Love in the Village
The Sister Who Refused Marriage
Marrying Sisters
Escape to Bobo
Further Varieties of Village Seduction
A Village Courtship
Catching Chickens
The Sweetness of Villages
Part 4: African Independence
10. Problems of Multiculturalism
Stuck in the Village
Ten and a Half Languages
Undercover Research
I Could Sell Her in Accra
11. Babes in the Woods
The Smell of a Place
Passage by Contract
Ghana Girls in Ouaga
Togo Girls in Ouaga
A Greenhorn
12. The Ashawo Alternative
Women for Themselves
The Patience of a Mossi Mistress
Who Wants to Live in an Institution?
The Issue of an Issue
Serial Monogamy
Private Ashawo
13. Sex Stories from The Life
Not a Captain of Sexing
The Dilemma of Big Pricks
Limata’s Boyfriend
Ginger for Sex Workers
The Italian Man with a Prick Problem
14. The Game
Something like a Thief
The Poor Man Who Tore Limata’s Dress
Customer Relations
Popularity Party
Revenge of the Men
The Price of Champagne
Glossary
"John Chernoff’s books are important and passionate social documents that show how Hawa and many of her fellow citizens are capable, socially advanced and wry survivors; the challenge left to readers is to ask why these qualities in adversity are so necessary, and how things should be changed to enable ordinary Africans to enjoy the freedom they deserve."
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