“Akwaaba.”
That is the first word that I saw when I stepped foot in Accra, Ghana: “Welcome.”
I didn’t know it yet, but this was my introduction to the kind, generous, and inclusive culture of Ghana, a small country in West Africa. In the three weeks that I would be in the country, I would interact with people from all walks of life: teachers, merchants, government workers, and more. Each person would be just as warm and friendly as the next, exemplifying the importance of community in Ghanaian society.
And these values did not just manifest in adults. The purpose of my trip, after all, was to help with youth development. Every day, I would venture to a small public school and volunteer as a teaching assistant for around four hours, helping kids of all ages learn math, science, English, and Twi (a language I didn’t even know existed until my first day). The real fun was during recess when all the students would exit their classrooms for around 30 minutes to eat snacks and blow off some steam.
It was in these moments that I saw how seamlessly Ghanaian culture is transmitted to its younger generations. The children were heart-warmingly generous, empathetic, and joyous; every minute I spent at the school brought me closer to them, and I started to care for them more and more.
That is why it pained me so much to see them return to class after these exciting periods, back to learning in classrooms that were insufficient for the education they deserved – back to tiny desks, books that were falling apart, and pencils the size of their pinkies.
Arriving in Ghana
I had been mentally preparing for this trip all year. I was going to be without my family, on a new continent, with people I had never met before, and I was worried.
The program application process had been long and somewhat tedious – I wrote three essays, filled out too many forms, got a Ghanaian visa (possibly the most confusing part), and completed multiple online orientations. And yet, it never fully registered that this was all for a very real trip to Ghana.
Reality set in on July 5th, 2024 – the day before my departure. I had finished packing my suitcase and was sitting down at my last family dinner when I realized that I would be boarding a 10-hour plane ride the next day. I was faced with a whirlwind of emotions, amongst which there was both excitement and fear.
The plane ride was as expected: long, boring, and lacking good food. So far, so good. The real turbulence arrived when I stepped into the Kotoka International Airport in Accra, Ghana. I exited the plane and convened with my fellow program members in an awkward circle of silence. Together, we slowly advanced through customs and eventually made our way out of the airport.
My first breath of fresh air was quickly interrupted by the program leader, who insisted we take a group photo in front of the large written “Akwaaba” on the front of the airport building. He handed me and another girl a large Ghanaian flag to hold up in the center of the picture and then snapped his photo, which I located on Instagram about two minutes later.
We then boarded a small tro-tro, a common form of public transportation in Ghana resembling a van, and made our way towards the hostel we would stay at for the majority of our three-week trip. During the bus ride, the program leader explained the basic logistics of our stay, which included our roommate assignments. When we finally arrived at the hostel, my two roommates and I (one from Brooklyn and the other from Seattle) located our room.
I was eventually fully settled in and ready to relax. But, for the second time, my rest was cut short by the program leader, who came knocking on our door about two minutes after we finished getting situated. He called us back to the tro-tro.
The Bus
Our trip to the mall would be one of many we would take throughout our three weeks in Ghana. Our schedule was packed with outings, classes, and volunteering, all of which we drove to. These first bus rides (from the airport and to the mall) soon made me understand why. The “sidewalks” of Accra were tiny and bordered by massive uncovered gutters. The streets themselves were in good condition but had no regulations – motorcycles, cars, and tro-tros essentially had free reign on the road. Thus, bus rides with our experienced driver were the way to go.
As I sat through these bus rides each day, I thought about how different my transportation from place to place was from that in New York City (although I did not miss the B Train). I would look out the window and onto the suburban landscape, the markets, the highway, the narrow roads between one unfinished building (that would not be finished any time soon) and one tiny supermarket, and I would simply appreciate the stark differences with my own home.
Perhaps the most notable part of the bus rides was our interactions with people outside of the tro-tro. Inside the bus, we were talking, laughing, listening to music – but outside of the bus was a completely different story. When we entered a busy area, young children would knock on our windows, asking for food. The first few times this happened, we had no idea how to respond. The children would point towards their mouths and put their hands together in pleading, and my fellow program members and I would look at each other in confusion, heartbreak, and slight panic.
Our program leaders advised us to simply wave to the children and nothing more. We didn’t carry food with us on the bus, but the action felt wrong all the same.
Service
A good portion of our bus rides were to our service site, the Future Leaders School (also known as the Billa Mahmud Memorial). When we first arrived at the public school – situated right off of a busy highway– the principal sat us down to tell us the story of the school’s origins. She explained that a couple prior, a man named Billa Mahmud wanted to make education more accessible in his community. So, one day, he decided to sit underneath a mango tree and invite all of the children in his neighborhood to come for lessons in Math and English. Over time, the group of children that he taught grew and the space under the mango tree no longer sufficed for his lessons.
The Future Leaders School has been expanding ever since. In his lifetime, Mahmud constructed a wooden barn-like structure to hold classes, which still stands on the campus today. A larger building was also built sometime in the past decade. The school now has over 200 kids aged 2 to 17 attending every day, instructed by a strong group of teachers.
While the faculty is doing an excellent job holding classes and educating their students, the school is still struggling to stay afloat. Though it was originally founded to make education accessible, and this is still the main goal of its directors, they now have to reject some children purely due to lack of funding; they don’t have enough desks, notebooks, or buses to sustain a larger population. This reality is heartbreaking not only for the directors of the school, but the community it serves.
Ghana’s Underfunded Education System
When I learned that I would be volunteering at a public school during this trip, I somewhat expected this to be the case. I also received confirmation from people who had been on this trip previously that many of the students were lacking materials, so I decided to gather all of the craft materials that I had at home and bring them with me to Accra.
I will never forget the last day of service when I gave all of my students some coloring pencils and markers; they had all eagerly lined up to pick out their favorite colors, and said a quick “Thank you, Madam,” before they left to trade with their friends.
Basic education in Ghana has been suffering due to the Free Senior High-School (Free SHS) education policy, a government initiative to make secondary school more accessible by paying for textbooks, boarding, meals, and other school fees for high school students, thereby enabling more financially disadvantaged children to get a better education.
While this initiative has many benefits, it has a balance of drawbacks. The funding used by the government to cover these fees is the funding intended for all primary and secondary education. Therefore, devoting such a significant amount of this money solely to secondary schools puts the quality of primary schools in jeopardy – these institutions do not have the resources to provide the best possible services to their students.
Basic education is just as important, if not more important than higher-level studies. Not all students will go on to pursue advanced education to ultimately land themselves in college or university, but all of them will attend primary school. Primary school provides humans with the most essential knowledge to be valuable members of society – this is where they are taught how to interact with others, read, write, problem-solve, and so much more. Sacrificing these teachings for those of high school is extremely counterintuitive.
One way to solve this problem would be to redistribute the school funding, while another, more ideal solution would be to provide the Ghanaian education system with more funding to begin with. But this is not as easy as it seems.
Like the vast majority of Africa, Ghana experiences a wide variety of economic struggles. The majority of its economic revenue comes from its agricultural sector, which is not only season-dependent, labor-intensive (occupying nearly half of the Ghanaian workforce), and time- consuming, but also requires a significant amount of the funding generated by it to be cycled back in.
Additionally, any money that is earned from trading resources goes into other areas. Out of the twenty billion dollars Ghana earns every year, the majority goes to infrastructure, debt, and health care – it can’t devote all of its profit to basic education.
Looking Forward
The reality is, Ghana can’t just forget all of its other issues and prioritize these struggling public schools.
So what can we do? It starts with recognizing the privileges we have in America.
For one, I know that I am a girl who gets to go to school every day with a full backpack on her shoulders. I have pencils, notebooks, a computer, a calculator, and everything else I could possibly need to ensure my success as a student is at my fingertips.
Of course, this is not the case for every student in America, but it is still true that over 90% of children in the United States go to public elementary and secondary school. In Ghana, only 70% of primary school-aged students and 39% of secondary school-aged children attend school every day. This is no insignificant difference.
The privilege of public education is so often overlooked. In America, almost everyone goes to school; it’s part of life. What’s important is realizing that it’s part of our life; not every country has schooling as an essential step in becoming a valuable member of society, not because they don’t necessarily believe in the value of education, but because people around them live without it every day. The inaccessibility of education in these countries has caused people to pursue work that doesn’t always require a degrees or diploma to succeed in, leading to different societal norms and expectations.
That is not to say that education should not be improved for these nations — education allows us to make discoveries, come up with new ideas, and above all, achieve progress. The children I met on my trip were not only full of joy and love, but were incredibly smart and talented future leaders. It is my true hope that they will have access to the opportunities their ambition deserves and that they will be able to help their future generations have the same. I hope that one day, Ghana’s basic education system will go from underfunded, undervalued, and overlooked to improved, acknowledged, and supported.
That is why it pained me so much to see them return to class after these exciting periods, back to learning in classrooms that were insufficient for the education they deserved – back to tiny desks, books that were falling apart, and pencils the size of their pinkies.