John is my friend in Ghana who helps those who come to him in desperate need. Though poor himself. John does what he can and often he goes hungry to help those who come to him.
I do what I can to help but I am poor myself, by American standards. I consider myself a wealthy man by Ghanaian standards and when I see their suffering and need I do not complain about my situation. I have a roof over my head, heat and food, and I get by. I am honored to help John when I can. It is just what we do as a part of the community of humanity.
The nightmare of the situation is not so much the suffering of the people John is trying to help but the fact that we can help so few of them. We try to prioritize. Those in desperate need of medical help, to the point of literally dying without it, come first. Homelessness, paying the rent of those who have been evicted or are about to be evicted, comes next. Then food.
We try to help children but anyone can be in need. The old and feeble and even those in the prime of life can be on the edge of losing everything too (by this I mean not only possessions but literally their lives) and it is hard to say that they should die just because they are not too young or too old. (When I first knew John one of his friends in his twenties was trying to live on one cookie a day, He caught typhoid and died in hours.)
In just this past week John has had a young relative come to him in need of surgery. I am not sure of the exact medical situation but when she has her periods the pain is so bad she literally cannot stand or walk. It has been getting worse. She has been told she needs an operation but we cannot afford it right now.
Then a soldier came with a young daughter who is also in need of surgery. In fact it was scheduled but he cannot pay for it. Right now neither can we. Difficult times.
I guess I am just saying here, this is not all good times and feeling satisfied with ourselves because we are just the radiant beings spreading goodness and light among the populace. This is a gut-wrenching, grinding work where we have to decide every day who we can help and who we cannot.
It is not the fun of playing with the lives of other people.
I am not sure of the rules of fundraising here and I don’t want to violate them, Also I don’t want to ask for money. I was not raised that way. But in the last diary someone asked if there was a GoFundMe where people could help. I did set one up. It is at email.gofundme.com/… I am not asking, just saying.
The man in the improvised wheelchair above is Abdul, tho he is called Bobo. He cannot walk or stand. He is quite well known in Ghana. He is one of the beggars there. He came to John after being evicted for no money to pay rent. We managed to get him back in his house (he is in his forties and was sick from being homeless in the weather.) He asked for a new wheelchair but of course we can’t do that.
I wish I could just write diaries about all of the good things John is doing.