Fentuo Tahiru Fentuo: Ode to Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings

Where I come from, Vamboi, a tiny village just outside of Tumu in the Upper West Region, to have a boy as your first child was considered a big blessing. Above all other things, your worth as an asset was going to be  determined by how much you contributed as a farmhand.

For starters, I had to do errands – fetch  water, bring a cutlass, herd the cattle, this and that – as soon as I  could steadily place one foot in front of the other.

It was pretty much the same for every family.

But some of that changed quite significantly in 1991 when the 31st December Women’s Movement (DWM) built the village’s first school, a Day Nursery.

Suddenly, there was a fresh incentive for parents to consider the prospect of formal education.

It wasn’t so straightforward, as some needed persuasion to enroll their wards. Even fathers—the sole decision-makers, traditionally, in what is very much a patriarchal society—were urged to volunteer a child each to assemble the inaugural batch of pupils.

And that included my father, who, at the time, had just one child.

Surely, he had every reason not to heed that call – and Lord knows there were more than a few who tried to get him to decline – as, after all, others who had children in the tens could afford to send half of them to the school and barely feel the pinch on the farm.

The odds were stacked against my father – and, thus, against me – but, ultimately, he made the difficult decision to take me to school. I was

I made it just in time for the school’s commissioning day, an occasion graced by no other personality than the then-First Lady of Ghana, Nana Konadu Agyeman–Rawlings, who also doubled as the Founder of the DWM.

With a nursery full of children, and a charge to put on a proper show, the teachers got to work, teaching us basic nursery rhymes.

I was quite good at those. And that, perhaps, was where my lifelong interest in the English language began.

I was one half of a duo picked to perform those well-rehearsed rhymes for the sufficiently impressed First Lady and her entourage; Nuratu, a cousin, was the other. It is, to date, my most vivid recollection of my otherwise unremarkable childhood.

I remember the reaction after I was done performing ‘A Lion’.

I was no older than five years, yet I could see that everyone present – my beaming father, especially – was really proud of me. Oh,  there were people from neighbouring villages as well. The atmosphere was almost like what you could expect to feel at a political rally.

And maybe it really was, unofficially, some sort of rally.

The general elections, Ghana’s first since mid-1979, were coming up the very next year, and Mrs. Agyeman-Rawlings’ husband, Flight  Lieutenant Jerry John Rawlings, was reportedly eyeing a transition from military dictatorship to becoming the first democratic president of  Ghana’s soon-to-be-born Fourth Republic.

Mind you, I  have only come to appreciate all this history years later, only with the benefit of hindsight, of course.

What I did know for a fact back then, though, was that this event presented me with the first opportunity to see a 4×4 vehicle. Lots of them. And I sat in one, beside the then First Lady.

Mrs. Agyeman-Rawlings took Nuratu and myself in her car after the  programme and proceeded to ‘campaign’ in other parts of the district,  before bringing us back to our village.

The joy of that ride lasted a fair few days, before all that joy was replaced by creases on my rather  prominent forehead – and for good reason.

We had been told the day’s events would be on national television not long afterwards, hence, each evening found us gathered around Mr.  Dintie’s battery-powered TV, hoping to catch the news item and bask in the glow of it.

Yet weeks passed with nothing in sight, and my father – every bit as disappointed as myself – eventually stopped taking me on those news-watching, thrill-seeking visits.

The first day we didn’t show up, as fate would have it, was just  the day the news report we had so eagerly sought, aired on Ghana Television  (GTV).

Some of the older folks had sent one of my cousins running to our  house to inform my father about the ongoing broadcast, sending us  running almost immediately in the opposite direction.

We couldn’t get down there soon enough, however; by the time we  arrived, breathless yet full of spirit, the focus of the news broadcast  had shifted.

I had missed out on a chance to see myself on television. I didn’t know it then, but I would spend much of my adult life in the news – more  specifically, chasing the news and telling the world about it. Maybe, sub-consciously, my career path was determined by that episode, as I continuously pursue the news.

I have always enjoyed watching the news every evening. While every kid always seemed to crave something else on TV, the news was all I ever wanted to see.

The vicarious satisfaction my father felt while I took the stage, stayed with him for quite a  while, long after the fanfare had dissipated.

He needed no more convincing that my place was not on the farm,  but in school. The original idea was to take me away from school once the Konadu fanfare was over. But now, he saw that my future lied in the classroom, and so he kept me there, and the rest, as they say, is history.

And none of this would have been possible without that singular initiative from Mrs. Rawlings. I have never had the opportunity to thank her or give her this personal testimony. But I know people who know her, will send her this piece. I am grateful.

I am telling this story as a reminder to everyone that a programme aimed at expanding access, is always a laudable idea. Those 31st December Women’s Movement Day Cares were crucial interventions, same as a programme such as Free SHS. They may not be perfect, but you cannot deny that they give kids like myself a chance at getting an education and influencing a whole community.