Family Secret: A Generational Curse For Ill Gotten Generational Wealth?

In the past year while COVID-19 was raging and most families were hunkering down in the hopes of avoiding the virus to keep their families safe, my big brother was living life like there was no tomorrow. He still threw exclusive parties in exclusive hotels. He met and mingled with friends, and of course he had his women, side women. One afternoon I was in his home helping my nephew and niece with their online schoolwork, when his heavily pregnant wife received a call and began screaming. The reason: my brother had been rushed to the hospital after suffering a heart attack. When we got to the hospital, we were told he was pronounced dead on arrival. Let me cut a long story short, my brother had a heart attack and died on top of another woman.

He left a pregnant wife in her last trimester and two children under ten years old.

Two years ago, one of my uncles died fighting his girlfriend’s boyfriend. He was stabbed eleven times. He left a wife and three teenage children.

Another one of my uncles died in an accident with a twenty year old girl on the Kwahu mountains. He wife thought he was on a flight to France.

Years ago, one of my cousins was found dead in a popular, top class hotel in New York City, he had overdosed on cocaine. Security cameras showed he had checked in and entered with two women. The women left hours later. No one knows if he died before or after they left, but that is besides the point. The point is he was scheduled to be married in two weeks to one of the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. But instead, he went ‘whore-monging’ and died.

Misskorang, do you see the pattern? I could go on and on with my great-uncles, uncles, cousins…. The curse appears to work on male descendants of my grandfather.

This generational curse is gender specific! You would think the female descendants go scot free, no they don’t. Because this curse doesn’t work on them but it works on their sons!

So what at all did my great-grandfather do? Because ironically he lived to enjoy his old age and his wealth. He died when I was ten. He had three wives, seventeen children and twenty-two grandchildren by the time of his death.

When my brother died, I was inconsolable. I sank into depression. I was so angry with that bastard of being so darn irresponsible! My mother was scared of my rage, so he called my grandmother to come speak with me. It was then that I learned how my great-grandfather got his wealth.

Back in the 1950s , my great-grandfather (lets call him Al Capone) worked in a government institution as a clerk. His pay was modest, he had a cocoa farm on the side, he and his first wife (my great grandmother) had a modest life.

In those days banks were not as prevalent as they are now, so salaries were sent to paymasters (HR heads) in sacks or briefcases and they in turn distributed the physical cash to the workers. Al Capone saw a loophole there, and purposely made friends with his office paymaster. According to my grandmother, they were so tight, the paymaster and Al Capone took turns eating dinner at each other’s house every evening.

Months passed, the paymaster ‘s wife went away to deliver their last child at her parents home (out of town). That was when Al Capone set his plan in motion. He got the paymaster in a drunken stupor, pretending he was drinking with him. All the while Al Capone was plying the man with alcohol, he was drinking water. When the paymaster was good and drunk, Al Capone stole the sack of money meant to pay salaries the following Monday.

When things same to a head, Al Capone denied ever being in the paymaster’s home that day. The man had no witnesses and my great-grandmother corroborated her husband’s story. The paymaster was sentenced to decades in prison.

Al Capone and Al Caponess moved from the town and settled in another region. They became wealthy, invested well, did many businesses and sent their children to Ivy League schools in Britain and The United Sates.

That is the reason for our generational curse; after Al Capone, it appears every male in his bloodline doesn’t live past sixty five. Most die younger, with women they’re not married to.

My family has done everything and gone everywhere under the sun to try to break this curse, it is not working! The only remedy, I’m told is to give back every penny and every thing we’ve benefited from that blood money. But how do you return education and exotic vacations? It appears the only people benefiting from this wealth without any consequences are the Mallams, Priests and Pastors. They’re taking us for a freeloading jolly ride!

Some of my family tried to convince the paymaster’s family to accept a compensation of a sizable amount of money. At the meeting, the man’s family members sprayed mine with raid mosquito spray. We were mosquitoes to them.

When I see young men and women marry into our family, I pity them. If there’s anything my family does well, it is to throw parties. So when I see people dancing at these lavish weddings, I say them a prayer, because I know the funeral is coming. As for me, I am not going to bring any children into this mess, I am enjoying my life, if I die, I die!

So there you have it, my family secret: The Well Deserved Great Generational curse!