A British man stranded in the Philippines claims he is ‘waiting to die’ after his life took a horrific turn – leaving him with a rotting leg, no visa, and no way home.
Conan White, 60, has been left in unimaginable agony, his foot mangled beyond recognition after a botched medical procedure, a failed witch doctor’s exorcism, and years of neglect.
His harrowing descent into this nightmare began when he uprooted his life to move to the Southeast Asian country in 2018 for love – only to be stabbed by his girlfriend and abandoned in the slums.
Now, penniless, immobile, and starving, Conan says he is trapped in a jungle hut, held like a prisoner by locals who control the only key to the gate.
With his funds nearly depleted and his health rapidly deteriorating, he fears he is only days away from death. ‘This is really it now, the project that is me is almost over,’ he has said.
The desperate Brit has told MailOnline about his hellish experience living and surviving in the Philippines wilderness after setting up a crucial fundraiser he hopes may just save his life.
Conan, eager to return to what once was his home in Newbury, Berkshire, UK, is now begging the British Embassy to rescue him from his nightmare as he battles living in a jungle located a 17-hour ferry away from any civilisation with a decaying foot. The Foreign Office have informed MailOnline they are aware of his plight.
The ex-pat moved to the Philippines in 2018 after meeting a woman on a Christian dating app. Excited to begin his new life, he gave up his job as an HR officer at Hinduja Global Solutions to start what he thought would be a fresh start in the paradise southeast Asian country.
But his world quickly came crashing down when he realised he had made a dangerous ‘mistake’ falling for a woman he claims was involved in dubious businesses and had abandoned her child.
After spending around five years with his then-girlfriend, and even taking in her nine-year-old son from the hands of her sister, she would go on to stab him in May 2022.
Conan White, 60, has been left stranded in the Philippines after moving there from the UK in 2018
The Brit is living in a shed-like home in the middle of the jungle and has no way of getting home
Conan said the relationship was ‘flawed’ and the vicious attack is what led him to his first encounter with Philippines police.
The Brit recalled laying on a bed in their shared home after they had broken up before she launched the unprovoked assault on him.
‘I was on the bed and the next thing I know, she was attacking me, fighting me, slapping me… and then she stabbed me in my foot, she stabbed me twice, I have no idea what with’.
He said he retreated in a panic, hobbling down the stairs and leaving a trail of blood behind him which her ‘traumatised’ young son managed to snap a grisly photo of.
Conan rushed to the police – only to be told they would not investigate unless he paid a bribe. Alone and injured, he was forced to patch himself up and flee into the slums of Cebu.
Following the bloody assault, Conan was forced to live in rat-infested squalor where he came face to face with disease-ridden vermin the size of cats and shared a communal bathroom with cobras.
Images shared by Conan of the Cebu slums reveal the beginnings of his tragic journey from home comfort to desperate measures.
His bed, merely two wooden pallets topped with a single dirty duvet and a child’s pillow, was where Conan attempted to rest and recover from his violent stabbings.
The toilet was shared by a dozen other poverty-struck Filipinos and is seen surrounded by large, grimy waste bins. His £1.40-per-night accommodations were little more than a filthy, crumbling shack.
There, Conan was bitten by a rat and contracted Mpox. But although it seemed as if the Brit had hit rock bottom, his suffering was far from over.
In the summer of 2023, Conan took a catastrophic fall down a freeway after just having recovered from Covid19 and Mpox, saying his immune system was at its weakest.
Conan contracted Mpox from a rat bite while living in the slums, after fleeing his ex girlfriend who stabbed him twice in the foot
Conan’s foot after it was bitten by an Mpox infected rat while he was living in the slums
Conan was kept in a crowded hospital with little to no hygiene measures along with several other sick locals
The Brit’s ex-girlfriend’s child son took a snap of the blood trail left behind by Conan after he was stabbed in the foot
Conan has endured several injuries while in the Philippines, but nothing compared to the wound on his foot
The sickly man also contracted Covid19 after running away from his violent ex and says his immune system was at its lowest
It was during this incident Conan’s foot was left shattered, forcing him to seek treatment at a private clinic -where, he claims, the doctor deliberately ‘butchered’ his limb to extort him for more money.
‘Locals confirmed to me that I shouldn’t have gone there and that he was a charlatan that will hack your foot apart,’ he said.
Days later, a water burst in his home sent him tumbling down the stairs again, worsening his injuries.
His foot became twisted, mangled, and oozing with infection.
The man soon began experiencing a fever – one so severe he had to take antibiotics and ‘useless’ medications that were not working.
‘I’m not exaggerating when I say this, but I was probably dying at this point. I was in a complete state, I could barely speak, I could barely move, I couldn’t hold food down.
Conan’s then-girlfriend, who was located in Malaysia and growing increasingly concerned for his well-being, said he immediately needed to go to the hospital.
Her brothers took an eight-hour ferry from Mindanao to Cebu to bring him back to the Philippine island so he could be seen at the city hospital.
‘But when you go to the hospital here, you don’t get much help,’ Conan said.
‘You have to have someone with you, you have to have help. They have to stay with you in hospital and sleep in the chair next to you.
‘They’re the ones who dress your wounds and get your medicines. The nurses don’t do anything’.
When he arrived back home he quickly realised his foot was not in any better state, and he was again, rushed to the hospital.
Conan claims the doctor did not look at his wound, and instead charged him a hefty consultation fee and prescribed a course of antibiotics.
Conan had a gaping hole in his foot after visiting a local doctor who left it ‘mangled’ and ‘butchered’
While living in the slums, Conan’s bed was two wooden pellets put together, along with a dirty single duvet and child’s pillow
The rat-infested bathroom was shared by a dozen people and was often left in a messy state
Conan spent around £1.40 a night to stay in the slum
The locked gate to the entrance of the slums where he lived for over a year
Not able to return home and care for himself, the desperate and sick man went to stay with his girlfriend’s mother, where in a horror turn of events, he was left bedbound for a year due to her neglect.
‘It was a horrible time, it’s very traumatising,’ Conan said.
‘My leg was continuously infected, it was on the verge of gangrene and I realised I needed to go into hospital but the mother kept telling me that if I went to hospital they would just chop my leg off’.
She insisted to Conan that they would not offer any treatment and would jump straight to amputation which left him fearing for his life.
Conan claims the mother gave him another choice, however.
‘She said, if you stay here I’ll look after you, give me your money”‘.
Desperate for aid, Conan followed her demands and was from then on taken care of by his girlfriend’s mother – but his foot would never fully recover.
The mother took Conan off his diabetic medicine and his antibiotics – instead using herbal remedies to try and fix his severe ailments.
She had invited priests to the house to ‘bless his foot’ in candlelit vigils, and at one point, had even invited a female witch doctor to the property who massaged his back before ‘spitting continuously to try and get rid of the evil spirits’.
But Conan put up with the ‘attempts to perform magic’ and ‘ritual medicine’ as he was so terrified of stepping foot into a hospital.
‘I was becoming so delirious, it was horrible,’ Conan said.
‘The mother didn’t speak English, no one around me spoke English, I was just left in a back room and I was by myself all the time’.
In the end, he claims those around him believed he was on the brink of death and so he was rushed to hospital where he spent six weeks in agony.
In 2024, Conan underwent an operation to try and fix his severely injured foot, after refusing to sign paperwork that would permit surgeons to cut off his limb.
Desperate for aid and shelter, Conan gave his girlfriend’s mum all of his money in exchange for care and a roof over his head
He lives in squalor in the middle of the jungle, miles away from civilisation and any English speaking citizens
With an injured foot, Conan struggles to get around as the ground is in such poor condition
Conan says he can’t recognise himself anymore and claims he looks as if he has aged 30 years in the space of under ten
But in just a few day’s, he was dumped back at his former caretaker’s home – stitched up but still rotting from the inside.
He knew was had fully recovered after noticing a gaping hole in the bottom of his foot below his 36 stitches.
Hungry, exhausted, and desperate for medicines, Conan was fed a supposedly ‘magic’ concoction using the island’s coconut flower, which the mother paid around £10 of the money she gained off him to a man who sliced them down from special trees.
The concoction was also rubbed into the deep wounds on Conan’s feet as he was promised this practice would heal him. But after being confined to his bed for the entire year, he is still awaiting a miracle.
In January of this year, Conan was moved into a tiny, crumbling hut deep in the isolated jungles of Mindanao.
The small shed-like outhouse is located within a community that has no more than 100 people and 20 buildings.
And to this day, he is mostly unable to walk and feels like a prisoner with no financial resources to get back home.
‘People here don’t speak English, and I don’t speak Filipino so I’ve been isolated here for over a year and I’ve recently come to know my girlfriend from Malaysia has gotten a new boyfriend’.
Conan eats just one meal a day, usually consisting of a thin, watery stew of tuna and crackers which costs him just 42p. He has no other option – with the little money he has managed to preserve rapidly drying up.
The wooden shack he calls home is seen in images surrounded by thick jungle shrubbery and is guarded by at least six dogs.
‘I can’t get out,’ he said.
Conan claims the gate between his jungle home and the outside world is kept locked with the owners refusing to give him the key
The desperate Brit is learning to walk again and has to use a stick to help him get around
The wooden shack can be seen behind jungle shrubbery and is completely isolated from any civilisation
Conan lives with the bare minimum in his wooden shack and is rapidly running out of money
He typically eats one meal a day, usually consisting of tuna, watered down with a few crackers
He is trapped in the jungle and explained he has only left around six times in the last 18 months
Conan said tap water in the jungle shack costs around £6 a month and can be used to wash in but not drink
The Brit, thanks to a one-time £90 donation from an ex-colleague, now has enough money to fund his life until March 18
‘The people who run this place have the key to the gate to get in and won’t give it to me. And they won’t tell me why’.
According to Conan, he is now a prisoner in the jungle residence where he is left with nothing but his thoughts as company. He believes the locals are keeping him locked in for his money, they claim he is too sick to leave.
To escape the hidden shack, Conan must cross a rickety bamboo bridge that crosses over a river filled with snakes and sharp rubble. It is even feared by locals for being so dangerously unstable.
‘The bamboo handle shakes and creaks when you walk across it, it’s muddy and bad, and then you go up about 100ft and its broken concrete and jutting stones’.
The mother lives on the other side of the bridge.
Now, almost completely out of money and becoming increasingly prone to infections due to his open wound, Conan believes ‘the project that is me is almost over’.
A week ago, Conan reached breaking point and contacted the British Embassy in a last-ditch attempt to save himself, but to no avail.
He claims ‘they have been useless,’ after having continuous back and forth but reaching no solution.
‘They basically said, “Here’s loads and loads of links and loads and loads of documents, but they won’t do you any good, they’re bizarre, but don’t worry, you’ll be okay”.
However, Conan simply can not believe this to be true.
Without money and the ability to walk or communicate with those around him, he feels hopeless and trapped in an unescapable prison while ‘on the brink of death’.
‘I’m literally looking at living in the jungle, I can barely walk, and the Embassy want me to live in a shelter for two-to-three months if they can get me one, but how am I meant to survive?
Conan is begging for help from the Embassy and has set up a donation page in an attempt to raise enough money to get him home
He lives and survives with the bare minimum. This is the equipment he has access to when it comes to cooking meals and washing dishes
‘There’s a list of things I’ve got to to, I’ve got to go to various departments, file various paperwork, but I’m in the middle of the jungle miles away from anything with no money and no ability to walk.
‘I mean, what’s the point?’
‘It just feels like I’m prolonging my life to die,’ he said.
Desperate to find a way back to some kind of civilisation, Conan has even approached the police to try and get himself arrested and taken to a deportation centre.
He admitted he had overstayed his visa after his ex-girlfriend allegedly lied to him about there being amnesty during the Covid19 pandemic, but the police had no interest in getting involved without a bribe.
And Conan had nothing to give.
‘I feel cursed, and if I am honest, scared,’ he said.
Conan is now begging the British Embassy to send help before it is too late, claiming he is just days away from losing internet connection.
He said he has been responsible with money all his life and had cash reserves while in the Philippines, and that he has endured great hardship.
‘But when the Embassy became a last resort, they weren’t there for me,’ he said.
A FCDO spokesperson told MailOnline: ‘We are providing consular assistance to a British National in the Philippines and are in contact with the local authorities.’
Conan has now started a crowdsourcing donation page as a last-ditch attempt to fun what he believes may be the last weeks of his life.
‘Realistically I can live on about £200 a month. It would be pretty basic, but it wouldn’t be too bad. But when you haven’t got any money, you’re screwed,’ he said.
‘I do hope the crowdsourcing will get me enough money to survive and also get back to my home in England’.
