Ghana: Failing the next generation to satisfy the previous one…
It is a cool Saturday evening in my home town. Finding a way to escape the incessant noise blazing from the loudspeakers at the funeral grounds; I take a walk to the Methodist school. The trees around the place provide the quiet atmosphere I’m craving for. Secluded from the noisy town lying downhill, it offers an opportunity to reflects, think and fantasize.
Memories rushed through my mind, I remembered years ago when we used to carry stones to the site few meters away from where I stood. That was the site for the community library. Twenty years on and what I see is an uncompleted building overgrown with weeds. It is funny how these memories last. I still remember the fanfare that greeted the sod-cutting ceremony of this project. I was about six then. Living in the countryside, this project represented our one hope of experiencing city life. Month after month, I witnessed the rich and older folks, who had broken out of the cycle of poverty, returning to the village for a funeral.
The splendour, extravagance and open display of wealth drifted my young mind to what life would be. I still remember how my father used to tell us, education was our only hope of escaping the treachery of village life. So to my siblings and me that project meant a lot. Every Saturday, when going for readers’ club meeting, I made it a personal mission to carry a ‘bucket of stones’ to the site. Five years passed and the library building was still at the foundation level. Fortunately for me, I moved to the district capital in the sixth year of the local library project.
As I stood there reflecting, I kept asking myself what the priority of my community was. As the library site turns into a forest, the same community is putting up an ultra-modern ‘community centre’, market, and funeral grounds. Sometimes I’m immobilized by the injustice my generation is doing to the unborn generation. Speaking to young men in my hometown now, I gather they have become convinced education means nothing. They tell me stories of how their colleagues have had their lives turned around just by following the politicians. With political power won, many of them without even basic literacy skills have found themselves in the Ghana police service. Kofi tells me, he is hoping his candidate and party wins in 2016 so that he can also join the police force. I asked Kofi how he intends to enlist with his F9 in mathematics and integrated science. He smiled and showed me a picture of a officer on his phone. He tells me that officer doesn’t even have a BECE qualification yet ‘Hon’ has fixed him.
Education as a tool for social mobility is lost to this people. Their only hope of breaking out of the vicious poverty cycle is doing the bidding of their political masters and hoping victory is theirs in the next election. After a short pause, Kofi suggested we take a stroll around town; our ancient beloved home town. At almost every corner, there was a funeral. The sight of young men and women engaging in the reckless act of uncontrollable drinking sent shivers down my spine. Equally worrying was the ages of the deceased ones. I stared in reflection and amazement; these are our youth- the future leaders of the community.
Coming up on the short stretch before the giant tree in the middle of the town, Kofi glances over at me for an instant, accessing my mood. He could see I was distraught. He kept his silence for a moment before finally speaking: ‘for us, it is survival; we need to do what we have to do to survive’. With the growing gap between the rich and the poor and the decreasing role of education as an avenue for prosperity and economic growth; what is the future holding for these youths? I have been with some of the most blessed people in this country but I have also witnessed the life of others at the bottom of the ladder struggling for just a meal a day. If this growing trend is not checked, the social consequence may be too high for this country to pay in the next generation.
‘…Today, as a country, we have conspired to constrict the movement of the citizens up the ladder on the back of education and are expanding the base of the pyramid in our social strata’. (a quote from Nana Awere Damoah’s sebitically speaking )
Don’t wonder why the disillusioned are not speaking up, that is how our society is, the upper class run it, whilst we survive in it.