This story cuts straight to the heart of the matter. Instead of presenting struggle as a metaphor or hiding suffering behind neat resolutions, it gives you Tekua, a woman caught between survival and despair, and asks you to sit with her reality.
Tekua sells goods at Kejetia Market in Kumasi, one of Africa’s largest trading hubs. Her life revolves around long hours of arranging and re-arranging merchandise, earning barely enough to feed her two sons and save a little for their school fees. Her work is punishing, her hopes are fragile, and her stall is her only lifeline.
In the story, we see her present-day struggle at the market, interspersed with a flashback into her past and the sad circumstance that birthed her sad reality. A major betrayal and loss led her to a breaking point, and, in the end, her choices leave her sons facing a reality that feels both shocking and inevitable.
The details of Kejetia, including the noise, the smells, and the endless human traffic, make the setting vivid and believable. You can almost hear the calls of the traders and feel the sun on Tekua’s back. Still, the emotions at the heart of the story, including hope, disappointment, shame, and exhaustion, are just as obvious.
The nonlinear narrative seamlessly moves between Tekua’s present and past, without confusing the reader. Each flashback explains how a promising life turned into a struggle for survival. The small spoilers do not ruin the experience because the tension comes from the character, not twists.
The final pages are painful but work pretty well, revealing the cost of repeated losses and betrayals, not as a sudden tragedy, but as the culmination of a prolonged erosion of hope. And, for readers, while it reads as an ordinary story, this plainness is its precise strength, perfectly conveying how easily Tekua’s path mirrors that of many women juggling debt, children, and survival.
It is a hard read but an important one.
