When I first moved to this address, I paid the required rent for my two-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bathroom, large hall, dining room, front and back porches, and garage. I assumed that the rent covered all of the enclosed spaces. After living here for five years, in 2024, the caretaker’s eldest son told me that his mother needed to use my garage to store the grain the family used to make Kenkey every morning, which they regularly sold to community members. This sudden need arose because the shed near the wall, where they had previously stored those goods, was being converted into a small shop to benefit the proprietress residing in Belgium at the time. I then advised him that the garage was my personal private space and that I was not interested in sharing it with anyone.
That same week, the landlady’s son and her sister called me to say that the garage was never rented to me. They further informed me that garages are generally not rented with any apartment in Ghana. I was shocked to hear such news, and since I had some realtor friends in Berekum, I consulted with them before making any decision. Only then did I fully understand what the Spirit meant when He advised me before these developments, “That I would need to be careful to avoid coming trouble.” My friends in the real estate industry confirmed everything stated by the landlady’s relatives. Accordingly, I promptly paid the rent for the garage for one full year. They sounded like they wanted enough rent to cover the past five years, during which I thought the garage was mine. The realtors, however, advised me that they couldn’t go backward.
I recall that about two months before these developments. The caretaker and his son had been trying to get into the garage attached to my apartment. They were unsuccessful since the doors had been locked for over five years. Then they came to me and requested the keys to unlock the doors. However, I advised them that Mr. Sam (the proprietress’s late son), who rented me the apartment, had never given me the keys to the garage doors. They further explained to me that the property owner had directed them to make an entrance into the garage. However, they had to come inside my apartment and use the door that opened into the garage to access that space. I thought at the time that such instructions were extremely odd. Since I had rented the apartment, presumably the garage was under my control. Two months later, I would bump into the inconvenient truth.
At about the same time, one Saturday morning, I heard voices calling me at my apartment’s rear entrance. I didn’t pay any attention to those calls since it was Saturday, and the other people living on the property knew that, as a rule, I didn’t entertain guests or engage in any kind of secular discussion on the Seventh Day of the week. When the proprietress’s son and his aunt came to collect the rent for the garage, the son felt that the occasion was an appropriate time to complain about my unresponsiveness on the Saturday morning that they were trying to contact me. I listened carefully, then asked them if they had heard anything about the Sabbath. They answered in the affirmative. Thereafter, I took up my bible, turned to Exodus chapter 20, and read from verses 8-11.
“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.”
They both listened carefully because they were not unfamiliar with the Sabbath Truth. Afterwards, I asserted, ‘Folks, I’m begging you to not come and see me on a Saturday. Because you won’t be able to get me since I’m a Sabbath keeper.”
The apartment next to mine had been vacant for approximately three years. The family living there finally moved out because they were consistently experiencing financial problems. They had difficulty paying their portion of the water bill whenever it was due; they experienced challenges purchasing electrical credits whenever needed, and, of late, they couldn’t find money to pay their rent. They were probably asked to leave, and they did so promptly. Two young ladies were living there with other family members. After leaving, the younger one called me periodically whenever she needed money for school trips, a bag for her books, or some other necessary school expense. I always obliged her.
The proprietress called the caretaker and asked him to leave the huge apartment upstairs, where he and his family had lived rent-free for over 16 years. I had been up there a few times and couldn’t help but notice that there were no beds or other furniture pieces in any of the rooms. When I first moved here, my apartment downstairs and directly beneath theirs was regularly flooded because they would turn on a pipe to fill up a bowl or large container and then leave for church. I had to suffer the inconvenience of mopping up all that water resulting from their frequent carelessness. They were extremely apologetic for those mishaps, and I never lost my temper at any time, let God be praised. There were also signs of severe leaks in the roof from the upper floor’s ceiling. However, the most serious problem was that they wouldn’t stop using the two largest bathrooms upstairs for frequent showers. I repeatedly warned them that eventually, the floor would collapse because of water seepage, which caused the underlying board to rot. All of this was the result of poor and shoddy construction. Such signs were clearly visible in the northern corner of my dining room’s ceiling.
Unfortunately, however, they wouldn’t cease and desist, just as they couldn’t understand that they and their animals should stay off my front porch, even though I warned them three times in a highly courteous and very nice manner. They never got my point until they were finally kicked out and accused by the proprietress’s sisters of forcing me to build an enclosure around my porch to keep them and their animals out of my private space.
(TO BE CONTINUED)
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