Permit me, dear reader, to introduce you to my American surrogate father and my great friend in the last seven and a half years.

 

Long before coming to live in exile in the United States, I heard of Reverend Bill Johnson and his wife Sammie. They had welcomed my wife, Lizzy, into their family with open arms, while she was still a student at the Kansas City Kansas Community College, KCKCC. My wife who came to the U.S. one month after we were married was the spiker and the game changer for the junior college’s volleyball team, the She Devils. My wife, a great team player, listening to good instructions from her then coach, Heather Mazeites, was focused and turned around, with her teammates, the eighteen year poor records of the school in Jay Hawk conference and Mid America Volleyball. The school from relative obscurity became the envy of all and sundry in the 2000 volleyball year.

 

And when it was time to be rewarded for her efforts, my wife though backed by her coach, was robbed by the Athletic Director, because of her race and was not awarded the covetous prizes that she merited and which she indeed had labored to earn.

 

 

Lizzy protested to the authorities of the school. That was the time she met Mrs. Johnson through the school’s Director of Multi-culture, Mrs. Mellany Scott. Mellany and Sammy were strong pillars of support for her. Living and schooling in a country far away from home in Nigeria, was tough. Lizzy lost her petition to the college council.

 

In 2004, while a student at a four year university, she won the coveted All American Award and was voted an MVP. The support and inspirations from the Johnson family had stayed in her mindscape. She remained strong.

 

I met the Johnsons because Elizabeth had first met them. They welcomed me because they first welcomed Elizabeth.

 

When I rode into Kansas city in the cold month of March, 2002, It was Rev. Johnson, who had spent several years as a Presbyterian Minister, that came to meet me. I was endangered specie. He saw me on wheel chair and later, as I began to regain the use of my legs, and my badly hurt eyes and the threats to my life, he offered me very firm support so that I could stand again.

 

Rev. Johnson has a degree in History and a Masters Divinity. He understood the hazards and dangers of life as a reporter in Africa. Through the support of the Harold Thomas Center, Kansas City, where he serves as the Director of Outreach, the non-profit that belongs to the Presbyterian Church, he ensured that my numb soul received a living flow again. I had grown up in Nigeria as an Anglican. And now I am a member of the Redeemed Christian Church Of God. God used Rev. Johnson to bless me and my family.