If you are reading this, then I have carried my shame as far as the Adomi Bridge. Accra has finished me!
I am standing where the wind from the Volta rises cold and strong, where lorries groan past with their headlights on, where people cross from one side of life to another without thinking about the water beneath them. The river is black tonight. Not blue, not silver like in the tourist pictures. Black. Wide. Patient.
I used to think that sentence belonged to weak men. Men who drank before noon. Men who sat under trees and blamed witches, politicians, cousins, God—everybody except themselves. I used to think hard work was a key. I thought if you held it long enough, if you turned it with enough faith, the door would open.
I was wrong.
Seven years ago, I walked out of the University of Ghana with a first-class degree and a smile so wide my mother said I looked like a man who had already seen heaven. My gown was too hot, my shoes were borrowed, and my father’s old phone kept ringing because the whole family wanted to congratulate me. They called me “Professor.” They called me “Our hope.” Even the aunties who had not paid my school fees hugged me as if they had personally written my exams.
And Paula was there.
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