I currently live in the United Kingdom with my husband but this is not how my story begun. I was born and bred in a tiny village in the Afram-Plains District of the Eastern region of Ghana, Donkorkrom. To get to this village, one has to go through the “life-transforming experience” of crossing a river, the river Afram, by ferry. Donkorkrom is a farming community and is considered a food basket of the nation. As you might have already gathered, the inhabitants of this village are mostly peasant or subsistent farmers and when their lots are bettered, commercial farmers.
My parents did not have much. My father was a farmer and worked as a preacher in our local church. My mum was a trader. Even though my parents struggled to make ends meet, they were determined to get us educated because they believed education was the only route if we were ever going to make it out of there. Tried as they did, they could not make enough money to take us “overseas” to attend all the private/boarding schools that were turning up. I remember crying my eyes out when my childhood friend was “shipped” over to attend Swedru International School (SWIS). My dad was distraught. He wished I could go too but there was no way he could afford that kind of private tuition and boarding. All he could do was to advise me to make the best of my “village education”.
Not long after this, a medical doctor was posted to my village. Why and how he got there, I can never understand but I believed he was sent there for a purpose. I believe he was sent there to revive the ebbing hope in myself and my village friends. What did this man do? He set up a Community Based Organization (CBO), Nyame Nti. This CBO aimed at bringing children of various ages and backgrounds together and educating us on health and social issues. It was there, I first learnt to be a peer educator. It was there, I learnt about social phenomena such as HIV/AIDS, Girl Child Education, Molestation, Drug Abuse, Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), what have you. It was there that I first learnt to be a Peer Counsellor.
It did not just end there, this man went on to organise special evening and vacation classes in the areas of Maths, Science and English. These extra classes were taught by teachers who were very experienced in these fields. To date, I believe that those classes built our confidence and brought us a step closer to our contemporaries who were attending all the big schools and vacation classes in the cities.
Long story short, I passed my Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) and made it out of my village. I attended Abuakwa State College, went on to the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) to obtain a B.A (Hons) in English, and a Postgraduate Diploma in Education from the University of Cape Coast. Before I left Ghana, I taught English Language at the Methodist Technical Institute in Sunyani.
To whom do I owe my achievements? To God, for His ever loving kindness; to my parents, for their undying love and support; and to that Doctor, Dr. Steve Ogbordjor, who did not leave us to our fates but sort to do what little he could to get us out of there. It might not have seemed much then, but it made a lot of difference in our lives. I am a living testimony.
