Scaling the walls of life, part 6

I love youth empowerment, and so I set up a farm project in a rural community which was employing 20 young people.

A department of the farm processes and packages livestock. Just when I started production, I heard rumours about some people planning to file a suit against me at a High Court to contest the ownership of my farmland. I found it laughable because I legitimately acquired the land, and have documents endorsed by the chief of the village where I have my project.

Interestingly, not too long afterwards, I was served with a writ from the High Court. It was a difficult moment for me at that time because I had invested heavily and had little money left. I struggled to pay for the service of a lawyer and filed my defence. They had prayed the court to put an injunction on my farm so that I I should not even go there. The project is my pension plan, and as a writer, I had thought of having a serene environment to read and write aside eating fresh and healthy foodstuffs to keep me strong in my old age.

I went in and out of court for many months. My financial position worsened, but I had to put in my all because I couldn’t afford to lose the project which meant a lot to me.

Something funny started happening, some of those helping me in the case suddenly got ill. As if that was not enough, I had an accident.

It was a busy market day, I was approaching a T. Junction, and about fifty metres to the junction, the engine of my car suddenly revved to the maximum, the car was moving at about 70km per hour. I saw a KIA truck coming from the left side of the junction and some cars coming from the right side.

I stepped on the brake but it didn’t work. Because it was a market day, there were so many people around. I was about to hit many of them at a go! I started sweating. My car is automatic which won’t permit me to use the gears to stop. Somehow, I managed to drive into a house under construction. It was a miracle that no one was injured even though the engine of the car got damaged. So many people rushed to the scene and were surprised to see me alive and unhurt.

These weren’t all, workers on my farm started leaving without notice. There were times that I received calls that there were no one on the farm, I had to stop whatever I was doing in Accra and rushed there. I later on got to know that some people had allegedly told my workers that those litigating with me dabble in “juju” so they could die while on the farm, and since nobody wants to die they all left. This was a big blow to me. All the vegetables we had cultivated went bad. I lost 10 goats in a single day.

To be continued.

Anthony Obeng Afrane.