Village life in Tetako

CamFed- locally known here as Comfort- is the campaign group to promote female education, expanded- and gender equalized- to include all vulnerable children either not in education or at risk of dropping out.

The roots of current initiatives under Millenium Development Goals, the World Bank, UNESCO and the like are found in the scholarly research of Ghanaian Dr James Emmanuel Kwegir Aggrey, writing in the 1920’s as a result of his research in the Gold Coast (now Ghana) into education,

“If you educate a man, you educate an individual.

  If you educate a woman, you educate a nation.”

Tetako, a poor village, within the poor Upper East region of Ghana, is a sobering example of the grinding realities of rural poverty within a progressing country.  Although only 15 miles away from Zebilla, the approaching road, a rutted track amid dried vegetation, the absence of any power lines, a wide landscape of savannah, scrubby plants, with clusters of huts arranged within walled compounds indicated a tough life with few choices,  isolated from the outside world.

Tetako Kindergarten and Primary school, with a staff of five trained teachers and two youth employment (straight from high school) teachers (rarely paid, rarely show) offers the guaranteed basic education to about 250 children, the majority in the first two classes, as movement to the next grade depends on achievement. The kindergarten class of sixty was not in session as normal, under the large tree, allowing instead the combined Parent Teacher Association (PTA) and CamFed meeting to take place.  A turnout of 80 parents, an even mix of men and women, was impressive, but not unusual in the dry season, when there is no agricultural work to do.

Haruna addresses the meeting

As nominated representatives from CamFed, including me, as a guest from overseas,  we spoke of the value of education as key to better understanding, to more involvement in community life, to better health, to using resources more productively. My interpreter, Haruna, translated into the local African language. He also stressed the importance of sending the “girl child” to school, based, he told me later, on the continuing practices in villages of child brides at 12,13, 14, and of girls kept at home to perform household duties.

Proposing the value of education- Haruna listens then translates