I needed a house help, someone who would help me take care of my two kids while I was away working. I spoke to a lot of people to help out until one day, a friend called and said, “I have a girl for you. She’s hard-working and can help you with whatever you need in a house help.”

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I was happy—grateful, actually—until she mentioned the age of the girl. She said she was fifteen years old. I answered, “Nooo, that’s too young. What can a fifteen-year-old girl do? I need a house help and not someone I will have to help. Fifteen years means I will have to cook for her and clean up after her.”

She told me not to worry because the girl was coming from the Northern Region and could hold her own when it came to housekeeping. I grudgingly accepted and spoke with the child’s family.

The agreement was that she would go to the same school as my kids so they could be home together while I was at work. She would help them do their homework and give them something to eat until I returned home in the evening. Aside from that, I was going to send some money to her parents every month.

So the girl was shipped to Accra by a man who said he was her uncle. Once the girl was with me, her uncle called to tell me he didn’t want the girl to go to school again. He said, “Take her to a seamstress nearby and let her learn the sewing business instead. That would help her more than school.”

I was, in fact, confused but decided I was going to do what they said they wanted me to do. The girl looked sick when she came. She had dark feet and skin with a texture so rough it could cut another skin. I focused on grooming her for a while so I could later find a place for her to start learning fashion.

Just two months with me, and I had another call from her people. This time they said, “Kindly send the girl back to us. We want her home.”

I was a little bit confused. I asked if there was something wrong, and they said nothing was wrong. I thought maybe the girl had called them to complain about me, so I asked her about it and she said she hadn’t. She started crying, telling me I should not send her away because she didn’t want to go back.

I held on for a while, hoping the family would change their mind. They kept calling. I kept giving them a reason or two while asking why they wanted her so much. One day her uncle said, “There’s a ritual we need to perform for her, and she ought to come as soon as possible.”

What the ritual was, the man couldn’t explain. I was tired of them, so I finally decided to send her away. When I told her, this girl cried all night, begging me not to send her away. She said she was comfortable and had come to see me as her mother, so I shouldn’t send her away.

I asked her, “Do you know about the ritual they want to perform for you?” She answered, “I’m not sure what it is, but I suspect it would be about the man.” I asked, “What man?”

According to her, when she was ten years old, she was married off to a man. A man she went to live with and performed wifely duties for several months until her family went for her when the man fell sick. According to her, she didn’t go back to the man again, but she was still married to him.

I gave her a phone when she came to live with me. She would be on the phone talking to people and speaking their local dialect, so I figured she was talking to family members. Through those calls, they had informed her that her husband was dead. She knew about the death, but she didn’t know she had to go back to the village for any ritual.

I was stunned. I was living with a widow and didn’t know about it. How could they marry off a ten-year-old girl? For Christ’s sake, she was just a girl.

I decided I would resist and not send her away, but one day, one of the family members called, and this time he threatened me. He said, “If by tomorrow you don’t bring the girl, we won’t say anything, but you’ll willingly send her to the north without knowing what made you send her.”

I felt he was being more spiritual than physical. I’m just an empty vessel. If I’m attacked spiritually, I will be shattered into pieces, so I told her, “Get ready; I’m taking you to your uncle tomorrow.”

She cried until I cried. I was deeply hurt by her story. I had groomed her into a lady. Her skin patches were all gone and her skin was getting smooth. She dressed well and was learning very quickly. I was deeply hurt, but I also couldn’t wait for them to hit me spiritually, so the next day, I packed her up and sent her to her uncle.

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I’ve never been this lonely in my life. My firstborn is almost ten years old and also a girl. I look at her and ask myself, “What could my daughter do as a wife to an old man? This girl walking around here who doesn’t even know how to wash her undies?”

I think of her a lot and wish I could fight to bring her back, but I’m just a human, an empty vessel. I can’t fight over what’s not mine, so the only thing I can do now is pray for her wherever she is. She’s been through a lot—at fifteen, and she’s a widow. Wow.

—Lydia

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