NEWS FROM GHANA: NDC holds Greater Accra Regional rally tomorrow ...

NEWS FROM GHANA: NDC holds Greater Accra Regional rally tomorrow ...: NDC holds Greater Accra Regional rally tomorrow Thousands of supporters of the ru...

NDC holds Greater Accra Regional rally tomorrow

Thousands of supporters of the ruling National Democratic Congress, NDC, are expected to converge on the Mantse Agbonaa park tomorrow for the Party's rally.

The rally under the auspices of the Greater Accra NDC, will be used to outdoor the party's Parliamentary candidates for the region.

It is the first political rally of the NDC three years after it won power.

Speaking to Radio Ghana, the Deputy Greater Accra Regional Minister, Isaac Vanderpuiye, said all arrangements have been made to ensure the success of the rally.

GBC NEW S

A Mother's Love

Once upon a time, in the village of Mempeasem, it was considered a taboo to give birth to a physically challenged child.

The chief who reigned at that time disliked children with disabilities, to the extent that he was able to convince his elders to pass a law forbidding the presence of such children in the village.

He told them such children were a curse sent to humans as punishment for offending the gods. Therefore, under the law, before those children reached age five, they were sent to the evil forest and abandoned after the chief priest had performed certain rituals.

It happened that Eno Ama Nyarkoah and Agya Kwabena Nsiah had been married for years without a child. Finally, Eno Nyarkoah  conceived and bore a beautiful baby girl called Oforiwaa. Sadly, two years after the birth of Oforiwaa, it was realised that she was disabled from the waist and as a result, could not walk.

Eno Nyarkoah decided to keep it a secret but somehow, the whole village got to know of it. When the chief and elders heard of it, as custom demanded, Oforiwaa was supposed to be sent to the evil forest.

However, Eno Nyarkoah stuck to her guns and insisted that she would not allow her only child to be abandoned in the forest just because she was a cripple.

The chief and the elders, therefore, banished Eno and her daughter from the village. Eno Nyarkoah was happy at the turn of events and assumed that Agya Nsiah would support her but he did not.  Instead, he told Eno Nyarkoah that if she would not respect the custom of the land, then he would not accompany her.

Eno Nyarkoah, therefore, left Mempeasem for a village called Meniagye which was very far away. Eno Nyarkoah knew a great deal about herbal plants and their usefulness, therefore, she started applying the herbs on the sick in that village and soon, a lot of people came to her  to seek treatment for their ailments.

Oforiwaa began to learn from her mother so that she could be of assistance. By the time she reached her teens, she knew a great deal about herbal plants and the many ailments that they cured. Because of the good work they did, Meniagye village became popular and people came from far and near to seek their help.

Soon, age caught up with Eno Nyarkoah, therefore, she could not work as much as she should. Oforiwaa, therefore,  took over everything.

Meanwhile, at Mempeasem, the chief whose reign saw the passage of the law that did not recognise physically challenged people, fell seriously ill.  His elders did all they could but he did not recover.

He learnt of the great herbalist at Meniagye and decided to go there with some of his elders to seek a cure for his illness. They set off very early that day. When they got to the compound of Eno Nyarkoah, they found only Oforiwaa there because by then her mother had gone to the forest for herbal plants. After telling her their mission, Oforiwaa decided to help them.

As would be expected because of the chief's negative perception about people with disabilities, he was reluctant to take the concoction given to him by Oforiwaa. It took a lot of prodding from his elders before he did. After drinking the concoction, he went to his hut to sleep and by the time he woke up that evening he felt totally renewed. He took another dose that evening before finally retiring to sleep. The next morning he was completely healed.

Happily, he and his entourage decided to go and inform Oforiwaa about the happy news. It was there that they met Eno Nyarkoah, who was busily washing some herbs she had gathered from the forest. The chief and his entourage immediately recognised Eno Nyarkoah.

The moment Eno Nyarkoah asked them what they were doing in her house, they realised that Oforiwaa, who had restored the health of the chief was her daughter. The chief and elders then begged for their forgiveness.

Oforiwaa  was confused about all that was going on. Her mother, therefore, chose that moment to explain to her the story surrounding her life. The chief and his elders realised how immature they had been in passing that law.

Immediately, they acknowledged that disability was not a curse and realised the harm they had caused to all the innocent children they abandoned in the forest.

They decided to abolish that cruel law as soon as they got to Mempeasem and pleaded with  Oforiwaa and her mother to return to their kith and kin.

Indeed, when the chief and his elders returned to Mempeasem, they abolished the law on disability and today, the people of Mempeasem live peacefully with the physically and mentally challenged.

Disability is not an inability. It is not the fault of a child to be born with a physical or mental challenge.  Let us not shun such people;  rather, we should treat them with respect and love because given the right opportunities they can contribute to the development of the nation just as all others do

Henrietta Oforiwaa Darko,
T.I. Ahmadiyya JHS 'B',
Asokwa, Kumasi.

Headmaster Shares Bungalow With Female Students

The headmaster's official residence which he shares with female students

Accommodation challenges facing the Mangoase Senior High School (MASS) have compelled the headmaster of the school to cede part of his two-bedroom bungalow to female students of the school.

Close to 50 students are occupying the headmaster’s kitchen and sitting room, with some sleeping on the about 20 beds available, while others sleep on mattresses on the floor.

To enter his room, the Headmaster, Mr Albert K. Worfa, passes through the garage, while cooking is done in the open.

There is a blockade that prevents the students from interfering with the headmaster’s space and privacy, and vice versa.

The school has a boarding population of 420, with 270 being girls and 150 being boys.

On a hot day, life becomes very uncomfortable. Ceiling fans spin furiously in vain to blow away the steamy hot air flooding in from the compound.

One student sums up the problem: “The room feels like an oven. Sleeping here with our bags as pillows is very difficult.”

The only bath house for the 270 girls is a ramshackle structure that can take only six students at a time.

“In the morning, long queues are formed here just for us to bathe and prepare for school,” another student said.

If the situation for the girls is bad, that of the boys is no different. Besides the struggle for decent accommodation, there is no water at the boys’ dormitory and the students have to rely on the heavily polluted River Densu for their domestic activities.

Their woes do not end there. Because there is no dining hall, the students are forced to use their classrooms or any convenient place to take their meals.

The library is a room that best qualifies to be a storeroom, as stack of books compete with two sewing machines and some foodstuffs. The only bookshelf is packed neatly with books described by the students as “irrelevant to our subjects”.

That is not all.

The computer laboratory is virtually on hibernation, as the close to 1,000 students have to devise means to study Information and Communications Technology, which is now a core subject in SHS, with eight computers that, on a bad day, only blink and stay so for the rest of the day.

Opened on January 27, 1992, MASS is among the most deprived senior high schools in the country.

The school, located at Tetteh-Kofi village in the Akuapem South District in the Eastern Region, is accommodated in the buildings of the defunct Cocoa Services Division.

Domestic animals take advantage of the absence of a school wall to roam on the school compound, leaving behind trails of animal droppings.

Speaking to the DAILY GRAPHIC, Mr Worfa said the school was opened as a community school but later adopted the hostel system to enable students from outside Mangoase to access secondary education in the area.

The hostel system, he stated, had been transformed into the boarding system, while the school awaited approval from the GES.

To deal with accommodation, the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund) has started the construction of two single-storey buildings to meet the accommodation needs of the students.

With all those challenges, results of the school in the West Africa Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) can be very predictable, even though efforts to get the school’s WASSCE results over the years did not prove successful.

The headmaster told the Daily Graphic that the performance of the students was average.

After running two years without a Board of Governors, the school finally got it its board sworn into office on Thursday.

The 11-member board led Mr Ransford Tetteh, President of the Ghana Journalist Association and Editor of the Daily Graphic , is expected to, among other things,serve as an advisory body to the headmaster.

The body would also control the general policy of the institution, subject to further directives of the Minister of Education through the Ghana Education Service Council.

Addressing the new board members, Ms Adriana Kandilinge, the Eastern Regional Director of Education, said the board had been appointed at a time senior high schools in the country faced numerous challenges including accommodation, infrastructure, and poor academic performance.

She, therefore, urged the board members to use their rich experience, with the help of the school’s Parent Teacher Association, to find solutions to the myriad of challenges facing the school.

The Regional Director also urged the board to be circumspect in its dealings to ensure that the usual friction  between school boards and heads of the schools did not arise.

While commending members of the old board for their sacrifice over the years, she said, “We trust that with your experience and high standard, decisions taken will serve the best interest of the staff and the school as a whole.”

“The board must cooperate with staff, students and Parent-Teacher Association and the community to ensure that peace prevails. When peace prevails, then everybody’s attention will be focused on how to fufil the school’s mission and vision of excellence to the optimum,” she said to a wild applause from the students.

The new Chairman of the Board of Governors of MASS, Mr Ransford Tetteh, promised that the days of deprivation and struggle would soon be over for the school.

He gave an assurance that the board would do all it could to change the face of the school and leave it better than it was now.

Mr Tetteh, who shared his experience as a child in a community not far from Mangoase, said, “We can lift ourselves from this small community and challenge all the big schools in Ghana and make it to the university if we are determined to. There are people from those big schools who are not able to qualify for the university.”