Growing up, I still remember how I could ask my dad to buy me almost everything, sometimes including the world.
I remember vividly how I used to brag about what my dad had promised to buy for me and how I wouldn’t let any of my friends touch my ‘car’ or ‘aeroplane’ when my dad brings them.
Yet the only ‘valuable’ thing I ever had then was “A for Apple” books.
Wandering up and down the streets of Twifo Hemang (in the voice of Lucky Dube), my whole dream was to become a legendary legal practitioner. Not because, I knew much about the profession, but I wanted to be like that ‘Lawyer Asamoah’ (Harry Laud) in Harry Laud Production’s masterpiece ‘Girl at 18’.
Finding myself in arguably the best high school in the northern sector of the Central Region of Ghana, Apam Senior High School, I was made to study Pure Science, courtesy my ‘all powerful’ mother who wanted her son to be a medical doctor because a pastor had told her “your son will be a doctor”.
But will you blame her? In our part of the world where every fortune or a misfortune ‘MUST’ have a spiritual reason, can you blame a Twifo Hemang born woman whose highest certificate in life is a Middle School Leaving Certificate for clinging to a ‘prophecy’ by a “Man of God”? Obviously not!!!
For almost five years after leaving the four corners of Apam Senior High School, I had to move through the ditches, sleep in the bush and expose myself to all sorts of dangers just to tell the story of the ordinary Ghanaian to the world through the power of the media (traditional and social).
A lawyer, a doctor, now a reporter.
My dream of becoming a lawyer, my mother’s hope of I becoming a medical doctor and my several years’ experience as a reporter landed me at the Ajumako Campus of the University of Education, Winneba pursuing B. A. Twi Education.
Why this long boring autobiography?
As human beings, we all have dreams. It is another thing dreaming and another thing realising your dream. Dream is the imaginations and revelation of things hoped for.
Realisation of dream is the actuality of things imagined.
Between October last year to March this year, millions of energetic young Ghanaians had a dream of earning a title “Tertiary Student” by the end of this year. As fate may have it, through whatsoever means some of these young men and women will have to re-position their dream to another year with the hope that one day “Jesus will pass by the pool of Bethseda”.
Those that serendipity went to your favour. Congratulation!! I could imagine the verve you used in receiving the ‘good news’.
The guys upon the receipt of the good news started ‘phoning, testing, whatsapping and Facebooking’ with phrases such as “Charley, I get Leg, I dey go read P-Science”. “Mehn Tech, engineering, sup”
Those that fortune eluded them a bit and are to come and be with me at Ajumako to read B. A. Twi Education immediately had to concoct stories on their social media statuses such as ‘God has been good to me o, Winneba here I come. Linguistics”.
The ladies started calling their guys and sugar daddies names they seldom use just to fill their ‘Ghana must go back’ bags and to better their wardrobes.
Parents went to church to pay moneys in a form of thanksgiving. Champagnes were popped. For over a week, one could see smiles beaming in their faces. In some cases the lives of some fowls, ram, and goats came to abrupt ending to celebrate the admissions of their wards.
Thankfully Last week the never ending recess (thanks to Ebola scare and POTAG/UTAG strike) of the public tertiary institutions in Ghana came to a halt and the schools immediately called the students (fresh and continuing) to go and hustle for another four months (semester).
Fresh undergraduate students will for the first time in their academic lives be having a feel of tertiary life and will be commencing in most cases their four year university education.
So what happens after their four years stay in school and after they have been presented with the coloured ‘A-4’ sheet? After they can no more bloated bills to fill their pockets? After their boyfriends/girlfriends will no more accept ‘I’m a student as excuse for shelving responsibility? After the realities of life start dawning on them? After they start paying for utilities from their pockets? Will they also have to add to the numbers of UGAG (Unemployed Graduates Association of Ghana)?
Like Kwasi Frimpong growing up at Twifo Hemang expecting Kwasi Assuman (my father) to buy heaven for me and to cuddle me before I walk, is the state ready to let the systems help me stand on my feet? So that may be one day like John F Kennedy, I can boldly ask myself what I can also do for my country?
In our part of the world where people’s destiny can easily be changed by the system, what becomes of the University degree we so much fight for? What happens to our dreams?
So AFTER THE CHASE for University degree, WHAT’S NEXT for me the Ghanaian youth?
Kwasi Frimpong
UEW
AJUMAKO.
qfrimp@ymail.com
0201833775.
Whatsapp: 0245695124
The writer is the NUGS President of the University Of Education, Winneba-Ajumako Campus.
