I heard the rumors among my parents when I was writing the BECE. Mom asked my dad, “Has he agreed that Akosua should come to him?” My dad nodded his head and said I would leave the house the very day I finished the exams. My brother knew about it, so he asked if he would be going with me. I told him I didn’t know where I was going or who I was going with.
We never traveled. All our lives, we stayed in the confines of Asin Fosu. We could visit an aunt or an uncle who also lived in town, and that was it.
When the time came, I asked my dad where I was going. He answered, “You’ll know when we get there. He’s a very kind man. You’ll be able to continue your education when you stay with him.” I asked, “So I’m not coming back again?” He told me I could come only for a visit because where I was going was my new home.
We traveled at dawn but got there very late in the afternoon. I was reading the road signs, trying to figure out where we were and where we were going. I slept in between. By the time I woke up, we had arrived. I scanned around, looking for a signpost that would tell me where we were. I saw Aflao. I asked my dad, “Are we in Aflao?” He didn’t answer.
When we got to the man’s house, I recognized him immediately. He was my dad’s friend who came around once in a while. I smiled and he hugged me. The two of them went in and left me outside. I could see them but not what they were saying. Dad slept over, but when I woke up in the morning, he was gone.
His name is George. I wondered why he was living alone and what role I had to play in his house. All the people around spoke Ewe, which I couldn’t speak, so it was hard to talk or have a friend.
A week or so later, this man tried to sleep with me. He was doing his best to talk me into accepting to sleep with him. I said no. No matter what he said, I told him I was too young to do that and my dad wouldn’t be pleased. He said, “Your dad brought you to me to marry you. He knows this was going to happen; that’s why he brought you here.”
My heart started racing. He was very gentle with me that night. He didn’t force it through, but days later when I continued saying no, he took it by force and I broke down. For days, I stayed in bed while he brought me drugs and food. I didn’t want to get up for him to do it with me again. I wanted him to believe the next time would kill me so he would leave me alone, but a week or so later, it happened again.
I needed to talk to someone, but who? They spoke French and Ewe. I regretted I hadn’t taken my French lessons seriously.
There was this woman who had a child my age. We could only exchange looks but not say a word to each other. I started drawing close to the woman and then her daughter. Her daughter could speak a little English. I couldn’t speak proper English anyway, so we added hand gestures to make our conversation full.
George was a teacher. He warned me not to be free or talk to anyone, but when he was away, I went to the woman. When her daughter returned from school, I played and did hand gestures with her. By that time, I was getting used to George sleeping with me. It was no longer physically painful but emotionally troubling and painful as well. I knew the man was lying about the marriage because that wasn’t what my dad told me. I needed to talk to someone who could hear me.
When George realized I was getting free with the woman, he started locking me in the house anytime he was going to school. I said I was lonely. He said he would provide whatever I needed and I didn’t need anyone. Apart from sleeping with me, he treated me very well. He cooked for us. He did chores with me. He bought me new dresses I had nowhere to wear them to.
A year went by slowly. My results had come, but I didn’t even know how I did. I asked if he had heard from my dad and when I was going to school. He told me he wanted me to go to school in Togo and their academic calendar wasn’t right for me to go. I cried myself to sleep every night. I missed my brother. I missed my friends. I got homesick.
One Saturday morning, he sent me to buy something from the street. I met the woman and her daughter. We talked for a while and the girl pointed at another lady she said was her big sister. She was Lucy. She asked me in impeccable English if I could speak Twi. I started speaking it and she joined me. She lived in Ghana and had come to visit. I knew my savior had arrived.
If I didn’t go back early, George would come looking for me, so I told her I would see her again and went back home. I would later go for a walk and try to see her, but she wouldn’t come around. She had gone to Togo to buy clothes. The whole week I sneaked in to see her, but she wasn’t around. I gave up until I accidentally bumped into her on the street.
I poured my heart out to her. She narrated it in Ewe to her mom, and her mom was shocked. I told her I wanted to run with her when she was going back. She lived in Accra, but I told her I didn’t mind. “Once I get to Accra, I can find my way home.” The woman asked if she should report to the police. And I said, “Naaa, I just want to go home.”
On Monday, when George was in school and I was locked in, Lucy came around. She helped me through a window and then threw my little bag over the wall and climbed out. That was my final day in Aflao. I smelled freedom and it made me drowsy, so I slept. Lucy had her hand on me throughout the journey.
While in Accra, I couldn’t wait to go home to tell my dad everything that happened to me, but Lucy asked me, “What if indeed it was your dad’s plan to give you out in marriage? Don’t you think he would take you back to Aflao?” I convinced her it wasn’t the case. She gave me her telephone number and bought a phone card for me and said, “Call me when you get home and things get worse.”
It got worse indeed. My dad beat me like I was a thief he caught at night. “Why did you run away? You’ve grown huge wings to be able to do that? This place is no longer your home. I will take you back.”
When the storm calmed, I asked my mom, “Do you hate me this much to sell me to a man? Do you know what I went through?”
We were poor. Very poor, but we could eat. My dad was a Christian who looked up to God for grace. I wondered how he could do that to me. But my mom told me, “You won’t go again. I’ll talk to your dad.”
It turned into a huge physical fight between them. “She would go.” “She won’t go anywhere.” My dad would slap me at will wherever he met me. My mom gave me money and said, “You’ll go to your aunt in Mankessim tomorrow morning. Run away before your dad gets money to take you back.”
I went to my aunt—a no-nonsense woman who already knew my story. She told me, “If your dad tries it again, I will give him to the police.”
There was a calm that lasted for a few months. One day, my mom came to Mankessim with my brother and her life belongings. She said she had left my father. They were divorced because of me. My aunt supported her, asking her why she had stayed so long in the marriage. Later, my mom got her own place and we moved in with her. I started going to school. I was two years late, but it didn’t bother me.
I called Lucy when I was in Mankessim. I told her everything. She asked me, “How old are you?” “Seventeen,” I answered. “And you’ve gone through all that? You look like thirty.”
Lucy became my elder sister. I went to her on vacations. She gave me money and bought provisions for me. She even helped pay my fees at some point. She was still a sister to me while I was in nursing school. She taught me how to make money through selling. I completed nursing school but didn’t become a nurse because of her. She made me chase money so I could help at home.
She Would Introduce Me To Rich Men Who’ll Give Me Money
My dad is still alive but doesn’t talk to any of us. I don’t think I’ve woken up one day to think about him or consider building bridges. In my mind, I don’t have a father, and he also doesn’t have a daughter. He killed my childhood, and it took the benevolence of a stranger to bring me back to life, so why would I go to the same man who did that to me? Even his funeral, I won’t attend.
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𝗙𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗼𝘄 𝗢𝘂𝗿 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁𝘀𝗔𝗽𝗽 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗹 𝗧𝗼 𝗚𝗲𝘁 𝗟𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗡𝗲𝘄𝘀 𝗔𝘀 𝗜𝘁'𝘀 𝗗𝗿𝗼𝗽!
