My dad doesn’t want to hear my husband’s name. He has told me point-blank to leave my husband. He said, “It hurts my ears whenever I hear you have a husband. This is a husband? Leave, and I will take care of you for the rest of your life.”

I know when my dad is serious, and he says this with all the seriousness I’ve seen in him. He’s a diligent man and a man who always preaches truth and honesty. I’m his firstborn, the only child of his who suffered with him when life started with him.

My husband is jobless. Three years ago, he came home broken and almost drawn to tears. He had lost the job he had relied on since he was a young graduate. He fell into my arms while we talked about it. I was then pregnant with our first child, and that made the fear very large and palpable. You can’t console a man who has lost what makes him a man, but I tried my best. For a whole week, this man didn’t eat anything of note.

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I started talking to my contacts, and he also started doing the same. He attended a few interviews, which yielded no results. A few months later, he was desperate. He didn’t sleep well or even breathe well. I woke up one dawn and saw him awake and thinking. I told him, “Why don’t you work with my father for the meantime? He would be happy to have someone like you, and he would pay you too.”

He didn’t want to, but I kept drumming into his ears all the advantages he would get from working for my father. My dad has a large poultry farm. He started his business from a poultry farm, and as it grew, he added other farming activities to it. He has a cattle farm, a pig farm, a large maize farm, and also a very large cold store at the centre of town.

Growing up, we all worked in the poultry farm. My mom and my younger siblings. I was the oldest, so I had the biggest responsibility on the farm. Even when I was at the university, I was still working on that farm. I had managed my dad’s workers and had grown to know the nitty-gritty of the farm. I knew very well my husband could do it.

After several weeks of humming into his ears, he finally accepted that he would do the work. I spoke to my dad about it, and he was so excited.

“This will give me time to also rest on some days,” he said.

So my husband started working there, and he was made the manager right away, even when he didn’t know a lot about the work. My dad wanted the workers to respect him as his son-in-law and also let them know my husband was doing the work as a favour to him, my dad.

He was paid above everyone, even those who had spent ten years on the farm. Aside from that, he was given a product bonus every month, and he could decide to sell it. The salary and the benefits were very close to what he had lost in his first job. Gradually, I saw my husband growing back into the man that he was. He came home with gifts and came home smiling.

A year passed quietly without any trouble. With him in charge, my dad even stopped visiting the poultry farm, giving him the utmost autonomy to manage the place.

My dad called to tell me he had sacked my husband even before my husband could get home. He was very angry and couldn’t string words together.

“Tell him I’ll arrest him when this is all over. Let him know I will come for him.”

I tried calming him down, asking what had happened. My husband had connived with some of the old hands there to steal products from the farm. They sold without entering the sales into the records. Buyers came there at dawn to pack products away without any record-keeping. One of the aggrieved accomplices told my dad about it, and for several months, my dad investigated until an audit supported the claims.

My dad had lost close to GHC400,000 in sales and products. Some machinery had even been sold as scrap without informing my dad.

My husband denied it. He said it was the guys there who committed those frauds behind his back. My dad produced fake receipts that had my husband’s signatures. He still denied it. Then my dad got angry and went to the police to have my husband arrested.

I ran to my mom and asked her to add her voice. We were both down on our knees begging until my dad reluctantly agreed to let it go.

He told me to divorce him.

“A man without honour can’t be a good husband. If he can do this to your own father, then know he has been cheating on you and will run when the going gets tough. Leave him. I will fund the divorce myself.”

My mom asked him to leave that decision to me since what happened didn’t affect the marriage directly. My mom also had her share of my dad’s anger.

I talked to my husband for days, asking him to at least bring whatever amount he had left so we could return it to my dad and let peace reign. He didn’t have anything to give. Meanwhile, all that money didn’t reflect in the lifestyle of our marriage.

My dad these days talks to me anyhow because of this issue. I used to be my dad’s favourite child. He would call me on ordinary days, and we would talk the whole day. These days, he would miss my call and not call back. He would tell me, “I can’t trust the quality of your decisions if that man is your husband.”

Is There A Man Out There Who Doesn’t Cheat?

The way things are going, my dad would die someday and leave nothing for me in his will because of this marriage. My husband is here, still looking for a job, still playing the husband role. I see him as a flawed, trying man, but my dad won’t ever forgive him.

I haven’t thought about leaving him, but would you leave if you were in my shoes? A lot is at stake right now. I don’t have my dad in my corner now, and that’s a lot missing in my life.

—Claudia

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