Why Akua is looking for Little Kwaku’s Father (07-06-13)
Kwaku is five years old but that is not his real name. His
mother is Akua and that is not her real name either but they are real people
and their story is real. Kwaku’s father has effectively abducted the child, but
Akua does not know what to do or where to turn for help. This is Akua’s story.
She has two children both with the same man. They lived as
man and wife although the man had not performed any rites. They come from
adjoining villages in the same district and had known each other “back home”
but their relationship had been formed in the hard setting of Accra’s unfriendly
suburbs. Let us call the man Emmanuel; he is a tradesman having learnt
carpentry and other crafts at various apprenticeships since he left school.
Emmanuel came to Accra in 2003 or 2004 to join his cousin who
had arrived two years earlier and stayed at Ashiaman. Akua also arrived a year
or so later but the two met and developed their friendship sometime in 2005.
They had a daughter in 2006 and little Kwaku followed two years later in 2008.
Their daughter, Amma is seven and the boy who is at the centre of this story’s
main sub-plot is five. After months of quarrelling, usually over money, the two
drifted apart with Akua unofficially but firmly and inevitably retaining
custody of the two children.
Emmanuel was an on-off father for a few months after the
on-off relationship kind of ended; he paid money for the partial upkeep of the
children as and when he was harassed by Akua, especially after he was rumoured to have taken up with another woman.
One day, or so it appears, Emmanuel
vanished from the lives of Akua and the children and he made sure to consign
his mobile phone number to the garbage heap of history. But Akua is a determined
woman and managed after months of hard detective work to get her hands on
Emmanuel’s new telephone number.
He said he was living in Kumasi after receiving Akua’s
surprise call. He explained that he had left Ashiaman under considerable
financial pressure but had now found employment in Kumasi and promised to do
his fatherly duty. Meanwhile, Akua’s mother had taken Amma with her to the
village, so Emmanuel came up with a suggestion: since Amma was struggling to
look after the boy, would it not be better if he took little Kwaku to live with
him in Kumasi? Akua said a firm no. Emmanuel used the new idea as a bargaining
chip. He would stop looking after the children altogether unless he Akua agreed
to given custody of Kwaku to him. She reluctantly agreed because she did not
want the entire clan blaming her if Emmanuel used her refusal as the excuse for
not looking after their children. One day Emmanuel suddenly came to Accra to
take the boy to Kumasi. That was the last time Akua saw her son or his father.
Three months ago, Emmanuel played a cruel trick on Akua who
had been pleading with him to allow her to pay a visit to her son. He agreed to
let her see him so Akua bought some nice things for Kwaku and set off for
Kumasi. She got there in the evening but by then Emmanuel had done it again;
his mobile phone had gone stone dead and has stayed dead up to this minute.
Akua stayed at the bus station overnight and continued her futile search for
her son the next day until she realised that Emmanuel had pointedly punished
her for wanting to see her son. What could Akua do? She returned to Accra a
dejected figure. No amount of cajoling and pleading with Emmanuel’s relatives
and friends has given her even a morsel of comfort.
On the face of it, Akua could have recourse to the law and
this is what I suggested when I got to know of her case. But she has spoken to
people who have tried the police route and they have persuaded her to the view
that it would be a waste of both money and time. She told me poignantly that “in
Ghana poor people have no rights”.
Akua is not alone in her predicament. Just by looking around
my own circle of friends and acquaintances, I am astounded at the high number
of women who have been left by their children’s fathers to look after the
children on their own. What is worse, it appears that this is a taboo subject
which is hardly addressed publicly. It is a question of family honour, someone
has suggested; families do not want to wash their dirty linen in public and so
while they try to support such women if they can, in reality most of them have no
real support and are on their own.
Emmanuel is not alone. The one good read reason Akua thinks
she was so badly treated in the Kumasi fiasco is that Emmanuel is living with
another woman, who if his relatives are to be believed, is also not his wife.
Emmanuel has moved on, at least in his own mind. As he sees it, he is looking
after Kwaku while Akua’s mother is looking after Amma in the village. That for
him is the end of the matter.
There are hundreds of thousands of children in such “domestic
limbo” who are denied full parental care by both parents; more importantly they
are left in the care of these young women who themselves are barely making a
living. These women feel trapped and do not know where to go. The Domestic
Violence and Victim Support Unit of the Police Service is often recommended to
such women to report their AWOL menfolk but this unit is probably not the most
appropriate institution for resolving such difficulties.
In many ways the Ghanaian state has abdicated its
responsibilities in the social sector as if to say that there should be no or
minimum public interference in people’s private lives. However, part of the
social contract by which we are governed expressly expects the state to protect
people even from their own weaknesses and follies.
The problem of fatherless children is an epidemic
in our society and we can no longer pretend the phenomenon does not exist. At
the same time it is neither correct nor enough to treat this as a moral issue
in which young mothers burdened with bringing up these children are cast in the
role of villains who “brought it on themselves”. Obviously the problem relates
to several other causative factors including unregulated rural to urban
migration, lack of proper educational opportunities, the need for decent
accommodation for young people, sex education and general solidarity and
fellow-feeling for one another in society. There are many causes of this
problem and the government would do well to commission a formal study into the
many dimensions of this problem.
In the meantime, somewhere in Kumasi, or more likely in one
of its suburban badlands, is a man who has effectively abducted his own son and
denied the child’s mother visiting rights. We have called him Emmanuel but we
could call him a hundred other names all of which he would answer to because
there are so many of such fathers. We have to find and HELP them to do their
duty, but where encouragement fails they have to be compelled by law.
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