Surviving Pain and Finding Love Again

Had I not moved out, I would have persisted in living in such miserable conditions. My maternal grandmother sent me to an orphanage where my parents were no longer alive. Along with six siblings, I was raised by a single mother. We all together in a small room, and food was often a scarcity involving a lot of theorizing. Of all the men who were my mother, my father was the only one who really cared for us, although he died tragically at a very young age.

After his death, survival was the daily fight. We lived on the food our relatives threw away, often timing our visits around the meals of the day to make sure we could eat. The constant conflict implied very little parental supervision in our house.

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My older sisters started relationships with men who would take care of them financially, while my mother had to live with the father of our youngest child to make a living and look after my third child, who was disabled. She did many low-paying jobs, but they all together did not give her the break she needed.

I was about six years old when my mother decided to send me to live with my grandmother’s younger sister, a well-off retired civil servant who lived in the city. She enrolled me in school and got me an NGO-supported sponsorship that supported poor children. They paid for my school fees, medical costs, etc. until I turned 22. I am extremely thankful for that chance.

Even with such help, I still was treated like a servant in her home. I was selling things on the street at age seven, and I was doing whatever was necessary to make some money. I was a victim of different types of mistreatment. You wouldn’t think this lady was my grandmother; she would punish me physically no matter how small the issue was. She would not give me any money for school, but at the same time would force me to sell after class.

She was always pointing out to me how lucky I was to have her as my caregiver and she would often say, “You’d be pregnant like your sisters if it wasn’t for me.” She was using my mother's past against me, enjoying every moment when I felt unwanted and like a burden.

Home was not enough of a punishment; she also came to my school every term to report me to my teachers, badmouthing me even to those who truly cared about my well-being.

Things got even harder at Senior High School. Most mornings, I had no money for school. On the very few occasions I received something, I had to stand outside her room for almost 30 minutes just to get 4 cedis while being constantly insulted. The little tips I got from men flirting with me and from the good-hearted people who helped me without expecting anything in return were the ones that kept me going.

I recall grinding for WASSCE when, out of the blue, my grandmother turned up at school, went straight to the headmaster, and tried to report me for coming late home. She was trying to put me down in front of everybody. The good thing was that the headmaster did not allow her to pull off her tricks.

Heaving a sigh of relief, she went out of the office. The headmaster called me in, and he was surprised to find out that I was the one implicated by her complaint for being late coming home. When I told him my story, he was moved with pity. He said, “If you feel you can pass the exams, stay on the campus after school and study. But if you think you can’t, then go home when classes end.”

Following him, I stayed to study before going home to sell.

My mother was not part of my life during that period. She never came to the city to see me, and my grandmother, who was in charge, wouldn’t let me go to her either, saying that my mother had “entrusted” me to her. I was not even checked on by my older siblings, although some of them lived a few towns away.

Our paths finally crossed again in 2018 when I completed SHS, and my uncle took me back to my boustead. The living there was a thousand times better. He took me in like a daughter, treated me with love, and gave me the confidence to become who I am. Only a handful of people even knew that I wasn’t his biological child.

My mother is no more, but two years prior to her death, we started to interact much more often. She would call whenever she was in need of something and I would help her as much as I could. Unfortunately, she passed away just a few days before my wedding. But up to that tragic loss, she worked hard to seek forgiveness for her past and those efforts were greatly appreciated by me.

It was at her funeral that I reestablished my connections to my brothers and sisters as well as my aunts. The whole thing has made me a very introverted person and I struggle to show my feelings, even to my family. I am trying to change this, and doing so by taking it one day at a time.

—Ameen

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