Outmoded cultural practices: …widow recounts harrowing experience

A 37-year-old trader has shared her experience on widowhood and called on society to be more humane towards women who find themselves in that state.

She says it is unfortunate that in the Ghanaian society, anytime a husband dies regardless of the circumstances, the widow is fingered as the killer of the man by her in-laws.

“Some of them wanted to take me to my late husband’s grave at night to bathe me with water used to clean his dead body, so I ran away with my two children,” she recounted in an interview with the Spectator on condition of anonymity, on Monday.

She disclosed that the water they were going to use had been stored for three days and the bathe was ostensibly to cleanse her so that no “bad luck” could come to her.

She said when she received the message from a “good samaritan” about the intentions of some of her in-laws to take her through that ritual, she was baffled because both her family and that of her late husband had agreed that there would be no such widowhood rites because her husband died as a Christian. 

“I was not going to allow myself to go through that when I heard that the water had been mixed with some substances to make me mad and even cause my death in six months (to confirm the suspicion that I killed my husband) and make my children orphans,” she said.

She questioned why any woman in her right frame of mind who was together with her man raising children and struggling to even pay bills, could take the life of her husband.

“Imagine single handedly paying bills and taking care of two children aged three and eight under this economy?” she questioned. 

The trader said her husband did not own any property to even motivate her to termination his life in the first place and that their rent had even expired at the time of his death.

“He was involved in a road crash but I was shocked to hear that because I did not give him his peace of mind, that is why he became absent minded when crossing the street and was knocked down,” she said.

She said the back and forth with the family about the death of her husband, preparations towards his burial and life after, had seriously affected her mental health.

“The fact that they even wanted to take my children from me because they said I did not have the financial muscle to take care of them and also that the children belonged to her late husband’s family was most torturing” she disclosed. 

She said it was interesting that she and her children were asked to pay GH¢1,000 for the funeral and when they incurred a debt the family again told her to pay about GH¢4,000 more though they did not allow her guests to eat the food they prepared for those who attended her husband’s funeral.

The woman said she had been denied access to her late husband’s shop but the family was unwilling to give any financial support to cater for the children.

She said she was never going to allow anyone to take her children from her but feared she might lose the strength to fight them along the line and wished she could get help from the public to keep her in-laws away. 

“I need legal advice and action to protect my children and I” she pleaded.

From Dzifa Tetteh Tay, Tema.