"Perregaux' Report for the Year 1897"

A long-standing woman member of the community had had to be excluded for 'falling' with an excluded man and refusing to live with her husband - Perregaux had in time past held her up as an example. She was part of a reduction .of 4 in the Abetifi community due to exclusions - 42 members had moved away, 18 of them into Kumasi, including the families of 3 evangelists (one of Ramseyer's new evangelists was a man who had cared for Perregaux during his Nkoranza illness). He is starting his Evangelists' School in Abetifi - it is partly intended for boys of good character who passed through the Akropong schools, but were not giften enough to go into the Seminaries. The founding of the School is put into the context of an acute shortage of local help. In Obomeng, for example, the chief had been asking for a teacher for so long that he eventually asked the Methodists to help – they sent one, but he did not last long. Perregaux wonders if the Akwapim people should not cut down their own requirements a little. He cites the Abiriw congregation, only 2 minutes from Akropong, which has its own catechist. (Müller notes that Abiriw has a school with 50 pupils and a Christian Community of 150). Five of the pupils are well past school age. One from Abetifi had been being coached to be an evangelist some time before, but had put away his wife and taken another 7 years before whereupon he had been excluded for a time. He is a carpenter. Another had been through the Akropong elementary school and the Government School Accra, and had been a shop keeper in the Congo for a time before coming back saying he found no joy in that calling. In Pepease there has been difficulty, and things are at a standstill. The chief there is feared - hence the movement of a number of people onto the station, He also knows how to win peoples' loyalty, however - and thus an elderly Pepease Christian has just returned to the town in order to take up a sub-chief's stool. His only recently baptised Christian wife from Abetifi has refused to go with him. At the same time a Presbyter used the money entrusted to him for the costs of building the chapel to pay his brother's debts - he has had to be excluded and has gone to Kumasi to try to earn the lost money (Fr. 125). Catechist Martinson is too old to be able to handle everything, including the school, satisfactorily. Nkwatia - a notorious fetish priest has become a catechumen. In Tafo Mmesekua, the priest of Buruku died in the course of the year - Perregaux evidently hopes this will improve the prospects for the Christian community in Tafo. In Bepong 2S adults and 22 children were baptised, and there are still 24 catechumens. Perregaux offers no explanation of this occurrence, other than that Catechist Boakye is an industrious man, however, he had never succeeded in holding a school together - he usually tries to send pupils to Mpraeso but they never continue with that for long.

26.01.1898

26.01.1898

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