I met Joana in school and we got attached. We were learning together and moving in and out together until the feelings we had for each other changed. I told her I wanted more from what we already had and she asked “Where more means?” I was afraid she would say no to me and then I will lose our friendship but she pushed me to say it so I eventually told her that I wanted her to be my girlfriend. It took a whole week but it was a week worth it. She said yes. Our friendship turned into love.

We were in the first year. To find love in the first year and keep it till the final year is the most difficult thing any guy can face on campus, especially if your girlfriend was as beautiful as Joana was. A lot of good men came her way but she brushed them off. Lecturers came. Guys with beautiful cars came along but she said no to them because she had me. It pushed me to love her more than I’d ever loved anyone.

After school, we both travelled to where we came from. She came from Accra and I came from Takoradi. We promised to be there for each other through thick and thin but the distance eventually won over us and submerged our love in the deep. I didn’t have a job and she also didn’t have a job. When we planned to meet, we couldn’t travel because we had very little. Time did his thing on us. It was slow and unnoticeable but eventually, we let go. We stopped talking and we stopped texting. We stopped loving.

I found Lucy along the line and fell for her. I don’t know about Joana and what happened to her love life but once I found Lucy, I never turned my back on her.

I dated Lucy for three years before I had a job. While dating, we made promises to each other that once we both get a job, we would marry a year afterwards. I was the last to get a job so I started saving vigorously to make our dreams come through.

A year was too soon to marry but I saved enough to be able to do the knocking and get the list. We gave ourselves six months to get married and we were both committed to it.

One day I had a call from the past—Joana. It was the first ever call from her after we broke up. I missed her but my heart was busy loving Lucy so I couldn’t do much about the missing. We talked. We laughed. We asked questions; “Eii so what happened to us? When did we have our last conversation that we didn’t know it was our last?” We laughed about how young we were and how we thought we could own a piece of the world because we had love.

At the tail end of the conversation, she said, “There’s a reason I called you. I’ve won the American lottery and everything is set for me to leave Ghana. I don’t have the money. I’ve gone far and wide for help. I’ve invested everything I have yet there’s more I need money to do. I need a loan. I will pay once I settle, I promised you. I’m very desperate and it’s the reason I will call someone I hadn’t spoken to for over six years. If you can please help.”

The only money I had was the one I had saved for my marriage. I wanted to help her. I went to a few friends and they all promised to give me some amount as a loan. I trusted these people to deliver so I gave my savings to Joana to be able to embark on her travel. She was looking for GHC18,000 but I was able to give her GHC16,000. She was all glad and thanked me profusely. She said, “Trust me, I will pay you double once I settle and get a job.” I answered, “I trust you.”

The friends who promised to give me loans started telling me stories. Today this, tomorrow that. We needed the money for our preparation but each time Lucy asked for money, I gave her excuses. I was desperate. I went to the office to borrow money. There was a limit they could give me and that much wasn’t enough.

Lucy took my excuses the wrong way, especially when I told her I didn’t have money and that I’d invested my money and lost everything. She was so furious I didn’t know what I could have done to calm her down. She said, “Tell me you’ve changed your mind about the marriage and I will understand. You’re developing cold feet and it shows. What kind of bull story are you telling me? That you’ve invested what and it did what?”

She was so into the marriage process that even when I asked her to give me some time, she got deflated and said, “See, it’s not by force to marry me. If you don’t have the money for the wedding, what would we eat after marriage? Have all the time and do whatever you want. I know what to do.”

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Eventually, we broke up. She was always angry. Little things I did threw her off balance and said things she had no reason to tell me. Her consistent anger had a history and the history was rooted in my inability to marry her at the time I promised to marry her. Eventually, we agreed to let things go. We tried. I won’t blame her. I won’t call her names. If she did the same thing to me, I would have interpreted it the same way she did. I wasn’t angry when she decided to leave but she left with a fire of anger in her heart.

It took Joana a year to call me but when she did, she called to give me good news. She said, “I’ve paid everyone I owe. It’s your turn now. Give me one month and I will settle everything. I’m sorry it took me so long. Forgive me.”

The next time she called, she called to ask for my account number. A few days later she called again. The calls became consistent. When she couldn’t call, she texted.  One day I got an alert from my bank. She sent GHC30,000 into my account. That was in 2016. That amount meant a lot more than it means today.

We didn’t stop talking afterwards. She asked about life in Ghana and I told her. When something goes viral and she hears about it, I’m the one she would call for gist. Gist partners usually fall in love so gradually, we fell back in love as if we never left. I was laughing at her, “Even locally, we couldn’t keep it. How are we going to keep it now that it’s international?”

A year later, the two of us were planning to get married. During the wedding, she wasn’t there. I got married to her picture. But when we had to sign in court for it to be legal, she came back to Ghana. She wasn’t looking any different. She was still my Joana and we were still in love.

Maybe whatever happened was God’s way of saying “You belong together. You shouldn’t have left in the first place.”

We are married and living together now. We have a daughter together and this small family and the kind of happiness we have is all a man can dream of. We know life wouldn’t end here. We have dreams—bigger dreams but since those dreams are not here yet, all we can do now is live in the moment.

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The last time I heard about Lucy, she was getting married to their pastor’s son. I was happy for her. She’s not a bad person and deserves all the happiness she could get. And I’m happy we both found what would make us happy. In the end, we are both winners. Our plans didn’t work but who said what we plan have to work by all means? Something has to die for something new to grow. We are both happy about what grew from the ashes of our relationship. That’s all that matters. 

—Nathaniel

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