John Update 10/20/26
John
In all the years we have known John in Ghana he has suffered from poor health. He has struggled with several different ailments but they all stem from gastro-intestinal problems that seem impossible to cure on a permanent basis.
John has been treating his bleeding ulcers with local herbal remedies and this seems to help but that is a considerable continuing expense and when he runs out of money and thus runs out of the herbs he has been taking he almost immediately begins to lose blood though anal bleeding. (We know this is not a comfortable thing for many to discuss, but unfortunately this is what he has to deal with.)
Because John is John he often puts the needs of others above his own. He puts his own limited resourses and the funds we are able to send him into helping others first and himself last. John even borrowed money on his phone account recently to help Ada when she was in the hospital giving birth to her little baby girl. As a result he is currently several hundred dollars in debt and the use of his phone is limited until he has paid it off. This is causing considerable problems, as might be imagined.
For several months John has done without his medicinal herbs, spending the money on others instead. But this neglect has not been without its price.
Recently John sent a message that he was bleeding so badly that he was unable to stand. The only food he could eat was the juice of some fruit. In his last message he said that his friends had carried him to a clinic. The clinic limits use of phones (presumably for the privacy of other patients) so he had to talk a hospital guard into letting him use his phone but otherwise he was cut off from communication with us.
He had no funds and the circumstances made it impossible for us to get anything to him (this is a complicated issue but is based on the debt he currently owes on his phone.) He asked for help. Paying off the debt on his phone would at least make it possible to get funds to him but we are far enough into the month that our remaining funds are very limited. We told John we would try to work something out.
We have not heard from him since and right now we have no way to get in touch with him. We can only wait and hope he will find some way to contact us.
John is an intelligent, resourceful man. He has been in tight spots before and has managed to find a way out of them. We are hoping he can get through this and continue on with his life. In the meantime the situation is dire.
