I haven’t seen my younger brother in eleven years, and we haven’t spoken to each other in twelve years. I don’t think he counts me as his sister. I call him brother, but in my worldview, he doesn’t exist. How did we get here? Our parents brought us to this place.

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The age gap between us is a year and a few months. My dad was disappointed about my birth because he wanted a boy. My mom said I brought her bad luck because right after my birth, she lost everything. She had a big store that had everything sellable. While she was in labor, she heard her store had been burned down to ashes. Not only that, she lost all her money along with the store because she kept her money also in the store.

My brother came into her life and things started picking up for her. My dad didn’t have any special reason to love my brother more than me, except he wanted a male child and my brother presented himself.

My brother was loved while they threw me to the side. During Christmas, my brother got a new dress and shoes. Nothing was bought for me. I would work like a horse while my brother lived like a prince.

I still loved him. I didn’t blame him for my lack. I remember when we were so young, I fought his battles for him because he was so weak. We were both in the same school, but my brother went to school with money and extra food while I was given the food and no money. My mom said because I was a girl, I had to be trained well for the home I would live in in the future. My brother didn’t need such training because he would have his own home.

When I completed JHS, I did so well, but my parents said they had no money for me to continue my education, so I should become an apprentice for a seamstress or for a baker in town. My teacher, who lived close to us, fought for me. He even reported to our pastor, telling him about my grades. Through the intervention of these people, my parents sent me to a day school.

A year later, my brother also completed JHS. He didn’t perform well, but my parents made it their job to seek a better school for him. They even paid a bribe so he could attend Ghana National College.

From SHS, my brother also started treating me like he was better than me and deserved more than me. When he came home and we were talking about schools, he talked down to me and asked, “What do you know? When better schools are talking, a village school like yours should keep quiet.”

I fell very sick one day and my parents said they didn’t have money to take me to the hospital, so for two weeks, I stayed home while they gave me herbs that made my sickness worse. My mom would cook all sorts of foods and buy drinks to send to my brother during visiting hours while I shivered in the corner, dying. My dad didn’t even look at me. One morning, I went into a coma before they carried me to the hospital.

When they were asked to buy drugs for me, they would say they didn’t have the money. My mom had her store. My dad worked with the forestry department and also had a cocoa farm that made him much money, but they didn’t have money until it was about my brother.

After S.S.S., they told me my education had come to an end. I did well. It was only my science that didn’t go well, but they didn’t help me. I went into an apprenticeship to learn how to bake things. My brother couldn’t pass, but after writing remedial exams twice, he got admission to the polytechnic.

He kept looking down on me and insulted me over little things. He came to have a phone when I didn’t know what a phone was. One day I picked up his phone just to see what it was like. This guy insulted me and called me worthless. “What are you looking for in my phone? Do you even know how to operate it?”

I jumped on him and the fight started. That guy couldn’t stand me, but my parents took his side and made me feel defeated. The enmity started from there. I couldn’t wait to leave home. I made baked goods, sold them, and saved the money. For a year, that was all I did until I made enough and rented my own place in town. I lived there for two years; my parents didn’t know my house.

I wanted to go back to school, so I saved towards it and started Polytechnic on my own. I sold on weekends and saved the money to pay my fees. My parents didn’t come to my graduation because they didn’t send me to school.

A few months after school, my dad died. He had an accident that made him incapacitated for months before he died. When they needed money for the funeral, they called on me because, according to them, my brother wasn’t working. I contributed to get him buried, and right after that, I followed a friend to Accra.

Finding a job was very hard, so I started my bakery with her help. We sold together. We became partners. We expanded in no time. I started the university while still doing this business. For years I didn’t hear from my mom or my brother until one day, my brother called me on the phone and I spoke to my mom. She was bitter, saying I’d abandoned them and asking me why I wouldn’t help my brother to get a life. She said, “He’s here being wayward. You can take him to the city with you.”

I told her I needed time to bring him in. My brother called every day, putting pressure on me to bring him. One day, he insulted me on the phone, calling me a prostitute, all because I had delayed. “Do you think I don’t know what you do there? Is it not prostitution? Everyone knows; that’s the reason you can’t take me along. You don’t want me in your secret, but we already know.”

We fought on the phone. I called him names too and asked him never to call me again. A day later, my mom called and said, “Stop that life and give your life to Christ. I raised you in Christ, but you followed friends and now look at your life.” I thanked her and cut the call.

I cried that day but told myself I would cut them off for my peace of mind. I didn’t talk to my mom for years until I heard she was in a critical condition. I went home to see her, but she died a week later.

On her sickbed she was kind to me. She said she missed me and asked why I abandoned them. She sought to place my brother in my care again and said a whole lot of nothing when all I wanted to hear from her was “sorry.”

She died in 2014. Throughout the funeral, my brother and I operated like strangers. I just wanted to finish and leave. I paid for everything while my brother was busy collecting the nsaabodiɛ (donations). That was the last time I set my eyes on him. He didn’t come to my wedding. He doesn’t know where I live, and we both don’t call each other.

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He still lives in the uncompleted house my parents left behind. He has three kids from two women he hasn’t married. I hear of him through other people. They blame me for his careless choices. They think I’m the one whose support can turn his life around. I tell them, “He had all the support a child could get. If that didn’t turn his life around, nothing will.”

Sometimes I want to forgive him. I want to accept that it wasn’t his fault the way our parents treated me, but I remember the name he called me and tell myself, “I’m still an ashawo. Let me think about myself.”
#MyChildhoodTrauma

—Barbara

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