Ghana Save me – the teaching teaching girl from London

When my mother told me at the age of 16 that we were going from the United Kingdom to Ghana for summer vacations, I had no reason to doubt it.

It was just a fast trip, a temporary vacation – what to worry about. Or so I thought.

For a month she cut the bomb – I did not return to London until I reformed and won enough GCSE to continue my education.

I was similarly attached to a British teenager who recently brought his parents to the Supreme Court in London that they sent him to school in GhanaS

In their defense, they told the judge that they did not want to see their 14-year-old son become “Another black teenager, stabbed to death on the streets of London.”

Already in the mid-1990s, my mother, a teacher at elementary school, was motivated by such concerns.

I was expelled from two high schools in the London region of Brent, who was hanging out with the wrong crowd (becoming the wrong crowd) – and I went a dangerous way.

My closest friends at the time ended up in prison for armed robbery. If I stayed in London, I would almost certainly be sentenced to them.

But to be sent to Ghana also felt like a sentence in prison.

I can sympathize with a teenager, who said in his judicial statement that he feels as if he “lives in hell.”

Still, speaking of myself, by the time I was 21 years old, I realized that what my mother had done was a blessing.

Unlike the boy in the center of the London case in court – which he lost – I did not go to the boarding school in Ghana.

My mother put me in the care of her two closest brothers, they wanted to follow me and felt that being around the borders could prove too much distraction.

For the first time, I stayed with my uncle Fifi, a former UN environmentalist in a city called Dansaman, near the capital, Acre.

Changing lifestyle struck greatly. In London I had my own bedroom, access to washing machines and a sense of independence – even if I use it recklessly.

In Ghana I woke up at 05:00 to sweep the yard and wash my uncle’s muddy truck and my aunt’s car.

It was her vehicle, which I would later steal – something like a catchment area.

I didn’t even know how to drive properly by treating a guide as an automatic and hit him in a high -ranking soldier Mercedes.

I tried to escape from the stage. But this soldier caught me and threatened to take me to Burma Camp, the famous military base, where people had disappeared in the past.

It was the last really reckless thing I did.

Not only did I learn discipline in Ghana – it was a perspective.

Life in Ghana showed me how much I took for granted.

Washing clothes by hand and preparing meals with my aunt made me appreciate the necessary efforts.

Food, like everything in Ghana, required patience. There were no microwaves, no fast food running.

The preparation of the traditional dough-like Dish-Fufu is laborious and includes boiled wells or cassa in a mortar paste.

At that time I felt a punishment. Looking back, it was building resistance.

Initially, my uncle was considering putting me in high-end schools such as the International School in Ghana or SOS-Hermann Gmeiner International College.

But they were smart. They knew I could just form a new crew to cause chaos and mischief.

Instead, I received private training at Acra Academy, a state high school that my late father attended. This meant that I was often taught alone or in small groups.

The lessons were in English, but outside of school, those around me often spoke in local languages ​​and it was easy for me to take them maybe because it was such a immersive experience.

Returning to London, I liked to learn to swear in the words of my mother’s mother’s language – but I was far from free.

When I later moved to the city of theme to stay with my beloved uncle, Uncle Jojo – an agricultural expert, I continued private training at TEMA Secondary School.

Unlike the boy who makes the titles in the UK, which claims that Ghana’s education system is not in line with the standard, I found that it was demanding.

I was considered an academic gifted in the UK, despite my problematic ways, but it actually seemed difficult in Ghana. Students my age were far ahead of subjects such as mathematics and science.

The rigor of the Ghanai system pushed me to learn more strongly than I ever had in London.

The result? I won five GCSE with class C and above – something that once seemed impossible.

Beyond the academic achievement, Gan’s society has inspired values ​​that have remained with me for life.

Respect for the elders is not negotiated. In the neighborhoods I lived in, you congratulated the older ones, whether you knew them or not.

Ghana not only made me more disciplined and respectful – it made me fearless.

Football played a huge role in this transformation. I played in parks, which were often a hard red clay with loose pebbles and stones, with two square goals made of wood and a rope.

It was far from the neatly maintained terrains in England, but it strengthened me in ways I couldn’t imagine – and it’s no wonder that some of the largest players seen in the English Premier League come from West Africa.

The aggressive style played in Ghana was not just for skills – but for durability and durability. To deal with rough ground meant lifting, letting go and continue.

Every Sunday I played football on the beach – though I was often late because there was absolutely no way for me to allow me to stay home instead of visiting church.

These services felt as if they were going forever. But it was also a testimony to Ghana as a God -fearing nation, where faith is deeply embedded in everyday life.

The first 18 months were the most difficult. I was angry about restrictions, obligations, discipline.

I even tried to steal my passport to fly back to London, but my mother was in front of me and hid it well. There was no escape.

My only choice was to adapt. Somewhere along the way, I stopped seeing Ghana as a prison and began to see him as a happy home.

I know of a few others like me who were sent back to Ghana by their parents living in London.

Michael Adom was 17 years old when he arrived in Acra for school in the 90s, describing his experience as “bitter”. He stayed until the age of 23 and now lives back in London, working as a probation officer.

His main complaint was loneliness – he missed his family and friends. There were times of anger about his situation and complications to feel misunderstood.

This largely stems from the fact that his parents did not teach him or his siblings in one of the local languages ​​when they grow up in London.

“I didn’t understand GA. I didn’t understand Twi. I didn’t understand Pidgin,” the 49-year-old tells me.

This made him feel vulnerable to his first two and a half years, and he says that he was out, for example, from those who increase prices because he seemed foreign.

“Everywhere I went, I had to make sure I went with someone else,” he says.

But he eventually owned the TWI, and generally believes that the positives exceed the negatives: “That made me a man.

“My experience in Ghana saw me and changed me to better, helping me to identify myself with who I am by Ghanaian and cementing my understanding of my culture, origin and family history.”

I can agree with this. Until my third year, I fell in love with the culture and I even stayed for almost two years after I passed GCSES.

I developed a deep assessment of local food. In London I have never thought twice about what I eat. But in Ghana, food was not just a nourishment – every dish had its own story.

I became obsessed with “Waakye”-a rice made of rice and peas with black eyes, often made with millet leaves, which gives it a distinctive purple-brown color. It was usually served with fried plantaine, spicy black pepper sauce “Shito”, boiled eggs and sometimes even spaghetti or fried fish. It was the best comfortable food.

I enjoyed the music, the warmth of people and the sense of community. I was no longer just “stuck” in Ghana – I was thriving.

My mother, Patience Wilberfors, died recently, and with my loss I thought deeply on the decision she made in all those years.

She saved me. If she had not lured me to stay in Ghana, the chances of having a criminal record or even serving time in prison would have been extremely high.

I continued to enroll in Northwest London College at 20 years to study media production and communications before joining the BBC Radio 1xtra through a mentoring scheme.

The boys I was hanging out in northwestern London did not get the second chance I made.

Ghana resumes my thinking, my values ​​and my future. She turned a deluded threat into a responsible person.

Although such an experience may not work for everyone, it gave me education, discipline and respect I needed to integrate into society when I returned to England.

And for that, I am forever obliged to my mother, my uncle and the country who saved me.

Mark Wilberfors is a freelance journalist in London and Acra.