A man who discovered his dad had lied about his age after he passed away was in for a shock - because when he dug a little deeper he discovered he had also hidden a second family.
Joe Jaquest Oteng was devastated when his dad, Peter, died of prostate cancer in 2011 and he was left with the sombre task of sorting out his possessions.
In a box under his late father's bed, Joe found his dad's passport and it showed that Peter was ten years older than he had said he was.
Joe, who shares his story on YouTube, was intrigued, so he started digging for information and reaching out to his dad's old friends, and after a short search, he discovered a second wife and three children - who could be his siblings.
Then he traced his dad's family tree and learned that his dad was one of 69 children - meaning Joe had 68 aunts and uncles he knew nothing about, alongside 400 cousins.
What do you think about Joe's story? Let us know in the comments...
Joe, a professional singer who splits his time between London and Barcelona, said: "When My dad died, everything started to come out.
"I lived with my mum and dad until I was 11, then they split up - they were never really together, they stayed together to raise me.
"My mum moved into her own place, and I split my time between the two of them, this was in Wolverhampton, the jewel of the West Midlands.
"When he died I was kind of left in charge of sorting out the estate and funeral arrangements and stuff like that.
"I had to get some information like the death certificate, sort out pensions, and all the stuff that was left behind because he didn't leave a will.
"When I was going through his bedroom I had to go through all the paperwork and one of the first things I came across was his original passport from Ghana.
"In his passport, the date of birth was completely different from what we understood to be his birthday.
"We thought his birthday was on November 11, 1946, we celebrated his 50th in November, whatever year it was, but it turned out his birthday was April 3, 1936, so he was ten years older than we thought.
"We were like, 'what is going on?' We couldn't ask him any questions at that point, we just had the information.
Determined to learn more, Joe started going over the documents his dad had left behind to try and find more clues, but he was "a bit of a hoarder" so soon Joe's work stalled.
Joe continued: "It was a complete mess, he kept tons of files in his bedroom, and documents and all kinds of things. I basically spent a week on the floor just going through every little thing that was in his room just seeing what else I could find out.
"The next thing I found was a marriage certificate, to a woman that wasn't my mum - a woman called Irene.
"They got married in Birmingham in 1974. He'd never mentioned this woman and when I finally spoke to my mum about it she'd never heard of her either. She wasn't aware he'd been married either.
"Then I found a box under his bed, and in the box there were photo albums and letters and pictures of people from Ghana, people from Africa.
"I knew my dad was from a big family, he was one of 13 brothers and sisters, but he never spoke about his family at all so I had no idea who they were or what they looked like.
"I just assumed he was estranged from the family and maybe he didn't know them or wasn't in contact with them, but when I found the photo album I realised he was a lot more connected to these people than he'd let on.
"There were letters and correspondence from people with the family name, Oteng, but there was nothing concrete like addresses or full names, so even though I was really close to discovering his family, I had no way of contacting them directly.
"I just had to move on with things because I was quite young at that point, early 20s, and I'd just moved to London and was trying to break through into the music world as a singer.
"I had to organise the funeral and the estate, so I didn't have the time or the resources, and didn't know where to begin trying to get answers.
"I got on with my life, but these questions about my dad were always in the back of my mind."
Then, when the lockdown was imposed in 2020, Joe found himself with time on his hands and began forensically going through the mountain of documents his dad had left behind.
Joe continued: "When the lockdown began, that's when I became unemployed and I wasn't sure when I could work again.
"I stayed at home for a while twiddling my thumbs, and then I started thinking about my dad again and about all the things I'd found out all those years before.
"I decided that now was as good a time as any to commit to trying to get some answers, so that's what I did.
"During the lockdown, I bought a little camera and signed up to some genealogy websites and stuff like that, I started going through all the documents I had and all the clues that I had, seeing what I could find out.
"I started by contacting my dad's old workplace, the people at work didn't know too much about him, he isn't the sort of person that had close relationships with people.
"The people I spoke to had some good memories and were able to tell me about their time with him, but no one had any information about dad's family or his wife, and none seemed to know he'd been lying about his age either.
"I just kept looking further back and I went and found the college my dad went to when he first came to the UK, I got in contact with the old alumni association attached to the college - through those guys, I was able to get through to one of the people who had gone to college with dad and they were basically best friends.
"I went to meet him and spent the day with him, and found out what he knew about dad, and again it was a similar kind of story, he wasn't aware that dad had been married.
"One thing he told me was that when dad came to visit him in the late 80s he came with three children, and that was before I was born.
"I knew that I had a half-brother called Christopher, I was aware my dad had a kid with a woman before my mum was around. I wasn't aware of these two other children, and I still don't know if they were children of his or of his partners that were not his."
Joe had no idea who the other two children were and he's still not sure if they are his siblings or not, but he didn't let the shocking revelation put him off his search for his family.
He continued: "The thing that brought everything together was internet research. I know the village my dad was born in because it was in his passport, and his family name is Oteng, so I looked online to see if I could find someone with the same name who came from the same village.
"I found an article written by an Alfred Oteng, and it was about the village, Kyebi, and so the professor had written an article about the village and his email address was at the bottom of the article.
"I got in contact to see if maybe he was a relative of mine who had grown up in the village at the same time as dad had.
"He didn't recognise my dad's name but he was touched by the story and was really keen to help, I decided to give him all the information I had that might be useful.
"One thing I had found in my dad's box of memories was this little scrap of paper, it was the back of an envelope and it had a return to sender address, that had the name J W Oteng.
"It just so happened that Alfred recognised that name and the address, so he started doing his own investigation to see if he could find the contact details of J W Oteng.
"They'd known each other 30 years ago but were out of contact, J W Oteng turned out to be John Oteng who was my cousin.
"Then he got in contact with his brother, Edward, because his brother Edward lives in London and Edward got in contact with me, and then we arranged to meet up.
"We did, and weirdly I lived in Brixton for nine years, and Edward lives in Peckham - a 20-minute walk from where I lived.
"I went back to meet up with him and meet his family and find out more about the family in Ghana and what he knew about dad, and just have a catch-up and get to know each other a bit.
"That's kind of where things were for a long time, that's where things stood. Finally, I got the money together to go out to Ghana in January to go meet my family over there, so I met a bunch of family who had known my dad and found out more about what dad's life was like, and get connected to Ghana.
"I'd never been before and I wanted to experience the country for the first time, get my own connection to the country and the people.
"I found out was my dad was one of 69 children. His mum had 13 kids but his dad was the chief of the village, and he basically had all the children. He had 69 and my dad was the last born.
"All my dad's siblings have died, they're all dead, my dad would have been the youngest and he would have been 85 now. They were all older than that, there are so many cousins and so many different relatives out there, there's an endless stream of family to meet.
"It's in the hundreds, definitely. I've been in contact with John and Edward who are two of my cousins, they're children of one of my dad's brothers, and that brother had ten children of his own.
"If there are 69 of them, let's say they had five each, on average, that makes a good 300 first cousins, which is a big change from my reality growing up. "
Before Joe made his discovery, he thought he was from a small family with one half-brother and only two cousins.
"It is quite a change. It was me, my mum, my dad, my mums mum, and I had my auntie, and she has two children - so I grew up with two cousins, and now I'm at over 400.
"I really want to get to the bottom of the other children, and find out if I have any siblings, that's next on the agenda, I don't know how I'm going to do it but I'm looking into that.
"It's been a lot to take in and it's been quite overwhelming, and it's taken me a while to absorb everything that's happened over the past few years, and the month I was in Ghana meeting all these family members, and getting to realise I had this whole side of myself I didn't know existed and I didn't realise was there.
"I don't know if it's made me whole, but it's added a whole new element to my identity, and that's something I was hoping would happen.
"What I've taken away from this is that we take the people we love at their word, take them for granted, but you don't necessarily know what their pasts were like or what was going on before you were around."
Do you have a story to sell? Get in touch with us at yourmirror@mirror.co.uk
