Firstborn

“Excuse me, madam”, the boy, perhaps 10 or 11 leaned toward me from the one-piece wooden desk where he sat. “Excuse me, madam, but what is the name of your firstborn?” By Ghanaian standards I was an older woman, who, for 10 years at least should have been about the business of producing and raising children. “I have no children, yet.” I responded, watching the look of disbelief and pity cross his face.

“Oh,” says, Abdulai as I shared photos of my family – of my father and his third wife, “Oh so you also practice polygamy?” When I explained that the photo is of my stepmother, he was as dismayed and saddened by my parents’ separation, as I was surprised by men living with multiple wives.

As we struggled to make sense of young brides, of polygamous households, we found the Ghanaians treated the subject with a good deal of humor. When my co-leader, A., was invited to return to Ghana, she allowed that it was difficult leaving her husband with her young son. “He should take another wife, then you could travel whenever you want to!” They teased with laughing eyes. At the palace, the chief’s wives giggled at our curiosity. They loved living in a polygamous family—they had to cook only once a week and had unlimited free childcare!

Our shopping brought us to Colwod, another element of the equation. Here, women like me, unmarried and past the age of 22, may be kicked out of their homes, often with no place to go. The Colwod Cooperative teaches them a trade and offers an income. Women batik cloth, make shirts, dresses, pot holders, wall hangings, napkins, bags, headbands. They took our measurements, and began their work on the wide table and sewing machines that huddle in the shade of a corrugated metal canopy.

And I, unmarried and childless at 32, took their handiwork with gratitude back to my partner, my mother, my father and his third wife.