John Update Update March 29, 2025
- p9foundation
- Mar 29
- 2 min read
Challenging times in Ghana. We have only begun to put together the story of what
has been happening there with our friend John and the people he has been working
with; and we may not yet have the full details, but we do have the basic outline.
Some days ago we got a message from John that Anabel, the abandoned five year old
girl we have been helping there, had been sent home from school because of illness.
Then we heard nothing. Not about Anabel, not about Favour and baby Donald, not even
about John himself. It was as if John had ceased to exist.
Now this has always been a danger in our co-operation with John in Ghana. While John has
documented everything he has done there (to the degree he has been able to) and
while we have actually communicated directly with many others there over the years,
John is one of the only people we have had continuing access to over the years. We do have the cellphone numbers of various people there (Anabel's matron at the home where she stays, for example) but these are not really the kinds of contacts we can reach out to in an emergency. In most cases of anything had happened to John they probably wouldn't know any more than ourselves about it.
Finally a few days ago we finally received a message from John. He was wrapped up
over nonpayment of an electric bill of all things. Even now we don't
know all of the details but John owns his own home near the Buduburam Refugee Camp
(or where it used to be before the government bulldozed it). He has been renting it
out and living full-time in the slums of Accra where he works helping the poor. The
agreement is that the bill would be split three ways but somehow it wasn't getting
paid for three years. Finally, the government raided the house and arrested the
tenant.
In Ghana, as in other places in Africa, owing a debt is not just a civil issue. It
is a legal crime.
John signed an agreement to pay the bill in three monthly installments but they
demanded he pay the first installment. Unfortunately, by the time he was able to get in touch with us it was literally the day the first installment was due. The money for the first installment was advanced.
He hasn't had a chance to find out the immediate status of Anabel or Donald or any of the
others. This is, of course, worrisome. But of course, under these circumstances he has to stabilize his own situation first.
