There was the urgent need to get workers on the farm to at least prevent vital items like generator, deep freezers, solar inverters and batteries, pumping machine, electronic scales and other valuable items from being stolen.
I contacted a friend who used to be the head of an agric school and asked him to find me one of his past students to serve as a farm manager at INNOFARM. He gave me the contacts of 5 prospective applicants and I selected one of them after phone interviews.
The young man arrived on the farm three days after the interview. I told him about everything that had happened and prepared his mind against the brainwashing antics of my saboteurs. And indeed they came, telling my new manager things that will scare him away, but he stood his ground and stayed.
Something very interesting happened a few weeks later. We experienced the invasion of snakes on the farm. We are in the middle of the forest and it is usual to see snakes once a while, but to see snakes almost everywhere, I thought was an abnormality. I, therefore, raised my voice and prayed to God that any snake sent to cause havoc on my farm must die as soon as it crosses the boundary into my farm. The following day and the subsequent days,, we saw dead snakes about 10 metres from the boundary on my farmland. This increased the faith of my manager to stay. In a few weeks, the court case against us was thrown out for lack of capacity! It was a sweet victory!
By the help of my manager we recruited some labourers from Burkina Faso to help us with our operations. I borrowed more money for retooling. The guys worked extremely hard, but in the end we had nothing to show, our crops failed. It was becoming difficult to pay my workers so some of them left. But my manager and one Burkinabe stayed.
I had taken a loan from a savings and loans company and had defaulted repayment. I used my car as collateral, and the company gave me a deadline to pay or they auction the car to pay the debt. The one-month deadline was running fast, I did everything in my power to raise the money without success. A week to the deadline, I called my wife and children and told them I was going to hand over the car to the company. They were distressed.
I had hit the wall and needed a miracle! I locked up myself in the room and fasted for three days without food and water, seeking for God’s intervention. On the third day of fasting, I received a call from a young man from the village where I have my farm. He told me he and his friend had gone to a shrine to work against the progress of my farm and my uncle who is sick. He said the spell was activated more than a year ago, but he has been feeling restless and uncomfortable and wants to reveal everything to me when I get to the farm.
To be continued.
Anthony Obeng Afrane
