The masons took down almost all of the wall that was slated for demolition. The only thing remaining is a bunch of rubble, the foundation and one block on top of the foundation. We could not find the surveyor’s cement block. When they survey the land they put mortar on top of half of a cement block and scratch the GPS coordinates of the property lines on the block. They put one on the outside corners of the property. This property is divided into 3 large sections so there are at least 9 of these blocks. The children in the neighborhood are terrible and the first day that the blocks were in place one of them went missing; since that time 3 more have gone missing. We appear to have lost another one during the removal of the wall. We have the hard copies of the plans that have the coordinates listed. We will make new blocks when the masons actually finish the wall. Today while Steve and I were taking our walk a couple of the men from the neighborhood stopped and told us that we were doing a good thing by taking the wall down (like we really had a choice) . Nazo said this afternoon that some of his neighbors were talking to him and said they were surprised that we took the wall down because if we had been Ghanaians we never would have removed it because the owner has the right to put whatever he wants on the land.
We lost one of our babies. The grandmother of the child thought the child was a witch and that it needed to be killed. She sent it to some far village to a distant uncle so the Juju (witchdoctor) could kill her. She was 8 months old and she was a tiny slip of a girl. Some children are just slender. There was nothing physically wrong with the child and we could not tell that there was anything mentally wrong with the child. Sometimes children are killed because they have mental or physical deformities. Sometimes children are accused because too many bad things are happening to a village or to a family. The Juju, witchdoctor, is consulted and he always accuses someone of causing their trouble. The whole thing is so sad. The Ghana government has made it a crime to kill the children or adults for that matter for being witches but it still happens. The believers are very good at hiding the facts in these cases. A lot of people believe in witches. We found out because the rival (second wife) met Zorash and told her what had happened to the child. She was upset . Meri said that she met the child’s grandmother and asked about the child and the grandmother lied and said the baby was fine and was staying in the village. No one dares to report these cases to Social Welfare because of the repercussions that will come back on the family and because deep down many believe. No one here will act on second hand information. Now that I have depressed you I will close.
Thank you for all you do!
In His Service,
Steve and Kandie
