I do online taxi work sometimes. Sometimes after work, I would hop online and do business for a while before going home late at night. One Sunday morning, I received a trip from my neighborhood and it was this fine lady and her little girl who were going to church.

We struck up a conversation talking about the bad roads in the neighborhood and how the rains worried residents because of the lack of gutters. She asked if I lived in the neighbourhood and I told her I wasn’t far from where I picked her up. She said, “Oh really, then the next time I need a taxi I’ll call and see if you’re around.”

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We exchanged numbers and she began calling not many days later. She talked about her car always having challenges and spending days at the workshop. Because I had driven for a very long time, I could also fix cars, so I told her she should let me see the car. We became friends because I was almost always in her house trying to figure out what was wrong with her car.

While I worked for her, she would cook and serve me. She treated me kindly and later told me I could pass by and eat after work because she enjoyed cooking.

I got to know she had her daughter with another guy who traveled out of the country only to break up with her later. The only thing he gave her was the car she had been using. As we met and talked often, affection grew between us. I loved how she managed her home. I loved her culinary skills too.

I proposed to her and she didn’t waste time accepting my proposal. At first, she talked a lot about her ex and all the things he did wrong and pleaded with me not to do the same because her heart couldn’t take another heartbreak.

Our relationship was very beautiful and mutually beneficial to us until she started making a lot of things my responsibility. When her car had a problem and she had to buy a part, she left it in my hands to buy it for her. I did when my money could cover it or I would ask her to contribute.

Anytime I asked her to contribute, it turned into a war of words. Either she didn’t have the money and was pleading with me to buy it out of love or she would start talking about something else. One day I suggested she sell the car and get another one that wouldn’t give her the kind of problems she was going through.

She said, “No, it’s a very good car. If I sell it, how can I get the money to buy the same car?” I answered, “It’s a good car but it spends more time at the workshop than on the road, so it’s better you sell it and get a smaller car you can manage easily.”

She didn’t like the idea, especially me talking about a smaller car. One late evening she called me. “Babe, I’m in trouble. That car has left me in the middle of the road. If you don’t come, I’m dead.”

That was the beginning of the car leaving her stranded midway. I would drive to the location, get the car fixed and then she would drive home. I wasn’t actually fixing the car. Sometimes I just had to manage the problem for it to move because she didn’t have the money to fix it permanently.

One afternoon, I was fixing her car in the middle of the road somewhere when she told me, “The sun is disturbing my daughter so why don’t I take your car home and when you finish, you bring mine home?” She took the keys and drove my car home. That day I was very angry, to be honest. So when I got back, I wrote down all the things that were wrong with the car and gave the list to her. “Buy these and let’s fix the car once and for all. If not, you don’t have to move the car and I’m not going to respond when it leaves you stranded in the middle of the road.”

She said, “If you love me the way you say you do, you would have helped me get the things. Aren’t you scared for my life and that of my daughter? You want this car to kill us before you do anything?”

So I tried my best and got half of the money and asked her to contribute. She said I should use my half to buy the parts it could afford and she would later get the rest. We drove her car to Abossey Okai to get the parts and on the road, I jokingly said, “Are you sure your ex gave you this car out of love? It looks like he bought it just to punish you, looking at the way it’s always at the workshop.”

She flared up and asked me to stop the car. She was insistent and even attempted to take the steering wheel from me. I stopped and she quickly took the keys from me and said, “At least he bought a car for me. What have you done for me since we met? Common parts you can’t afford unless I contribute.”

This lady did a U-turn and drove her car back to the house, leaving me where we had stopped. I was shocked. I thought to myself, “So she will do this to me and later come and talk to me? I doubt it.”

I got a taxi home and for days we didn’t talk. I avoided her route so I wouldn’t even see her. Three days later, she texted, “So you don’t think you owe me an apology for what you said? Or I’m crazy to expect an apology from a man?”

I didn’t mind her. She came to my house the next day telling me we should talk about it. I said, “There’s nothing to talk about. Just leave and don’t come back here again.” I shut my door and she later left. A day later, she sent a long voice note telling me she was going to be the bigger person and apologize for what happened and that we shouldn’t allow it to break us.

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I didn’t respond. The next morning, I was going to work when I saw her car parked at the junction. She wasn’t there so obviously the car had left her stranded again. That evening after work she called me. I didn’t pick up. I knew all the calls were because of her car. I was even paying fees for a daughter I knew nothing about and fixing cars and buying spare parts but because I didn’t buy the car for her, I hadn’t done anything.

She still has hope that one day we will work things out but to me, we are done. She should go away with her faulty car and leave my life alone.

—Manuel 

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