We lived in the same rented house with 2 other tenants. I’m married with 5 children. Our side of the house is a 3 bedroom and the largest part of the house. Mr Ansah was in a chamber and hall with his wife and 3 children. Then we have Kwame in a single room self-contain. With the way the house has been built, Kwame’s room is at the back of the house and we hardly see him. When we do, it’s just a ‘good morning’ greeting and then he goes into his room. But as for Mr. Ansah and his family, we were more like a family. His wife could even go to town and buy drinks for my kids and so I started doing same. When my kids are watching cartoons, they will call Mr Ansah’s children and they will also come and watch some. We came to meet them in the house and we grew very close.
A time came and the Ansah’s were quarrelling all the time. It was so bad. We used to hear them once in a while, arguing on top of their voices and using very derogatory words on each other in the evenings. My husband was going to their side of the house and talking to them through the window. The door was mostly locked at that time. Sometimes hubby succeeded in abating the quarrel early and in the morning, Mr Ansah will be so embarrassed, he will come and talk to my hubby personally to apologize. It’s not as if we don’t quarrel, we do have misundersandings, but we don’t scream on top of our voices and somehow, we are able to move on from our arguments. Mr Ansah’s wife is an introvert, but her voice is very loud when they are arguing. On a normal day, she doesn’t talk much. It’s her husband who likes talking and engaging us in conversations.
The quarrels did not stop. They got worse until we started hearing them throwing things at each other. Then Mrs. Ansah packed her things and left the man. Their children are in Primary School and we were seeing how the man was struggling especially in the mornings with getting the kids ready and taking them to school. It got so bad that my husband was talking to me to be helping him. Our kids go to different schools but I started going to his side to help him get them ready. Two of my kids are teenagers and they were old enough to help their younger siblings. Mr. Ansah will always thank me. He started telling me how he wants his wife back and he has been calling her and begging her to come back but to no avail. My husband and I even became involved in it and we were calling for her to come back for the sake of the children.
She said we were taking sides with her husband and she doesn’t have any plans of coming back and that she is filing for divorce. I got so involved in it that one night my husband told me to step back and focus on our family. How I was always going to check up on Mr Ansah didn’t paint a good picture so hubby adviced me to try and reduce my visits to his side and I listened. We were there and Mr Ansah brought a young girl. In this generation, it’s always the young girls who go after men who are old enough to be their father. The girl was in her early 20s. If Mr Ansah had had a child early, he would have been her father. The man is in his 40s. He just didn’t settle down early. At first we all thought she was going to be a nanny and help him with the children. We were hoping that was the case because we didn’t want anything to make matters worse.
He didn’t even introduce the girl to us which is so unlike him and he started acting sneaky. It was like he was avoiding us because he knows that we will ask him about the girl. Over the years, we have all been in our businesses, so he knows we will ask him. The chance came and my husband asked him about the lady. He said she was more or less a househelp and he was getting irritated, so my husband took him at his word and left him. It’s not as if we didn’t want him to date any girl, but he was still a married man and we wanted him to do the right thing because of the kids. If he wants to date again, he should divorce his wife officially so he becomes a free man.
The lady got pregnant and then it wasn’t a secret anymore. I don’t know how his wife heard it, but she stormed into the house one day and insulted her husband and the girl. We tried to stop the argument, but when it was obvious that they didn’t want to stop quarreling, my husband held me to our side. Mr Ansah was insulting us and saying we stabbed him in the back by telling his wife. We did none of that. Our friendship became strained and we stopped talking to each other. Everyone was in their lane. It was even peaceful for a while. We later heard that the wife had made the divorce final. Then she came for the kids one day. The man was not around. It was just his pregnant girlfriend. The woman took all three of them away. When Mr Ansah returned, he was drunk and he was screaming all over the place. Threatening to kill his ex-wife if she doesn’t bring the kids home.
Then his girlfriend slipped one day. We heard she was bathing and she fell. She had a miscarriage. She left him and never passed by the house again. We never saw her again. Mr Ansah became very lonely. We tried to reach out to him but he will always lash out to us angrily and blame us. The man started drinking heavily. Then different girls were coming to see him in his room. Soon some very strange-looking guys started visiting him. That’s when the smell of marijuana started filling the air. The other tenant Kwame came to speak to Mr Ansah. He didn’t listen. Kwame reported him to the landlord. The landlord respects Mr Ansah a lot because he was here before any of us. The landlord just spoke to him and left. Things got even worse and we tried to find Mr Ansah’s family. We somehow got in touch with his brother. Mr Ansah’s parents have all passed and he is the firstborn. The said brother came around once and we didn’t hear from him again.
Mr Ansah lost his job. He will be in the room for weeks and we wont see him. My husband saw him one day and he was shocked. The man had lost so much weight and he hadn’t shaved in a long time. Then we started hearing him speak to himself. He will come and sit infront of his door and talk to himself. It looked like depression was taking over his sanity. In the end, the landlord took him to Accra Psychiatric Hospital and we hear he is still there. All of this happened within the space of 4 years. When I think about how quickly Mr Ansah changed and became someone else, it scares me. No one is above insanity. Sometimes we see mad people around and we unconsciously think that we are above them. But seeing our neighbour go mad right in front of us makes us know that any slight change, if not checked can affect our mental health.
Please don’t isolate yourself when you’re going through hell. Your mental health is important. I just felt like sharing because anytime I think of Mr Ansah,I shed a tear and I wish I had done more. But my husband and I tried our best. God bless you for reading.