Three years after marriage and with no child, I started feeling the pressure. The voices around me changed. They started asking why, and some started advising me on what to do to get a child. My wife became equally restless, and some nights she cried.

We had done everything possible and even spent money we didn’t have, but we couldn’t conceive. My mom called, worried that the problem might come from me. She took me to a herbal place, and I was given a bag full of herbs, both for me and my wife. My wife was already on medication. She finished that one and also did the herbs. Nothing happened.

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Four years without a child to bear my name, my dad called me. “Try another woman. There are so many towns in the world. Why stay in one little town and endure disgrace? My son, move.”

He wasn’t the only one who gave me this advice. Even my sisters did, and because of our inability to make a child, they all turned against my wife. My wife would leave the house and not come back until I went to look for her at her parents’ house. The weight was crushing her.

Five years without a child, my wife told me, “Maybe you should listen to your father and everyone who says you should try another woman. It doesn’t look like I’m ever going to give you a child.” I asked, “How about you? Will you try another man?”

This was the softest way I could talk about divorce without mentioning divorce. She said no. She said society would judge me softly and later forgive me because I’m a man. As a woman, she couldn’t do that unless we agreed to divorce.

I loved her. Apart from a child, our marriage had been nothing but a good one. Everything I needed in a woman, she provided without even trying. My wife is very beautiful, and she understood what it took to be a wife and also care for her husband. I was afraid I would find no one like her to do life with.

Six years without a child, my younger sister abroad called. She said, “You can come here and start life all over again. You can marry another woman here and tell your wife you’re no longer coming back again, so she should marry someone else.”

I bought into that idea. If I were out of the country, no one would know what I’d done, and when the marriage was over, my wife could say I wasn’t going back again, and that was why we had to divorce.

When my sister started my documents, I didn’t have the courage to tell my wife about it until everything was ready for me to leave. The day I told her I was travelling abroad to go to school and come back later, she told me, “Please don’t come back again. I will understand. Marry someone else and make children.”

We sat quietly throughout the night. She was crying when she went to bed. I was breaking down on the inside because of what I was about to do. A week later, when I was getting ready to leave, she was sleeping on the sofa with a cloth covering her whole body. She had complained of having malaria days ago, but I felt it was all antics because I was leaving her.

When I was ready, she got up and told me she was praying for a safe trip for me. We hugged, and then I walked out to a waiting taxi. She didn’t even come out to see me leave. She went back to the sofa.

I was in the UK for two days when my wife said, “Joe, something is happening. I’m from the hospital. The test shows I’m pregnant.” I said, “Pregnant? Please do it again and let’s see. Maybe it was a mistake.”

She also suspected it was a mistake, but she did another test a week later and then another the following week. They all said the same thing: she was pregnant. I could feel her happiness after each test. After the last one, she sang a full Yaw Sarpong song on the phone to me while she sobbed, “Sɛ nka Nyɛ Ewurade aaa.”

I told her, “I’m coming back.” She said, “You don’t mean it.” I responded, “This is the time we ought to be together.”

When I was leaving Ghana, I nearly resigned from work, but a voice kept whispering in my ears, “Don’t just resign. Apply for leave and resign when you get there so you can enjoy your last salary.”

Three weeks later, I was on the plane coming back to Ghana. No voice could convince me to stay. For years, I had listened to everybody’s advice. This time, I was only going to listen to myself.

She didn’t see me off, but when I was coming back, she was at the airport waiting for me. The hug was the longest. She placed her head on my thighs in the back of the taxi, and she sobbed until we got home.

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We have three kids now. Coming back home was a very good decision, but the best decision I ever made was to stick with a woman who didn’t do anything wrong except experience a delay in conception, which wasn’t even her fault. I have a happy home full of joy, and now the voices have calmed down because, you know what, when you’re stuck in the mud, anyone at all can advise you on how to get out of the mud.

—Joe

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