I thought I should update y’all on what has been happening with my friends in Ghana after last week and the demolition of the Buduburam Refugee Camp. I described that here
John is no longer living in the camp but some of our friends still do. Or used to. Now they are scattered and scrambling to survive and find someplace to stay. The local landlords are taking advantage of the situation and charging exorbitant fees for the few places available.
John’s younger brother Joshua had been living in the camp in a room we had rented for him. Joshua, sadly, is mentally unstable and cannot really care for himself. I think he has been surviving by gathering and selling scrap but I’m not sure.
As I said before, I have a deep affection for Joshua. I have chatted with him online many times. I wish life had worked out better for him but things are as they are. All we can do for him now is to try to take care of him as we can.
At any rate, John managed to find a room for him in a nearby village, a sort of suburb that is far enough away from Buduburam that the rents aren’t totally unreasonable. The landlord wanted a whole year in advance but John talked him down to six months and we managed to pay that. So hopefully he will be okay for awhile.
I would like to help Joshua to stabilize his life but right now that simply isn’t possible.
We had to pay the room and boarding fees for our little four year old orphan Anabel at the beginning of the month so that cut down on the funds we had available for the others but we managed to do that and hopefully she is settled for now. The place where she is staying sometimes asks extra fees for medicine, clothing, and the like and she sometimes needs to pay for school supplies but for now she is good. Fortunately the place where she is staying isn’t in Buduburam so she wasn’t really affected by the demolition.
We haven’t been able to make contact with Zenabu and Haddi and little baby Vicky. We helped Zenabu through a very difficult pregnancy about a year ago when she gave birth to Vicky but we haven’t been in touch for awhile. I don’t know if they are okay.
My biggest concern right now is the Zuzu family, baby Melbourne’s mother and two siblings. Melbourne will be three years old in May. His father is in prison and the mother has been struggling to take care of the children on her own.
She was staying in Buduburam and when it was destroyed she was forced to camp out with her children on the local school grounds. They are in great need but we just haven’t been able to help them yet. There is only so much money to go around. I am going to do some creative bookkeeping today and try to send a little for them. I know it’s hard to wait when your belly is empty, though.
On a more positive note, the photo above is of John and Favour’s baby. Favour is the seventeen year old Nigerian girl who was pregnant and living without shelter on the beach in Accra when she came to John for help. They have had their travails but the baby is alive and, for now, doing well.
We had wanted to do the baby’s naming ceremony this week so that he could become a real person in his own right but Buduburam got in the way. I am hoping to be able to arrange a small ceremony for him next week.
Though this may seem trivial compared to rent and food and medicine, it is very important. It is roughly equivalent to the Christian ceremony of infant baptism. Babies are not considered real people or real members of the community without it. And it is believed the spirits may take the baby back if it is not named.
There are some more positive things going on with John’s work in Accra but I thought I should limit this just to the basics so that it doesn’t seem to shoot off in too many directions.
The good thing is that everyone is alive and in good health. So we have survived another week.
God bless.