We met on Facebook and started talking. I liked the way he travelled from one country to another and the photos he posted. I commented on them. He responded and later came into my DMs. We became good friends from there. He would call on video and we’d talk. I would call him even at dawn and he would wake up and respond to my call.

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One day I expressed a desire to be like him. “I would also like to travel around the world like you’re doing. What can I do to become like you?” He responded, “It’s not hard when you’re in Europe. You can travel anywhere with little money.”

I told him I would like to travel to Europe then, so if he knew a way I could get there, he should show me. He talked about a lot of ways to get there, including scholarships and other schemes. I told him, ‘Is there not any short way to get there? I want to sleep in my bed and wake up in the UK.”

He laughed about it, but he later told me the easiest way is to get married to a citizen. I said that was fine, so he should get me someone he knew who could help me.

Any day that we talked, I asked him about it. He kept saying it was expensive because I had to pay for the one who would come and marry me. I told him, “I don’t have that amount, that’s why I’m asking you to link me to a man looking for a wife. I will fall in love with him if only he can help me.”

He asked me to send photos. I went to the studio and took nice ones. He said they were too professional, so he wanted everyday photos, which I did. He kept asking for sexy ones, something someone would see and fall flat for me. I didn’t even know how to be sexy in photos, but I tried my best. He would tell me, “Wear short things.” I would do it and send them. He would ask me, “Can’t you take one with only a bra?” I would do it and send it to him.

One day he told me, “Do you know I’m angry with you? Why didn’t you tell me to come and marry you instead but said I should link you to someone else? Am I a tree?”

I laughed, but he was serious. He said I’d broken his heart and because of me he walked around a hollow man. He took a photo of his UK passport and sent it to me, “You see my passport, what do you see? I’m a citizen too and can make it very easy for you.”

I apologized to him and said I didn’t know he was a citizen. He told me he didn’t want a contractual relationship because he had fallen for me. I told him I had fallen for him too, and he asked me to prove it. I asked, “How do you want me to prove it?”

He asked for intimate photos and I sent them through “view once.” He wanted them for keeps. I told him I didn’t feel safe to do that.

We dated online for almost a year and it was still the same “view once” intimate photos. So it got to a point I told him that until he made a move about my dreams, I wasn’t going to send “view once” again. “I give you whatever you want but you’re not doing anything about my dreams.”

So he asked me to do my passport, which I already had. He told me he would come to Ghana and marry me, and then he would go back to the UK, spend a few months, and later come for me.

When he was coming, he called for me to meet him at the airport. From the airport he took me to a hotel and asked me to spend the night, which I didn’t. I told him, “You and I have a deal. Make it happen and I will do whatever you want.”

He traveled the following day to his hometown and while there, he made me talk to a woman he said was his mother and then his father too. They were all happy to hear from me and even asked me to visit them. When he returned, he wanted more, but I still told him to do something before I could also do something.

He told me, “Because we have to make it real, you’ll have to rent a wedding dress and I will also wear a suit and we’ll take photos as a married couple.”

We did that. I even used my two friends as maids of honor to make it look more real. After the photos and the videos, he told me he knew a friend who could do a marriage certificate for us. He called him and the guy came. The guy took GHC5,000 that very day from him, took our details, and told us he would return the certificate in one week.

I was so happy I couldn’t hold it. I even posted some of the wedding photos on my status and received congratulations from people who didn’t know, and told others it was a secret wedding. A day before he would travel back to the UK, the guy brought the certificate. He gave it to me and asked me to keep it very well. “I will be back in five months to take you away,” he told me.

That night, I gave it all to him. He only had to request that style and I would give it to him. It didn’t feel contractual. I was connected. It felt like a dream come true. His flight was in the evening, so I stayed with him throughout the day, doing a lot more styles and all the while dreaming of Europe.

When he was about to leave, I cried. They were not fake tears. I was missing him and telling him five months was too far.

Everything was normal when he got there. A month later, I found out I was pregnant. I was happy about it because it was going to make our case stronger. When I told him, he was happy too. He said, “This is the miracle I was looking for.”

Those were his last words to me seven months ago. Since then I haven’t heard from him again. He stopped calling me and stopped picking up my calls. He read my messages and didn’t respond until one day he blocked me from every place I had access to him, even on Facebook, the place I found him.

I didn’t know who to turn to or who to talk to. All I had were his photos and his child who was growing in me. I didn’t meet any friend or any acquaintance when he was here. As I write this, my parents don’t even know I’m carrying a seven-month pregnancy.

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I’m so ashamed to talk about it to anyone. His name is Clement, and I’m here today telling him, “Clement, wherever you are, I won’t curse you or call bad spirits to descend on you. But I want you to know that I’m still carrying your child. One day when I get the strength, I will publish your photos everywhere for everyone to know what you did to me. I hope you appear before that day to claim what is yours.”

—Serwaa

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