My dad died in August 2022 but was buried in October 2023. I know you’re wondering what took them so long to bury him, so let me tell you. I’m sorry if it’s a long story. You see what’s happening today about Daddy Lumba’s death? That’s exactly what happened when my father died.

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My father died at the hospital. I was there with my mom when he died at dawn. His head was on my mother’s lap when he took his last breath. It looked like my mom expected the death, so she was calm. I broke down crying and making noise at the hospital. I made the calls that dawn, calling his younger brother and texting those abroad. A few days later, the family gathered to officially receive the news of my dad’s death.

While we were seated and talking, we heard the wailing and cries of a woman entering the house. She was mentioning my dad’s name and asking why he left without telling her anything. When she walked in, she was holding an A4-sized printed photo of my dad surrounded by two children and herself.

My mom mentioned her name, “Why is Ekuba trying to distract the family meeting? Who invited her?”

The family head offered her a seat in the meeting and introduced her as a woman my dad had children with. It wasn’t a secret that my dad had kids with her, but she wasn’t a woman a lot of people knew. It was my first time meeting her. My brother tapped me from behind and whispered, “So this is the legendary Ekuba?”

My dad met her when he was transferred to work in the Ashanti Region. My mom had just delivered my younger brother and couldn’t go with my dad immediately. That aside, my dad’s official residence wasn’t ready, so we had to stay behind while my dad went to the Ashanti Region alone. He spent two years there before we joined him. By the time we joined, Ekuba already had a son with my dad. My mom didn’t know until Ekuba had a second child with him.

If they fought about it, we the kids didn’t see it, but according to the stories, my dad accepted his fault and apologized to my mom in front of the elders. My mom wanted to bring the children in to live with us to curtail the contact between my dad and Ekuba, but Ekuba didn’t agree to that arrangement.

Her first son was twenty-two years old and the second was fifteen when my dad died. So the family and my mom knew her even before that day. When it got to the introductions, she got up and said she had children with my dad. The family asked if my dad married her, and she said, “No, he didn’t marry me, but when I was pregnant with the second child, he came to see my family to perform the knocking rite.”

My mom stood up and called her a liar. It turned to chaos, but calm was restored. My mom couldn’t stop talking. “You see what I’ve been telling you kids? You see the problem your dad has brought on us?”

By the time the family met again to discuss my father’s burial, the story had changed. The family had accepted Ekuba as my father’s second wife. The family head stood up and declared in front of everyone that he was aware all that while that my dad had a second wife and that he was there when the marriage ceremony was performed. My mom got up and challenged them with facts. The family head said, “What I’m saying is final. You don’t know your husband better than the family knew him.”

From that day, they stopped inviting my mom to meetings. We’d be home, and they’d send the final information to us. I have two younger brothers. They wanted to cause a commotion, but my mom called us and said, “We’ll be fine. None of you should talk or act. Stay behind me while we fight.”

The day they sent the funeral dates and arrangements, my mom told her lawyers to write to the family. The letter went, but they called my mom’s bluff. In a family meeting, my mom stormed in and told everyone present: “I love my husband so much I don’t want his funeral destroyed, but if you push me, you won’t bury my husband while acknowledging another woman as his wife.”

Again, they called her bluff, so my mom ran to the court and slapped them with an injunction. That aside, she asked the court to declare her as the only surviving spouse while submitting her marriage documents to the court. This issue took five months to settle. In the end, Ekuba couldn’t provide any legal documents to prove her marriage to my dad. My dad’s marriage to my mom was done under the ordinance, and she showed the certificates, but Ekuba couldn’t even show photos of the traditional marriage she claimed they had.

The family called a meeting and this time invited us. Before we attended that meeting, my mom said she had a dream and my dad was directing her to a certain spiritual man, asking her to see that man before attending the meeting. So all of us went to meet the man at his shrine. He told my mom, “You would have been killed if you went there without coming here. Your husband is here. He’s been disturbing me all week. I’ll protect you and the family.”

He performed a ritual and gave us three palm nuts each to keep with us. He said, “As long as you have these with you, if they give you poison, you’ll vomit it. If they shoot at you with a gun, it will miss you. If they try to drown you, you’ll float.”

When we were leaving the shrine, I asked my mom, “So how do we test the gun part? Who will offer themselves for a test?” We all laughed.

We were on our way walking to the family house when my mom was knocked down by a motorcycle. My two brothers were almost at the family house and I was trailing behind them when we heard the sound of the accident. My mom had crossed the road to buy an egg to eat. She was crossing back to our side when the motorcycle knocked her down.

She spent one month in the hospital. My father’s family celebrated. My dad’s brother told everyone that my mom had been paralyzed by my father’s ghost because she killed him for his properties.

To this day, I still believe my mom is a witch. What she went through that she didn’t die, only God knows. The spiritual man made a home around the hospital for spiritual enforcement. One day my mom would be declared dead by doctors, and the next minute she’d be up and walking on crutches. The accident itself wasn’t serious, ooo, but they tried to end my mom’s life spiritually, and she fought back.

While she couldn’t walk, the family visited my dad’s properties one after the other, telling caretakers to vacate and threatening tenants with eviction. My father had a very huge poultry farm, my mom’s favorite thing. The family took over, sacking the workers and employing new ones. I was scared. I thought we’d lost everything. One morning, my mom got up from her hospital bed with crutches and discharged herself.

She went straight to the family house, warning the family head and my father’s siblings, “I’m here and no one is going to stop me from burying my husband. Whoever tries will be buried before my husband is buried.”

A week before my father’s funeral, the family head got bitten by a snake. He died two days later. Everyone was scared to go close to his body. He started decaying a few minutes after he died. His body got so bad he wasn’t laid in state for people to see. He was buried like a nobody.

My father’s younger sister, who shared a room with Ekuba, also collapsed in the middle of the house and started foaming at the mouth. She was carried to a spiritual man who told her, “The properties you’re fighting for will kill you if you don’t stop. What has the widow done to you that you want to take her out?”

That aunt of mine couldn’t go close to my dad’s body when he was laid in state. Everyone was scared.

After all the drama and the death of the family head, my dad was finally buried. Throughout the funeral, my mom was the one they referred to as the widow. Even the MC called her, “The Correct Widow.”

Then it came to the sharing of the properties. Out of nowhere, my mom petitioned the court requesting a DNA test for all of us to prove paternity before the properties would be shared. Her reason? All along, she had suspected that Ekuba’s first child wasn’t my father’s. She told me, “Look at all of you, you’re even a woman but you still kept your father’s mannerisms. This boy doesn’t have it.”

We did the DNA test. When the results came, indeed, that boy wasn’t my father’s son. It was the second child who was my dad’s offspring.

Come and see my mom the day the judgment was read. She followed Ekuba in the court premises, clapping her hands and calling her a fraudster. It was my mom who was paying the school fees of the children and sending a monthly allowance to Ekuba while my dad was alive. The money came from my dad, but it was my mom who paid. She was doing all that to cut the ties between them. She threatened to sue Ekuba to refund every amount my dad had spent on that kid.

After the properties were shared, my mom later called Ekuba and personally handed her the house my father bought where he met Ekuba. She also gave her the poultry farm so she could continue paying the fees of the last born, who was in SHS then. And to this day, she calls Ekuba, asking about the kid and telling her, “I’m always here if you need help. He’s also my son.”

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The last school vacation, the boy spent it with us. My dad had his flaws, but my mom didn’t and still doesn’t see those flaws. She loved my dad so much she’s willing to protect everything that came from him. I tried calling my dad out on his infidelity, and the look this woman gave me made everything I had to say leave my head. But I always tell my brothers to learn from the troubles my dad left behind and not leave their wives chaos instead of good memories.

—Faith

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