If you educate a WOMEN you educate a nation!

I had the opportunity to host about 25 students from a private girls’ secondary school in Gambaga at the BMC.  Over the year, I met their teacher Claire, who is a Peace Corps volunteer teaching biology and running a health club.  She asked if she could bring the members of the health club to visit the hospital and learn a little bit about careers at the hospital, etc.  Since it is a girls’ school I wanted to make sure I found some good female role models to talk with the students.  I enlisted the help of one of our female pastors who is very outspoken and pro-women to help.  She did an incredible job putting together a panel of women to talk to the students about the careers they picked and how they got to where they are today.  One after the other was more inspiring and encouraging to the students.   

Midwife telling her story

Some of the stories the women told where heart breaking.  The midwife who spoke was from a very poor rural village.  Her parents never sent her to school.  She asked her friends one day where they went during the day and they told her school, so one day she decided to follow them.  She loved school and started to go regularly.  She said she did not own her first pair of shoes until she was in secondary school, so she would walk to school barefoot, running into the bush every so often when the road would get too hot on the soles of her feet.  She worked her way through school and now is one of our best midwives.  The pastor, who is in her mid-fifties, was an orphan.  She lived with some family members who also did not value education.  She had to do many morning chores before she was allowed to go to school.  She talked about how she persevered and always kept an eye on her goals.  How she knew it was up to her to make something of herself and get what she wanted out of life.  A young nurse, who just finished school, spoke about how she was from a family of more privilege, similar to the students’ situations.  She spoke about how even though they might have had an easier life, it is up to them to use the gifts they have been given to achieve something more.  That not everything will always be handed to them and it is their responsibility to work hard and better the country.

Asubonteng is a great lecturer . . . I even learned more
info about malari

After listening to the speakers we took a tour of the hospital and then Asubonteng, our PA, gave them a little lecture on Malaria. 

I think that the day was a great success.  Seeing the girls was an inspiration to me.  They all stood and said what they wanted to be and it was as diverse as any high school in America.  Nurse, doctor, midwife, politician, accountant, and teacher where the most common careers the girls wanted to pursue.  I just pray that the girls heard the messages that where directed to them and they will continue to study hard and reach whatever goals they set in front of themselves.  Because as it is said here in Ghana . . . “The surest way to keep people down is to educate the men and neglect the women.  If you educate a MAN you educate and INDIVIDUAL, but if you educate a WOMAN, you educate a FAMILY (nation)." (Quote is attributed to the Ghanaian scholar Dr. James Emmanuel Kwegyir Aggrey who was one of the most influential leaders of education during the colonial era.)