Can you marry into a family whose language you don’t understand? Here’s my story.

I’m a Fante. I’ve spent the best part of my life in the perimeters of Fante land and that’s where I met Richard, the guy who later became my husband. He’s an Ewe with a thick tongue. Thick tongue because it was hard for him to speak any language without the Ewe language infiltrating. He could speak English but once he speaks you’ll ask him, “Are you an Ewe?”

When we met he spoke Fante to me and I laughed. He said, “Don’t laugh. I’m trying.” I laughed nonetheless. As the days went by, we built a friendship and this friendship led to a bond. We both knew where the bond was taking us so we prepared for it. I prepared for the day he would propose and what my response would be and he prepared for what he would say and the language he would say it in.

In the end, he chose to propose in English shrouded in a thick gravy of the Ewe sound. I said yes immediately. He asked, “Will your people also say yes to me?” I told him, “You should have found out first before proposing but you didn’t so let’s find out together.”

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Six months later, we were at the door of my parents knocking. My dad called him Efo and to date, he still calls him Efo. Efo Charles when he wants to call him with two names. My family embraced him wholeheartedly to the point where he came to live in our house to complete the project that brought him to Abandzi, a village close to Cape Coast.

When he completed the project and was going back home, he took me along. His parents already knew about me and knew about our coming. Immediately I stepped into the compound, his mother approached with a stern face and said something in Ewe. She was looking straight into my eyes so I froze. His father walked in on us and both of them burst into laughter. His mother held my hand and I defrosted. His father explained what his mother said, “You’re in an Ewe house, you’ll eat our food and live like we do, you hear?”

That made me laugh again. I responded, “Of course, I will. That’s why I’m here.”

His mother didn’t know any language apart from Ewe. His father could speak broken English but when they took me in, they didn’t want to say anything that I wouldn’t understand. When the mother speaks, the father or my boyfriend will interpret right there. When I was alone with her, she would call one of them before she spoke to me. His father told my boyfriend, “My mouth hurts but your mom won’t stop talking so teach your wife the language and leave me alone.”

I spent four days there and by the time I was leaving, his mother told me, in Ewe, “I’m going to miss you” and she hugged me. I said the same to her in English. Right there, I knew I belonged.

When they came to my house to perform the knocking rite, I rushed out to meet them at the door. With a straight face, without a smile and finger gesturing in the air I told her, “You’ve entered a Fante land. You’re going to eat our food and pretend it’s the sweetest meal you’ve ever had, you hear?” She looked left to her son for interpretation. They were already laughing. He interpreted it to her and she burst out laughing. It was a payback time.

When we had our first child she came to live with us for over six months. When she was leaving I didn’t want her to. My husband is the quiet type but because he was always interpreting his mother’s language to me, we always talked and had fun. Once his mother was out, we came back to factory settings.

When God Throws A Wife On Your Table

We’ve been married for seven years now. Ewe is heavy but I can understand something and can put one and two together to form a sentence that makes my husband laugh until he falls. Language is not what we speak. Language is the action that accompanies what we say. You can’t say “I’m so happy” with a frown face. No one will believe you. So Agyeiwa, think smart about it. It’s not the language. It’s not the tribe. It’s the kind of parents you met. They showed you who they are. Believe them.

—Eduwa

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