Special ReportsIn-Depth Analysis and Investigative Reports
The desire to learn burns inside them
Tuesday, November 8, 2005 By Molly Hennessy-Fiske
Growing up in Ghana's impoverished north, Hamdiatu Mohammed had a one-in-three chance of making it to high school.
Her parents, poor farmers, had to pay to send their four sons and three daughters to school. According to tradition, they paid for the boys first. After Hamdiatu's father died when she was 4, the money dwindled and so did her chances.
Hamdiatu would have missed elementary school if not for the foreign charities that paid her way. Instead, she became a math and science whiz, among the top three in her graduating class of 120. The other two were boys.
"I was smart. I wanted to go to school, and more to the point, I was good," said the willowy teenager with searching brown eyes.
When the time came for Hamdiatu to start high school, her mother sold three cows for a total of $45 - and sent her stepson to school. Then she began arranging to marry Hamdiatu for a bride price paid in cattle.
"Because we are in the Muslim community, they said it was better for me to marry," Hamdiatu said. "My elder sister didn't agree."
The 32-year-old sister, married off as an adolescent, intervened. She contacted the Centre for Sustainable Development Initiatives, nicknamed Censudi, a Ghanaian group that's keeping girls in school with help from Syracuse.
In Ghana and the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa, 44 percent of girls don't attend elementary school, according to UNICEF. Five years ago, the United Nations and Ghanaian government announced a plan to enroll as many girls as boys in primary school by this year. Yet for every 10 boys, only seven girls enroll.
"While the gender gap between girls and boys is shrinking, it's still there," said UNICEF's spokesman Oliver Phillips. "In the case of West and Central Africa, it's probably the widest in the world."
Phillips said UNICEF lobbied for education reform in countries such as Kenya, which abolished elementary school fees two years ago and saw a rise in girls' enrollment. In Ghana, UNICEF is leaving education reform up to local leaders, who are better at reaching families, he said.
Censudi founders Franciska and Margaret Mary Issaka, Bolgatanga natives, are using their local ties to educate girls and turn them into national leaders.
The sisters benefited from a nontraditional upbringing. Their father, a Bolgatanga policeman, never went to school, but knew its value and paid their way. Margaret Mary Issaka, 57, graduated from Holy Training College in Takoradi, Ghana; her sister from the University of Cape Coast, Ghana, and Durham University in England, where she earned a master's degree in economics. Franciska Issaka, 53, went on to serve in Ghana's national government. She sits on the local assembly, similar to Syracuse's Common Council.
The sisters started Censudi in Ghana's southern capital, Accra. Schools and universities are clustered on the nearby coast, descendants of 18th century academies started by European settlers. The Issakas realized they were more needed in the north, where U.N. studies show fewer schools, lower literacy rates and less schooling, especially among women. They moved back to Bolgatanga.
Brought change by example
Villagers were surprised at first to see two women tooling around in a pickup truck, asking about their daughters. In Bolgatanga, where bicycles and mopeds outnumber cars, if anyone's behind the wheel, it's usually a man.
The Issakas brought change by example. They shared their experiences with families like Hamdiatu's, then asked them to reconsider early marriages and other traditions that keep girls out of school. During the past seven years, they have helped send 125 girls to school.
One way to persuade parents to send girls to school, Franciska Issaka says, is to review the family budget. Look at how much they spend on traditional practices, she says, from animal sacrifices to traditional healers. What is the result? Did the sick heal? Would treatment cost less at a hospital? Would the sick recover more quickly?
Hamdiatu says her mother might have been able to pay for her schooling if not for another tradition practice: widowhood rites. In many Muslim families in the north, after a woman's husband dies she must stay inside her house and pray for him. Fulerah Mohammed stayed home for three months after her husband's death. Unable to go to market, she lost her charcoal-selling business.
After talking with the Issakas, Hamdiatu and her mother say they "deeply regret" losing the business.
"It's a slow process of realizing this part of our culture is good and we will keep and this part we will do less of," Franciska Issaka says while sitting in her Bolgatanga office. Behind her, a poster advertises a speech she gave at Syracuse University last year: "Opening the Doors of Learning to Girls and Women."
In addition to changing tradition, the Issakas talk with teachers about gender sensitivity and with girls about their goals.
Syracuse women help
"Going to school is excellent, but so is changing the attitude of parents that this child is worth educating, changing the attitude of a teacher not to harass her, changing the attitude of a girl to be confident," Franciska Issaka says.
Mardea Warner, co-coordinator of the Syracuse women's group Beyond Boundaries, met the Issakas during a 1997 visit to Bolgatanga. She was impressed by their ability to connect with local families, she said. Later that year, Beyond Boundaries sent its first annual $400 donation to Censudi from the group's May art auction.
"Change is hard to come by. When you're looking at changing almost foundation ideas that people have, it's even harder. Especially in a way that's respectful, not imposing," said Warner, a native of Liberia, West Africa. "It takes years to develop those kinds of relationships. I'm amazed every time talking to Franciska at some of the particulars of the work that they do."
The Issakas are not the only ones helping girls attend school in the north, but theirs is among the few agencies that focus on secondary, rather than primary, education.
Hamdiatu fetches water from a well behind her house using a gallon can labeled "USA Refined Vegetable Oil," a gift from Baltimore-based Catholic Relief Services.
Cooking oil for education
The group gives cooking oil and other foods to families in exchange for sending girls to elementary school. This year, CRS used food to get 43,149 girls to school in northern Ghana at a cost of $7.2 million, spokeswoman Hillary Roxe said. That included some of the $16,900 raised in Syracuse for CRS during an annual March collection.
Censudi works with a much smaller budget, mostly private donations. The Issakas spent $120,000 last year on girls' education and on programs to reduce poverty, stop domestic violence, encourage women in politics and promote gender sensitivity.
Last year, Margaret Mary Issaka received 500 applications for the education program. She selected the most "needy but brilliant" girls, and says she expects as many applications for this year's 25 spots. She increasingly sees graduates reapply for help with college tuition, as Hamdiatu did once she finished high school this summer.
Ask why Hamdiatu, 19, wants to go to college, and she points to an inch-long scar on her left cheek. When she was a baby, she suffered convulsions. Her parents, who didn't attend school, believed a traditional healer could cure her by cutting her face. She recovered, but hates the scar and believes she would have fared better at a hospital.
"If my parents had attended higher education, they would have gone to the hospital or they would send me for immunizations," she said.
Before her final exams, Hamdiatu hung her class schedule on the concrete wall of her room, opposite the mat where she sleeps. At the bottom, she scrawled a reminder that God is with her: "Am Making It By This Grace."
She took her exams in July and August. Results are due next month.
Fulerah Mohammed, 40, says her daughter's studies inspired her to return to school. She married at 15, she said, didn't know the value of education and spoke little English. She's among the 33 percent of Ghanaian women who can't read.
In her Ghanaian language, Frafra, she explains through Hamdiatu that three years ago she started night English classes at a school in town three nights a week for less than $6 per month. When the money ran out, she stopped.
If she could go back in time?
"I run fast and go to school," she says.
Finding a way
Christine Aduko beat the odds in Bolgatanga and graduated from high school at a price. The oldest of four girls, her education was financed by the bride prices of her three younger sisters.
She watched friends, including Rose Azangina, married off as teenagers while their brothers stayed in school. After Azangina died last year, her daughter could not afford high school.
"It's the money. Everyone wants their child to be educated," said Aduko, who owns a furniture store and took in Azangina's soft-spoken daughter, Lawrencia Adongo, 19.
Lawrencia's stepbrother, Ankra Adongo, 25, contacted Censudi after her mother died. A welder who never finished middle school, he earns up to $600 a month, which makes him relatively wealthy in a country where the average monthly income was about half that last year, according to the World Bank. Adonga agreed to help pay for Lawrencia's schooling. He's already sending nine other children in the family to school, including five girls. He has hired a female welder and says women can help Ghana advance.
"There are a lot of women in parliamentary seats and they are good decision-makers," he says. "So if girls complete their education, it will help the country."
Hamdiatu's stepbrother Alidu Mohammed, 20, says sending girls to school will help decrease unemployment and child mortality in northern Ghana, which, according to UNICEF, is twice as high as in southern Ghana.
Higher standard of living
"If there are few children they will spend more money on them and that will increase their standard of living," he says.
Alidu wants to go to college to study business. He is waiting, like Hamdiatu, for his exam results.
Says their mother: "One will go."
Hamdiatu can guess which one.
She hopes Censudi can help her pay for college, she says. She is sitting in the courtyard of the family compound, facing a stepbrother's cinder-block house. It's painted with the phrase, "Time will tell." That means anyone can raise themselves above their circumstances, Hamdiatu says.
She's holding her 4-month-old niece, Zena, whose face is already scarred by traditional healing. Other nieces play nearby, girls in tattered dresses dancing and clapping to a song Hamdiatu says they learn at school:
Father, mother, my dear parents:
I am to you a precious gift.
My life and safety,
Lies in your hands.
Take care of me,
Take care of me.
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