When my dad died I cleared out his home – and discovered he had a secret wife

When Joe Jacquest Oteng’s father, Peter, died in 2011, he was in charge of arranging his paperwork, sorting his belongings and arranging a funeral. But he could not have predicted what he found. Here, Oteng, 38, from Wolverhampton and now based between Barcelona and London, reflects on this period of pain and discovery.

My dad was a hoarder. When he died, and I was clearing out the house, there were stacks of paper everywhere. When I was going through it, I found his original Ghanaian passport, which I’d never seen before. When I opened it up, the date of birth placed him 10 years older than my mum, which I thought he was, with a different birthday.

I thought it was a mistake. Then I found a marriage certificate to a woman who was not my mother. In fact, every piece of paper I found contained another piece of information that told me something completely different about my dad. All of the clues started to paint a very different picture of who he really was.

Shorts

I grew up with both my parents ; they raised me together until I went to secondary school but they were never really together and were never married. They tried to make it work so I could have some stability; they tried their best, but they didn’t have a great relationship, and there was no romance. I never remember them being affectionate, and they always had separate bedrooms. As soon as I got older, they went their separate ways.

I was always a lot closer to my mum; my Dad was more interested in my studies and academic achievements and didn’t seem to be so interested in me. When I think about him now, I think about his passion for work. He worked for the Commission for Racial Equality, and he dedicated his life to it. It was his real passion in life.

Joe Jacquest Oteng with his mother and father as a young child

My dad was from Ghana. He came to the UK in the 60s to study in Wales on a scholarship. He didn’t often talk about his past, but he spoke about college. I think it was probably the best time he had in the UK.

He never liked to speak about his past and where he came from. I think a lot of families have those unspoken things, so I stopped questioning it. He didn’t tell me anything apart from the fact that he was one of 13 brothers and sisters. He didn’t tell me their names or show me pictures. He didn’t talk about his parents or where in Ghana he was from.

His past always felt like a mystery, but I always had the impression that my Dad was a little bit strange so I didn’t really question it at the time. It’s just who he was.

When he died, it was left up to me to look after the funeral arrangements and organise his things. That was when I found out all the little clues about who he was. Losing a parent for the first time is already a really traumatic thing to go through, but to process that was indescribable. It was very heavy. My head was all over the place with the confusion about who this person I’d lost actually was.

I was angry. I was angry because I had so many questions about him and he wasn’t around to ask anymore. I was left with unresolved feelings that I didn’t have anything to do with.

I didn’t look into everything until 2020. At the time, I was focused on organising his funeral. I was trying to become a singer, and I’d just moved to London. It was my first time getting involved in the music scene. It gave me something positive to focus on so I pushed the feelings down so I could get on with my life. I couldn’t talk to my mum about what was going on at the time. She has mental health problems and I couldn’t cope with the idea of looking after her if she got unwell after I’d already lost my dad. I shielded the information; I didn’t mention that he had a wife.

Back in London, I got on with my life but it always played in the back of my mind. I wanted to find out where my Dad came from, what happened to his family and his wife. When the pandemic hit, and I stopped having full-time work as a live singer, my mind started drifting back to everything I’d found that day in his bedroom. It became my lockdown project to investigate and get answers to the questions I’d had for all those years.

I started to meet some of the people who knew him, like his best friend from college when he first arrived in the UK. He spoke about a man who was full of life, who wanted to talk about politics and was proud of his culture and heritage. That’s not the man I grew up with.

In 2023, I met my Ghanaian family for the first time. It was my first time in the country and in Accra, the capital city. The family were so welcoming, they showed me as much of the culture, food and music as possible, so it was really special. I got to connect with the heritage, but I do wish my dad had taken me himself.

I went to the village, and even the room where my Dad was born. It was a full circle moment to go to a place that, to some extent, he’d turned his back on.

Oteng with some of his cousins

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