Reflections from Maamobi Prisons JHS No. 1

I have been teaching at Maamobi Prisons Junior High School No. 1 for three weeks now. At the beginning it was difficult. I did not know the neighborhood, the students, the teachers, or the school’s standard operating procedure. The slip-ups and growing pains were many, and I relished the small successes so as to keep my morale up. However, as each day passes and I continue to settle into my routine, I grow more comfortable. This confidence has come from experience and the awareness that sometimes you must just expect – or at least accept – the unexpected. I have shown up to work an hour late because my tro-tro got in an accident along the way. I have been forced to review the periodic table and ready myself to teach a lesson on the structure of an atom – with only thirty minutes notice – to thirty-two eighth graders because the science teacher called in sick and no other teacher was able or willing to cover for him. I have had to spend seventy minutes on a grammar lesson that was only designed to take thirty because the students did not grasp the new concept with ease and expedience. Each of these experiences has taught me to embrace the spontaneity, uncertainty, and forced learning that is inherent in the nature of a new job and in working in a culture different than my own. Although, it would be inaccurate of me to think that every challenge that comes my way will have a lily-white life-lesson on the other side of it. It would be haughty, naïve, and even foolish of me to approach my teaching in Ghana with an overly ambitious hope. To think that simply because I am an American I know it all and am an authority on how things should be done. And to think that because I am sent by Princeton, that I am automatically destined to succeed and be a force of long-term influence in Maamobi and in the lives of my pupils. An episode that I witnessed last week challenged my beliefs and, for the first time, really forced me to examine my core – to question myself on why I had come to Ghana, and what I hope to accomplish while I am here. I will explain the uneasiness that I felt last Friday; how I was forced to reorient my hopes and expectations of myself as a teacher; and the impressions from the situation that have shaped my thinking moving forward. Last Friday I arrived to school at 8 AM – as I do every morning. Only this morning, I was not greeted with a playful welcome: “Obroni, ete sen?” (“White man, how are you?”). As I rounded the street corner and looked at Maamobi Prisons JHS No. 1, I heard the shouts of my headmaster; I saw the hopelessness of an apathetic father; and I was filled with compassion as I watched Kwame Adu cry out in pain.

As I walked through the gate of Maamobi Prisons JHS, I was struck by how silent the school was. Every Friday morning the school congregates behind the main building for an assembly of dance and worship (I will speak to religion in Ghanaian society in a later blog). The assembly usually lasts for one hour – from eight to nine – and the singing of the school children can be heard from a mile away. However, this morning was different. I heard nothing as I alighted from the tro-tro and walked to the school. Upon arrival, I noticed that all of the students were quietly sitting in their classrooms, not singing and dancing in assembly. The headmaster and four teachers were meeting with Kwame Adu and his father. Kwame is a seventeen year old Form 3 (eighth grade) student and is in his fifth year at Maamobi Prisons JHS. He passed Form 1 and Form 2; yet he has failed to pass his junior high school examinations the past two years and so remains in Form 3. Kwame’s inability to pass his exams is not due to a lack of intellectual spar or lack of ability. He is fluent in four languages: Twi (his dad is an Ashanti and speaks Twi), Ga (the local language of Accra), French (his mom is from the Ivory Coast), and English. Clearly Kwame has the intellectual spar to complete the middle school curriculum and pass the pre-secondary school exams. However, ever since entering Form 3, Kwame has chosen to spend his weekdays selling provisions on the streets, rather than coming to school. If you have taken a moment to view the pictures on my slide show, you should have noticed a picture of “Obama Biscuits”. I bought these from Kwame. Kwame comes from a broken home and humble means. Once he reached the eighth grade, he felt that he would do both himself and his family more good by earning some extra money by selling biscuits, crackers, and snacks as a street vendor than by attending class everyday. As such, Kwame has only been coming to school an average of two to three days a week for the past two years. And when he does come to school, he is so exhausted from the prior day’s work – and so far behind on his assignments – that he sees trying to pay attention as futile, and sleeps through nearly every class.

School started on September fifteenth, and Kwame came three times in the first two weeks of school – the first day, and Thursday and Friday of last week. Last Thursday the headmaster asked Kwame – as he does everyday that Kwame decides to come to school – to come to school the next day. However, this time, he asked Kwame to bring his father with him. The three were to have a conference in which they were to discuss the scary realities and arduous challenges that Kwame faces as he enters Form 3 for the third year in a row. Kwame did come to school the next day, and his father accompanied him. The conference, which was supposed to only concern Kwame, his father, the headmaster, and one other teacher, soon grew into more of a skirmish that drew the attention of the entire school. The first part of the meeting had been conducted in the headmaster’s office. However, by the time I showed up to school, four teachers, the headmaster, Kwame, and Kwame’s father were in a circle standing outside the headmaster’s office. The school is only one open building, which consists of five rooms – the headmaster’s office, a teacher workroom, and three classrooms. As such, once the meeting left the headmaster’s office, the gathering was visible to all – students and teachers alike. I do not know how long the meeting had lasted, or what was discussed in the headmaster’s office. I can only account for the sequence of events that unfolded before my eyes following my arrival to school.

Kwame was standing next to his father, who was not wearing a shirt and looked like he had just rolled out of bed. I did not hear his father speak one word the entire time he was there. He had an apathetic look on his face and slouched posture, making it apparent that he was only at the school out of sheer obligation. The headmaster was shouting. His shouts started out as justified contempt for Kwame’s truancy; however, they soon grew to borderline abusive. The school is right next to a prison (thus the name: Maamobi Prisons JHS No. 1). And the headmaster laced his verbal attacks on Kwame with condescending remarks of the neighboring prison. “Kwame, do you want to sell biscuits on the street for your whole life? Do you want to end up working in the fields like the prisoners over there?!” There were four teachers that had joined the circle of condemnation and were voicing their input. Their remarks were just as abrasive and heartless as those of the headmaster. “You are seventeen years old Kwame,” said the one teacher. “That’s what I was when I graduated high school, and here you still haven’t graduated middle school.” Such remarks were abusive and highly inappropriate for any teacher – the supposed shaper of a child’s mind – to be saying. Following a good five minutes of tumultuous shouting, the headmaster commanded attention. He asked Kwame’s father if he minded if he [the headmaster] spanked Kwame in order to teach him a lesson. This may be foreign in American schools today, but it is not abnormal in Ghana. Ghana is a very traditional, old-fashioned society, and caning is standard punishment for most offenses. Kwame’s father neglected to answer the headmaster’s question with a ‘yes’ or ‘no’, and simply asked if he could leave the school. He then permitted the headmaster to do what he saw as best fit from there. As Kwame’s father was walking away, the headmaster began to yell at Kwame again. He told Kwame that he was going to cane him fifteen times. “Fifteen” because he said that that was the age Kwame should have been when he entered secondary school if he had stayed off the streets and not played truant. Kwame absorbed the first five spanks with visible discomfort, yet he was able to restrain himself from shouting in pain. However, by the eighth cane, Kwame could not hold in his pain anymore. He began to cry out in agony, and his shrieks grew louder with each subsequent whip. Kwame’s lesson was being made the spectacle of the entire school as teachers and students peered over one another’s shoulders and around doors to see the cause of all the raucous. After the fifteenth lash Kwame fell to his knees and, with a look of fear and embarrassment in his eyes, promised the headmaster that he would not skip school anymore.

I cannot believe – in fact I refused to believe – that this extreme, abusive action was necessary to teach Kwame the importance of coming to school and passing his classes. I am convinced that there is another way to get the message across. I was filled with compassion as I saw Kwame absorb the condemnation from his teachers and the lashes from the headmaster. I was also overcome with an equally strong sense of hopelessness as I watched Kwame’s father walk away and not even look back as his son shrieked as he was spanked by the headmaster. It has been a week, and I have yet to be able to completely wrap my mind around Kwame’s situation and the sequence of events that unfolded last Friday. I still find myself asking many questions, and in a state of uncertainty as to how I should approach answering them:

· Kwame seems to have genuinely learned his lesson. But he comes from a broken home and lives with his seemingly apathetic father. Who is to say that he will not again be tempted (which he most likely will be) to make the quick buck, and skip school again?
· How does an adolescent that is trying to do the right thing look past his father’s apathy and choose to walk a path that he has not been shown?
· What kind of measurable influence can I make when I only teach Kwame – and any given student – for an hour, three times a week?
· Each one of the students goes home everyday, leaves the protection of the school, and faces challenges and hardships that I have – not by my own right – been blessed enough to avoid. How could I even begin to relate to most of these kids?
· I am scheduled to live in Accra and teach at Maamobi Prisons JHS No. 1 for four months (one semester). Is that enough time to do enough in order to ensure that my efforts have a lasting impact after I leave?
· Is it even right to try to quantify or compare one’s impact/influence on a situation (especially when dealing with the lives of human beings)?
· Why did I choose to be a teacher? Was it simply so I could share my knowledge with my students? Or am I interested in forming personal, pupil-teacher relationships with them?
· Is it fair of me to even begin to think that I have the wisdom or answers to some of the life questions and trials that many of these kids face everyday?

These questions were evoked by what I witnessed a week ego. They require me to analyze my experiences and set new, more appropriate expectations for myself moving forward. They challenge my prior beliefs, even my belief in myself, and make me question how much of a difference I can truly expect to make. And perhaps most importantly, they cut to my core and force me to honestly reflect on why I chose to come to Ghana.

Many of these children live in situations at home that I cannot relate to and that do not even exist in America. Sights such as what I saw last Friday touch my empathetic spirit and fill my heart with compassion. As I search for answers to some of my questions, I realize that I must begin my search at a logical starting point – my upbringing. I have lived a very comfortable, privileged life. I have not had to endure the loss of an immediate family member. I have been blessed with good health. In every endeavor I have ever set out upon, I have always had the full, unwavering support of my parents. I grew up in a safe, family-oriented neighborhood in south Charlotte. I have been afforded the privilege and opportunity to live in Ghana for nine months, and I will attend the school of my dreams next year. I am indeed blessed; however, it is by no right of my own. And because I am so very blessed, I am also morally obligated to give back to those who – by no fault of their own – have not been afforded the same opportunities. I did not come to Ghana to “save the World.” One Man already did that. I have merely come to Ghana, West Africa to “change the World.” Or I suppose a more appropriate wording would be “serve the world.” I have come to Ghana to serve. Maybe I make a difference in the life of one student because I teach him how to correctly address and format a personal letter, or because I pay 20 cents for his tro-tro ride home. Maybe I ease the workload of a teacher one day by grading her papers for her. Maybe I help tutor my host sister in Algebra and because of me she can now correctly simplify her fractions and find the “y-intercept” of a function. Or maybe I give my Harvard t-shirt to my eighteen year old neighbor who told me that it is his dream to make it to America and attend Harvard. Whatever it is, it matters, and it makes my time here worthwhile. It does not matter how tedious or simple the work or gesture may seem. If I can leave Ghana and one person can say that his/her life is a little better or a little easier because Nick Ricci passed through, then I have made a difference, and I have done well. I am a teacher by profession here in Ghana. But I have come to realize that we are all teachers to one another. Some of us are friends, parents, grandparents, guardians, bosses, or coaches, but we all can give a little. So we are all teachers, and we can all learn. Henry Adams, acclaimed historian and grandson of U.S. President John Quincy Adams, said it best: “A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.” This is so true. I was initially discouraged by the episode last Friday, and overwhelmed by the amount of seemingly unanswerable questions it raised. However, I have realized that it is okay to move forward without having the answers to all my questions. I have even realized that some of the questions are dangerous. For example, I wondered if I could honestly expect to be a force of quantifiably positive influence while in Ghana. This question misses the mark. It is selfish, narcissistic, and unproductive to spend my time trying to measure my influence. Because, as I cited earlier, one’s influence cannot every truly be measured. It is as Martin Luther King so eloquently put it, “You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don’t have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don’t have to know Einstein’s theory of relativity to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love. And you can be that servant.” This is what moves us to serve. The grace comes from God. He has shown each one of us His grace through the gift of his Son, and in each of our lives that are replete with blessings and good fortune that we did nothing to deserve. We all share a commonality, an inherent bond, as fellow human beings that says that “I am my brother’s keeper; I am my sister’s keeper.” And because we are all humans, we all have the ability to empathize and feel compassion when we see injustices or maltreatment to our fellow man. The “soul generated by love” is within each of us. This is why we serve, and it is this is what has brought me to Ghana, West Africa.