She’s been rejected, desperate and homeless, that’s the story of Yaa Rita, 33, who has been living under the Ofankor overpass for the past two weeks with her two sons.

Rita who was jilted by her fiancé and ejected by her landlady is now forced, together with her sons, aged seven and nine, to depend on the benevolence of passersby.

It is a daily struggle as people mistake her to be a mentally unstable person and no one is willing to give her a job to cater for her children.

“The other day I went to the nearby shop up here and told the shop owner to give me some bagged water [pure water] to sell. The woman there told me she regards me to be a mentally unstable person when she passes by. She did not give me the water to sell,” said Rita.

Her two boys have dropped out of school for more than a year. They look dirty because they have not bathed for days. And they are hungry.

Yaa Rita herself looked dirty in her flowery black and orange dress with her hair tousled in hair net when Joy News’ Beatrice Adu caught up with her.  

“I use the public shower which charges ¢1.50 per bath. When I get money we pay to bath and when I don’t we go through the day without bathing,” said Rita.

According to Rita, she uses some of the money passersby give to her to feed her children. They sleep under the overpass when it rains and when the rain is heavier, they run to sleep in front of shops.

Rita said her brother who lives in Ashiaman has refused to help her when her landlady threw them out saying he also has a family to take care of.

She tells Beatrice Adu she can’t go back to her family in the Volta and Ashanti regions because they themselves are also living like paupers.

Rita says she is in dire need.

Kofi, Rita’s first son said, “We have stopped going to school because we don’t have the money. Also, we feel bad because our mates at school laugh and tease us that we are mentally unstable.”

Together with their mother, Rita, Kofi and his seven-year-old brother are pleading with government, NGO’s and any good Samaritans to come to their aid.