I remember the time I got down on my knees and proposed marriage to a witch.
Of course, at the time, I didn’t have a clue who she was. If I had known, do you think I would have been kneeling there under that mango tree at Aburi Botanical Gardens, sweating through my new kaftan, holding a ring I bought on credit from a Lebanese jeweller at Osu? No. I would have run. I would have left the ring, the flowers, the photographer, my pride, everything, and run until my lungs collapsed somewhere around Peduase.
But love, my brother, is a foolish man’s most expensive education.
Her name was Afia Serwaa.
Even now, when I say it, something cold walks on my back.
Afia Serwaa.
She was the sweetest thing I had ever met. Not beautiful in the loud way Accra girls can be beautiful, with lashes long enough to sweep compound and nails sharp enough to open canned fish. No. Afia was gentle beauty. Church beauty. “Good morning, Auntie” beauty. The kind of woman who could serve you water and make you feel you had been forgiven for sins you had not yet committed.
When I met her, I was nobody.
This was before the Range Rover, before the four-bedroom house at Oyarifa, before men started calling me “Chairman” and standing up when I entered drinking spots. Back then I was selling phone accessories at Circle, sweating between counterfeit chargers and fake iPhone screens, praying the AMA boys would not come and scatter our table. I had one pair of good shoes. I wore it to church, funerals, weddings, job interviews, and anytime I wanted people to think my life had direction.
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