It’s our first child, so my mother-in-law is here to help. My wife hasn’t been well since the delivery, but we were told she would be fine with enough rest and peace of mind.

So, I wake up and boil her water for a bath. I’m working from home, so I’m able to help in every little way I can until my wife and her mother conspired to turn me into the house help. I should be more than a house help, looking at what I’m going through in this house.

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It started with sweeping the house and the compound. I would sweep our room and the hall and mop the floor, until one morning my mother-in-law requested I sweep the compound too. I did, while she stood there giving instructions: “The corners are not done well. Put the broom down a bit and try reaching farther with it so you finish quickly.”

It didn’t bother me until it became part of my chores. Even if I’m sleeping, this woman will wake me up, hand me a broom, and say, “The compound. It’s waiting for you.” And I’m doing this three times every week. It’s not a small compound, ooo. I’ve developed shoulder pain because of that.

That aside, she and my wife have turned me into an errand boy. My mother-in-law will go to the market and forget to buy charcoal. She will call my name, “Nsiah, oh I forgot to get charcoal. You have tall legs, why don’t you quickly rush and get some from the roadside for me.”

Charcoal, pepper, Maggi, cassava, corn dough, momoni, you name it. This woman has sent me to get all of that, just like my mom did when I was a boy. “Nsiah, there’s no momoni here ooo. I didn’t know. Take the coins on the table and get some for me.”

I could be in an online meeting or preparing a presentation. She wouldn’t mind. I would have to put everything aside and go get momoni for the stew, and she never cooks without it. I’d been in this area for almost five years and never knew the local stores, but within one month, I know all of them. Some of them call me by name or say, “Customer, what brought you here today?”

I figured my mother-in-law didn’t understand my job or thought I wasn’t working, so I intentionally sat her down and explained it to her. “I work from home. If you see me seated in my chair over there in the morning, it means I’m at work, and it’s what pays the bills.”

She nodded while I spoke and then said, “Oh, that’s fine. It looks like in this generation, everything is possible.” To show I’m working, I dress for work and sit before my computer and type away. She will stick her neck out and say, “Oh, you’re working. The cassava is ready ooo. If we don’t pound it now, it will get cold and hard.”

There’s a fufu machine shop in the vicinity, but this woman argues that machine-pounded fufu gives you cancer, so we have to do it manually. My wife also supports that, saying when she eats the machine-pounded kind, she doesn’t generate enough breast milk.

So I get up, change into work clothes, and start pounding fufu for a wife who doesn’t eat anything apart from fufu. One Saturday, I protested. Out of frustration, I carried the fufu to the machine shop, telling them my shoulder aches and “This once won’t kill anyone around here.”

You should have seen the queue at the machine shop. We used to respect the elderly when we were young and allowed them to jump the queue, but not the kids I met in the line that day. It was a Saturday, so the queue was long. I stood there in the sun, sweating while waiting for my turn to mill a small amount of fufu for two. It was like going from the frying pan into the fire.

I was raised to help, and I do it without complaint. My wife knows this because we’ve always lived like that, but it looks like her mother sees me as the boy of the house. Sometimes after pounding the fufu, she’ll get up and leave the wɔma and wedro for me to clean. I got so infuriated I put two and two together and told them, “My job has requested I start working from the office.”

I would wake up early in the morning, dress up, pick up my computer, and step out. I wanted to be anywhere apart from home—anywhere at all that promised peace without running errands. But guess what? I would get home in the evening and meet a pile of dishes waiting for me to wash. They used to eat fufu in the afternoon; now they wait for my return to pound it for them.

Like I said, my wife hasn’t been the same since her C-section delivery, but I’ve started suspecting her. That her pains and incessant sickness are not genuine, but ways and means to get me slaving in this house. It’s not easy, ooo. I’m the man here. I pay for everyone’s existence, yet I can’t catch my breath in this house.

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I’m telling them my job is taking me to Timbuktu for a month to work. I will pack a few things and find some place to hide, but then, I wouldn’t be surprised to come back home after a month to see a month’s pile of dishes waiting for my return. These people can do it, paaa! Other than that, tell me, why are they treating me this way? Someone’s son. A royal, for that matter.

—Nsiah

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