By Solomon Mensah
 |
| The Family's Mansion |
Food, water and shelter
are said to be the basic human needs. Any human being in short of one of these
lives a life turned upside down. In the heart of La, a suburb of Accra, an old woman,
her daughter, and her (old woman’s) grandchildren - have been living under a giant
nim tree for close to ten years now.
Regardless of the
prevailing weather conditions, sleeping on mats under the tree at night in an
open space is the only option for the family. Their few belongings they have
acquired are either washed away by rains or swept away by merciless winds.
It is 6:00am, aged
Agnes Akutse, laundry woman, and her family are up from bed with each one of
them partaking in getting their house chores done. Madam Akutse folds the mat
on which they slept and finds it a resting place. Her daughter, Janet Agbedam, a
laundry assistant, holds a broom in hand and sweeps around. Five year old
Abigail Akutse helps by shoveling the gathered rubbish into a dustbin.
Two of Madam Agnes’
grandchildren are already dressing up for school while the other younger ones
are also preparing to join their colleagues at the Presbyterian Primary and
Junior High Schools.
This morning’s routine
has being taking place in this open but choked space for the past nine years.
On this same ground open ground is the Family’s bedroom, living hall and
kitchen. The family’s ‘mansion,’ a tree tall enough to be seen when one is
looking at it from the Fraga Oil fuel station across the road.
“We have been living here for nine years now.
When it rains at night, we go knocking at people’s doors to find a place to
lodge,” Madam Agnes Akutse, a Togolese native, reveals.
She says that when it
rains in the morning, the Family manages to sleep by spreading rubber sheets on
the muddy floor in the evening before putting their mats on it. “When it rains
in the morning, we sleep here in the evening. We buy charcoal and set fire in a
coal pot beside the children to keep them warm.”
Madam Agnes Akutse says
her husband died about 17 years ago after they migrated to Ghana. Eventually, they
were ejected from the room the family occupied, and they have been sleeping under
the nim tree since. The owner of the
plot on which the tree is will not allow them to erect any structure on it.
Thus the way they live.
Michael Nii Odoi and
Stephen Yemoh are the elderly grandchildren of Madam Agnes Akutse. They are
both graduates from Osu Salem High and Accra Business High Schools
respectively. For all the time in their lives, they have been competing for
space with the rest of the family under this tree that shelters them here at
La, not far away from the La Community Bank.
Michael, 23 years old,
was however fortunate to have been adopted by a good Samaritan who financed his
Senior High School education. He has asthma and had to battle the
cold at night during his Primary and Junior High School days before his
guardian came to his rescue.
“I dream of becoming a
journalist and would want to attend the Ghana Institute of Journalism but there
is no help coming my way,” Michael says.
Unlike Michael, his junior
brother Stephen Yemoh, 20, still lives with his mother and the rest of the
family in the shades of the nim tree. He showed me some cartoons he had drawn
telling me he wants to be a cartoonist. Stephen aspires to study graphic design,
but he will need financial support.
Their mother, Janet Agbedam,
says she got impregnated by Yemoh, a driver, during her basic school days,
rendering her “a school dropout.” She now has four children with him and a fifth
with another man. Yemoh, the father of the first four children, “ended the
marriage a long time ago and does not cater for the children.”
Janet says “He has gone
in for another woman and cares for us no more. He beats me whenever I visit him
so I have stopped visiting him. He has refused DOVSU orders to pay an amount of
money. I again reported him to the DOVSU but has yielded no results.”
Apart from the bad feeling
of living under a tree, Janet’s third born, 14 year old Samuel Yemoh has
additional burdens. He needs books and other materials to study in school.
At night, a number of
Frytol Cooking Oil gallons are placed around the family’s mats to serve as barrier
to the wind. One mosquito net is tired to a dry line to support it in position
and it is gently tucked under the mats. Janet Agbedam says she is scared at
times for their lives living in the open space.
To prevent – or cure - sicknesses
contracted as a result of sleeping in the cold, the family boils some of the
leaves of the nim tree under which they sleep as medicine since none of the
family members has the National Health Insurance coverage.
I sought the whereabout
of driver Yemoh and found him in his family house at La to speak with him for
his take on the allegations made against by him his ex-wife. Initially, he
foams at his mouth, hearing I came to ask about his children; soon enough, he sits
me down to talk to me.
“It is not that I have
fathered the children and left them to their fate,” starts the 42-year old
driver. “It is because of their disobedience. At first, I was not working but
now I am a trotro driver and I asked the elderly children to come and work with
me as conductors when they finished SHS but they refused.
“I live in my Father’s
house where there are many rooms. I asked them to come and stay with me but
they would not come because they will not do what I asked them to do. So … I
told them not come to me again,” Mr. Yemoh explained.
I first investigated
this story and got it aired on GTV a year ago (October 12, 2014). On October
15, 2014, a year after that broadcast, I visited the ‘tree family’ and nothing
has changed. Three of Janet’s young children are currently home, having been
sacked from school for owing levy fees, and Janet Agbedam is also battling a “disease”
whose name she doesn’t know.
For Madam Agnes Akutse
and her family, their prayer is to hold a key to what they can call their room…one
day.
The writer is a
freelance journalist.
Twitter:
@Aniwaba
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