Georgina Pipson with three boys and two girls

In the past weeks as Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's fortnight in Ghana gave its place in the news to Togo under siege in Cabinda, another story was quietly playing out in the local press. It divided people sharply, turning its culprit into a victim while speaking volumes about a society out of touch with its own reality.

The story broke on January 5, with the discovery of five dead children, aged 11, 9, 6, 4 and 1, lined up like dolls on a bed in order of age.

Their mother, Georgina Pipson, (pictured, holding the youngest, Esi) is thought to have poisoned their food, then called her ex-husband, told him he should get the children, and fled.

Initially she was labelled a monster. But days later she was found lying semi-conscious in a vehicle in Accra. She was admitted to hospital and died the following day. Nobody spoke of the cause.

When she was found, she was carrying a purse containing a small diary in which she had chronicled her life.

“I was born in December 1977...I am alone in this world, God why, God why..Georgina with three boys and two girls...I don’t have a mother or father, who am I? My People deserted me...God give me hope...forgive me and my children, Nana, Kwaku, Angel, Kofi, Esi...What a painful world; God have mercy on me and my children...Why, Kojo my husband? Kojo, I do love you and will never forget you."

While reports suggest that Georgina was mentally ill, her former husband had said that this wasn't the case. “Georgina was not mad. She was quite normal but occasionally at some point, she starts behaving abnormal. She would go out and sit somewhere and cry.”

She'd been visited by a domestic violence unit of the police after reporting her husband for abuse, but there the help stopped.

In this newspaper column written "just to interrogate the system", Vicky Wirecko suggests that Ghana has yet to get to grips with the disintegration of communal living, which was equipped to support single mothers. Its place has not been filled by adequate state support, leaving single mothers, dirt-poor, struggling to bring up big broods they can't afford. The mental wounds (one study found 50% of women surveyed in a marketplace showed signs of mental degradation) can obviously be devastating.

Wirecko says the family’s tragedy "speaks loads about our failed society, our dysfunctional child welfare and protection institutions, and a pathetic diagnosis of the social welfare and medical support systems that exist in our country today."

Georgina still lies in the mortuary with the youngest of her children. The four others were buried last week by their father, absent for the latter part of their lives but keen last week to talk to the newspapers to present a picture of the wronged father burying his children in the copper soil.

The remaining child, one year old Esi, remains unclaimed. She cannot be laid to rest with her siblings because the father says she's not biologically his.

He also can't bury Georgina, so she will not share her children's grave. He says his culture can't allow him to bury the family together without the consent of Georgina's family, but they have not kept contact, save for the presentation of a bottle of Schnapps when they heard the news that the children had died.