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Abandoned, mocked and preyed on - Rita's story
Rita Yaa Osei wanted to die, but her duty to her two children kept her going. The three lived under a bridge for a year and a half in Accra, until one day rescue finally came. She tells Stacey Knott her story from the comfort of her new home.
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Having a roof above her head makes her feel strong, she doesn't have nightmares anymore.
It was only a few months ago that she was begging for death.
She was living on the streets of Accra with her two boys, now aged 6 and 8.
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Rita didn't know when help would come, she turned to various churches through Accra looking for safety but instead, she says congregations laughed at her dress or said she was mentally unwell, pouring anointing oil on her as she stood humiliated.
It was in 2005 when Rita first came to Accra from the Ashanti region with her then partner. They had two children, but never married.
Rita says her family never liked the partner, who ended up leaving her and the children.
She was unable to keep paying rent in the home they had. She told her family, who asked her to move back home, but family issues made this unworkable.
They told her to go back to the man to ask for help. However, Rita alleges he told her to sell one of the children and use the money to support herself and the other one.
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Rita decided there was no way she would leave her children, so she did the only thing she thought was left to do – joined life on the streets, keeping Ofankor barrier as her base.
It was scary, she told Pulse Ghana.
“It was not a pleasant place there were so many mosquitoes, the dust from the cars, you will even wake up one night to realise there was a mad man sleeping next to you.”
She saw fights everyday and would wake up to see someone trying to steal her children.
The small about of money she had would be stolen.
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“I actually hid the money deep down in my panties but people would go right into the panty and take it.”
Life on the street was something she would never wish on anyway, the logistics were a daily battle, getting food for her boys, finding places to bathe and safe places to sleep.
But as Rita narrates what she went through, it was the cruel taunts from other people – and being mocked when she tried to go to church – that cut her deepest.
“We had to sleep in front of people's stores, sometimes people were mocking at us, they called us mad... I knew I wasn't mad it was just the situation.”
On Sundays, Rita wanted to go to church.
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She would dress herself and her children as best she could.
“Most Sundays, I was mocked because of the dresses I wore to church. They actually thought I was bewitched or they would pray for me and pour so much anointing oil on my head, because of a dress I used to wear.”
They were known churches all through Accra.
“Even though I had the desire to go to church, because of what happened to me I couldn't go.”
She would cry after these rejections.
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“There have been so many time I have prayed to God to take my life because church was supposed to be the last place of resort. I was thinking the church would rather give me a place to sleep, clothes to wear and food to eat but when I entered the church and church was just about closing, these people would throw me out of the church with my two children and all my things.”
Abandoned, rejected and feeling hopeless, Rita didn't know when her plight would end.
But, one day, a stranger came to see her. He had read about her on Joy Online when a reporter met Rita and shared her story.
Elijah Amoo Addo, the founder of Food for All Ghana, an organisation that seeks to help the vulnerable through Ghana sought out Rita.
Rita was skeptical of Elijah, unsure of his intentions.
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NGOs had offered to help before, but only the children. Rita recalls she was told they would put them in an orphanage but Rita did not want to be parted with them.
Elijah offered Rita and the children a hotel room for the night while he figured what he could do for them.
Rita declined, unsure if they would be safe with this stranger. But when he came back the next day, and waited six hours for her as she had gone to wash clothes for someone, she changed her mind.
“When I went back to the same place Elijah was there and I realised this man had good intentions, and indeed he has. He has really helped me and my kids.”
For Elijah, the desire to help Ghana's vulnerable kept him there, waiting under that bridge – determined to get Rita and the two boys out of their situation.
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He spends a lot of time with Ghana's vulnerable – particularly children who have been abandoned by their parents. Rita's resolve to keep her kids with her impressed him.
“What really touched me as a food recovery organiser, was the fact that most of the street children we rescue and feed on the streets, they are children who their father abandoned their mother, and as a result the mothers also left them to be on the streets. What was so spectacular about Rita's story is the fact that she held on to the kids.”
Rita told Elijah her story, about life on the streets and the way churches treated her.
Through it all, the children were her treasure, she told him.
He had to assure her he would not separate her from the children.
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She worried what would happen to them if she died, they kept her going when she wanted to die.
Elijah, with his team from Food for All Ghana, posted Rita's plight on social media and had many people respond.
The Facebook group Ghana International Expats rallied to the cause, with members offering cash and goods donations.
So with their support, and Elijah and his team, Rita and the children were registered on the National Health Insurance Scheme, got medical treatment, were put into a home in Teshie and that home was filled with what the family needed, from a mattress to clothing, they also set Rita up with a provisions store close to the house.
The expat group also planned to offer Rita ongoing support with her store and money management.
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Rita's children excitedly play around the store, and cling to Elijah when he visits, though Elijah is concerned about their physiological development after their time on the street. He is seeking support for them.
For now, Rita beams with happiness when she talks about the house.
She proudly displays her goods in the small store.
And because there's not much else she can do, she has learnt to laugh about what she went through on the streets.
“It's been very long since I've slept in a room, even your soul is happy because you are sleeping in a room. No more nightmares,” she says with her beaming smile, as she flops down onto her mattress.
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Rita says she is content with her new life.
She doesn't want her boys to ever go through the hardship they were in again.
She has high hopes for them - one should be a doctor, the other a prophet she says, but mostly she just wants them to be “prominent people in the community.”
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Email: eyewitness@pulse.com.gh
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