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DNA for family reunification is destroying African marriages abroad

It was the second baby of the Canada-based engineer to undergo the important ritual of baby dedication in the family church in Accra.
Like the first, the husband flew to Ghana just to be by his wife’s side. For the congregants, it felt surreal and gratifying that the same pastor who blessed their marriage was also the man of God who held the baby in his arms and invoked the Lord’s blessings on him.
He had been named after his father, and even those who never saw the baby’s face insisted he was his father’s doppelganger (lookalike). A huge party crowned it all.

Paper mountain
Back in Canada, the engineer began the laborious family sponsorship application.
He confessed he never knew the difference between tortuous (twists, turns and bends) and torturous (very painful) until he began the application.
He joked that the letter ‘r’ which separates the two words, stands for ‘resubmit’, for he had to submit the application for the umpteenth time after repeating the same mistakes.
The mountain of mandatory and supporting documents required for the application dried up the embers of the romantic fire burning in the young engineer.
The package included photos of his wedding, traditional marriage, baby christening, and transcripts of money transfers and evidence of properties jointly owned.
He hated the compulsion of having to describe to the IRCC how he met his wife and how he proposed marriage to her; a privilege reserved for wedding guests.
He had to pay several thousand dollars to a lawyer to ensure that the third submission of his application was without errors, in addition to the payment of $1,400 standard fees.
Six months passed. Another month followed. The next month was pregnant with a combustible piece of information on an innocent paper which ended their beautiful marriage instantly. What was Samantha thinking?
The DNA tests told a story terribly different from the beautiful happily-ever-after tale they co-authored on their wedding day. The husband was not genetically related to his two kids, a biological conundrum only Samantha could explain.

Demon of lust
Samantha may have outdone Asmodeus (demon of lust) for having her husband’s kids with the same pastor who officiated their wedding and also dedicated their kids to what we now believe was Asmodeus.
This is what makes the engineer’s story the most painful in all abrokyire marriages.
Otherwise, this DNA paternity conspiracy is a harmless reminder of how women made fools of our fathers before DNA testing began.
The scrotum has since been a very pitiable object. The experience earned the engineer the painful moniker of ‘Chief Miso’.
He became a misogamist (hates marriage) and a misogynist (hates women). Yet he is not celibate.
Who is the cheat here? It is not Samantha; not even their pastor. The Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), who ordered the DNA, also became the Greek goddess of chaos (Eris), to destroy the beautiful marriage.
If the kids were born in Canada, the IRCC would not have required a DNA before handing over child benefits and passports to them.
They would be given all privileges, even if DNA were conducted after they had landed in Canada, and the results had shown that the kids shared no blood connection to the sponsor.
Strangely, the Canadian government may not have required any DNA proof if the husband lived in Ghana and was sponsoring his kids from Canada.
These submissions formed the gravamen of arguments contained in a letter I wrote to the IRCC years ago when the dreaded DNA testing turned asunder the marriage of a friend in Vancouver.
In Peter’s case, the tests proved that one out of the four beloved kids was not from his loins.
His wife threatened to sue the Canadian Embassy in Ghana after ferociously contesting the results, flaunting her fidelity to the high heavens.
She pulled the brakes when a second DNA test flagged another child for having a strange blood group.
At this point, it was advisable not to do further tests. Peter abandoned the sponsorship for all four kids and divorced his wife. Once again, DNA testing denied innocent kids a good life in Canada.

Community parenting
In my letter to the IRCC, I posited that DNA testing is alien to African culture.
In Ghana, children are not mere extensions of a person’s genotype, but spiritual pillars treasured for their community relatedness, than their genetic connection to a mother and a father.
Unlike rich countries where the absence of biological parents create a care vacuum for welfare agencies, in Ghana, aunties and uncles play in loco parentis (assume the role of parents), not as a charity gesture but as part of a spiritual community obligation.
As a result, nephews have as much claim to their uncle’s estate just as the uncle’s biological kids, and sometimes a stronger claim.
Where DNA testing flags a child for not sharing a genetic connection to the father, that child must be seen as a part of a family unit that must not be separated by mere laboratory experiment.
If the marriage predates the child and the father has been responsible for the child’s physical and emotional wellness, DNA testing may be waived.
Apart from breaking many African marriages, DNA testing has exposed children to stigma, neglect and shame, especially kids of African footballers.
DNA testing is based on trust, or rather mistrust–for our jurisdiction where an adult decides when they were born and marriage certificates are dished out like confetti for who can pay. The IRCC’s reliable acid test must be the DNA.
However, it has also proven to be a veritable acid that has ended the marriages of many Africans abroad.
As usual, Sir Alec Jeffreys, the British geneticist who developed DNA testing in 1984, did not make any provisions for African marriages.

Kwesi Tawiah-Benjamin
Tissues of the Issues
bigfrontiers@gmail.com

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