Chapter 2 explores the genealogy and meanings of supi, a polyvalent term for an intimate girlfriend in coastal Ghana. It distinguishes between supi as an intimate same-sex discourse emerging from the bonds between schoolgirls and adult same-sex lovers, and public representations of supi, including derogatory cinematic portrayals of “supi-supi lesbians” bonded to the water spirit Mami Wata. Focusing on the recollections of women of different generations, the chapter examines the notions of gift exchange and the homosocial spaces by which supi practices are informed. In these narratives supi is framed as an introduction to the ways in which same-sex passion can be known, negotiated, and celebrated in disguise. Invoked as a form of knowledge, supi amounts to an intimate sozializing and learning process. Despite the tacit character of the knowledge at stake, it is constitutive of the bonding networks of those articulate same-sex desiring women identifed as “knowing women.”

Chapter 4 examines motherhood as a metaphor for intimate bonds forged across considerable differences in age and social and economic status. It takes up from the mother-daughter terminology deployed among female football players who consider each other “team mothers” and “team daughters” and praise themselves for having a market woman as their “sugar mama.” This requires a closer look at the world of female football, at the figure of the market woman, and at the materiality of love. The chapter touches on the reciprocities as well as the dynamics of exploitation and inequality within relationships that include a “sugar mum” and a “small girl” or an older “giver” and a younger “receiver.” Through practices such us giving each other to potential lovers, friendships are probed and tested. While these circular practices limit the togetherness of twosomes, they also contain and bind them into informal same-sex bonding collectivities in which love emerges as mode of sociality.