“Baamalekura”: Catching the wind of Quality Education
I choose to call her “Esi”. She lives in Baamalekura in the Northern part of Ghana. “Esi” is very smart. She is not in school but she can write. I met Esi on one of my official field visit to the ….. Shall we get into the story now
“Sometimes, the most valuable experience as a communications person in the developmental space, is going to the grassroots, speaking to partners involved in the project and hearing how this is impacting and changing lives. It is satisfying”
July 9th 2019. I joined the UNDPGhana’s Global Environment Facility Small Grant Programme team as the Communications Officer for their monitoring and evaluation to about 7 project site in the Northern part of Ghana. My goal : Capture projects, lives transformation, interview beneficiaries and partners, write human stories after the visits.
From walking long distance, through bushes, speaking to beneficiaries, dancing with happy partners, to climbing hills and going through valleys, I couldn’t help but be enveloped with excitement from women, children and the opinion leaders. I was more happier to tell the story chronologically.
At about 12pm in the afternoon, the team head to Baamalekura to visit a project that focused on enhancing community climate resilience and poverty reduction in Bamboi and Tinga communities in the Bole District through Integrated wood carbonization and wood fuel supply chain enterprise development. This project also supports the community to grow a large scale of vegetation with help from the Chief. We visited the wood fuel plantation area, spoke to the chief and interacted with beneficiaries. We did few interviews, took some pictures and joined community members sing and dance.
I felt rather odd seeing a lot of children with us. I engaged the chief on why we had lot of children among us. Why are they not in school? Why are some walking bare footed on this woods and grass?
“We have a community school around,our challenge is mothers are refusing to send these children to school and we don’t even have enough teachers in the school” ,he narrated.
After few engagement with these children, I spotted “Esi”. She was rather too sober and did not want to say much. With a close look at her, realized she was physically challenged. We spoke for a while and I asked her “ Wup3 s3 wuk) school? (Do you want to go to school). She nodded in affirmation.
I asked her to write “1”, Esi wrote it , I said “2” she did. We moved to the alphabet and she was able to write from A to G. At this point, she was getting very comfortable around me, It warmth my heart.
Intriguing story of Esi: When I asked of Esi’s mother, her grand mother came out and said her mother left her when she realized the state of the child. The frustrating part was Esi’s father is a drunkard.
The team and I, went round educating parents on the need to send their children to school. We spoke to the children to take their studies seriously when their mothers send them to school. We highlighted the importance of education and how beneficial it is to making their lives a better one.
We used the opportunity to speak to them on what the Sustainable Development Goals meant to them (SDGs) and how they sending their children to school contribute to the country’s steps to achieving them.
My thoughts:This issue is really not in the past. The achievement of the SDGs truly goes beyond the city. These guys need enlightenment, they need to see the relevance of education before they could buy into it. These community needs our support. The children here have great potentials that are at the point of wasting away because of ignorance.
We left to other project sites. But My heart still beats as I remember the plight of these young ones in Baamalekura.
ESI , MY BEST FRIEND