I don't know what to do today. It's a Monday and I'm not going to school because I am at a funeral. It is a double funeral and I will be reading two biographies. You are wondering why two, Sukane and Metande died a week ago. They are my brothers. One my twin and the other my older brother.
They were involved in an accident.
I don't know who to blame, Sukane or the driver of the tipper truck. I'm left all alone with no family but Iris my niece. She's still a few months old and yet she never got to spend much time with her father.
I'm a sixteen year old African-American girl living with a total stranger who is taking care of me and sending me to school and providing me with shelter, food and a love of a mother.
I currently live here in Ghana, Africa hoping to go back to my father's homeland. I don't know what I'll l tell my aunties when I get there though.
My mother, father and two brothers are buried here on a foreign man's land not belonging to the soil but except my mother who is of full African parentage, structure and colour and who was born and bred here.
Antonio affectionately called Sukane wasn't a successful man but he was loving. He wasn't a graduate with a job but he was a smart boy with the passion of hard labour and not reading books.
He may have fallen into the most notorious group but he did it all to protect me, his little innocent sister. He may have made the mistake of neglecting his younger brother but I know deep down he loved him. His joy wasn't only me and my twin it was Iris, his daughter who turns three months tomorrow.
Antonio Sukane Balvin was born 3rd March 1996 to Mr Elvis John Balvin and Mrs Nana Akua Balvin at ...... in Brazil. He had his primary and high school education in Brazil. He moved to Ghana with his whole family when he was seventeen and later continued his tertiary education at KNUST (Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology) offering a BA in English language. He dropped out in his second year because he realised school was not for him. He instead decided to do odd labour jobs for individuals just as a hobby.
Anny as I loved to call him was not a strong believer in God but he made it a norm to go to church every Sunday. Anny was and had a good soul but all that changed on the night our mother died, he could not bare it. He then realised he had to do everything possible to keep us the younger children in school but he made the worst choice of joining a gang to fight for money so we could go to school, although things became hard he never gave up.
He worked alongside fighting to bring money to the house but when things became worse he sent me to a friends mother to take care of me and to protect me from bad boys in the area. He never forgot his family.
Antonio died 20th August 2019 in a vehicle accident when coming home for Christmas. He is succeeded by me, his sister and Iris, his daughter.
I take my seat with these words to him wherever he is
Irmão, Durma bem. Você estará para sempre no meu coração e embora não esteja aqui, Iris sempre saberá que ela tem um pai. (Brother, sleep well. You will forever be in my heart and although you are not here, Iris will always know that she has a father)
