Are You Managing?
on Anthony Lovat in Bolgatanga (Ghana), Unknown, 34 days ago
When my friend, Sue, was here last month, she asked a simple question: why is Africa in general, and Ghana in particular, poor? It’s a simple question with various complicated answers but, seeing as she’d phrased the question so simply, I tried to think of a simple answer. Mismanagement, I replied, is the main reason why northern Ghana is poor. I didn’t realise that we’d be given such a clear example of resource mismanagement just a few days later.Each region in Ghana has a number of science resource centres for senior high schools. The Upper East region has four, located in a school in each of the main population centres: Bolgatanga, Bawku, Navrongo and Sandema. The idea behind the scheme is that these four lucky schools are given good science resources in a modern laboratory and a bus. The bus can then be used to transport students from satellite schools to the resource centres - hence giving every senior high school student access to high quality science practical resources for at least some of the time. The science resource centres have been in place for several years and I have been working closely with Bolgatanga Senior High School resource centre. Sadly, due to endemic mismanagement, the scheme has never worked as envisioned. The laboratory technician is a drunk, rarely shows up for work, and doesn’t seem able to locate a clean cloth. The bus, supposedly to be used by the satellite schools, has been adopted by the host school - satellite schools weren’t bringing any students anyway because there was a dispute over where money for fuel should come from. Despite all this, the lucky scienceteachers at Bolgatanga Senior High School, who have been working with VSO for many years, make use of the laboratory for their own privileged students. The equipment may not always be tidy and clean but it is being utilised - if not for the good of all students.The science resource centre at Bolgatanga is like a grubby version of any school laboratory you might see in England. There are lots of jars of acids and alkalis, plenty of burettes and retort stands and even gas taps that could, if funds were managed correctly, light the many bunsen burners that are knocking around. The satellite schools, by contrast, have very often got nothing - literally nothing.This two-tier situation has been taking place nationwide for years. A few weeks before Sue came to visit, a letter came from the Ghana Education Service headquarters in Accra telling the regional office to organise the redistribution of equipment from the science resource centres to the satellite schools. Their survey, surprise surprise, had shown that the resource centres were not being used as they were supposed to - that they had created a system of haves and have-nots.I was very happy with this letter. It gave the regional science coordinator, Veronica, and I the mandate to negotiate with the science resource centres to fairly redistribute some of the equipment. The only resource centre I had been working with up until that point, however, had been the one in Bolgatanga - it would be my first visit to Bawku, Navrongo and Sandema Senior High Schools. Sue, being a (very good) biology teacher herself, was interested in the work so came with us to Sandema. I thought it might be boring for her - based on what I’d seen at Bolgatanga Senior High School, I thought it might just be like seeing a dusty English school laboratory. It might even leave Sue with a false impression of the state of schools in this area of Ghana - she might think all senior high schools have such facilities. It turned out to be a perfect illustration of how mismanagement can go unchallenged in Ghana.Sandema is a long way from Bolga. We had to drive through Navrongo, onto a bumpy dirt road and through small villages selling piles of charcoal. As we were driving, Veronica told us that she had visited the school several years before and that she didn’t believe the place had been sent any of the science equipment. She had not seen any resources whatsoever when she had visited. The school itself is just outside of town with the half-dozen or so buildings scattered over a surprisingly large area. We located the administration block and Veronicaled Sue and I into the headmaster’s air-conditioned office. The headmaster had been watching the television. He hurried to turn the sound off and stood up to walk around his desk and greet us.“Good morning,” he shook our hands warmly and smiled at us over the rim of his wonky glasses that still had a sticker on a lens from when he’d bought them. “You are the people from Phillip Harris. I’ve forgotten your name...”Phillip Harris is a British company that supplies schools with science equipment. I corrected him.“No, we’re not from Phillip Harris. You must be thinking of someone else.”“Oh, sorry, sorry. You look just like the other white man who came to help us. Which NGO are you working for?”“I am with VSO, working as a science teacher support officer through the regional education office. I work with Madam Veronica.”“Oh, that’s very good... very good,” the headmaster looked at me admiringly and, I think, gave a little bow. He was a short stout man of about fifty years old. “We thank you for your work here. You know we are in a poor area and we are a poor school - very poor school.”“Well,” I replied, feeling a little awkward, “I’m sorry to hear that.”“But you are here to help us,” he repeated. “We thank you for helping us because we are a poor school - a very poor school.”Following a few more embarrassing pleasantries, we sat on his threadbare sofa and explained why we were visiting. The headmaster nodded gravely, spent a long time studying the letter from Accra that had been signed by the regional and national directors for education, and then nodded gravely again.“We have been sent some very few science things,” the headmaster finally admitted, “but the roof blew off our laboratory last year...” we all expressed appropriate levels of shock and sympathy “...and you know we are a poor school so we have had to park the equipment for the time being. They are building us a new laboratory so when it is finished we shall move the things into the new building.”We saw the old building later in the day. The roof had blown off one side but the bottom floor and several rooms on the top floor still looked perfectly usable.The headmaster called the head of science, a polite young man in a smart shirt and shiny shoes called Mohammed. He repeated to us how poor the school is, how difficult it is to teach science at such a poor school, and took us to see what equipment they had.Despite Sandema being one of the more successful senior high schools in the region, their 2009 science terminal examinations still leave much room for improvement - 25% of students achieved A*-C in chemistry, 18% in biology and 13% in physics.Mohammed led us behind the administration block to a gloomy store room. He fumbled with the unfamiliar keys before finding the right one, clicked the stiff lock open and shoved the reluctant door. The unlit room was full of pristine science equipment, unopened and all in their original packaging. The boxes were piled high and coated in a thick layer of dust and bat droppings. Most of the boxes were completely inaccessible - buried under more piles of laboratory equipment. I peeped inside some of the boxes near the door. One contained fractional distillation glassware. One contained a Van-de-Graf generator. One was full of universal indicator paper. They had over fifty microscopes including half a dozen or so binocular microscopes and a digital microscope. They had a visi-camera that can link to one of the projectors that were in unopened boxes. They had everything in abundance and it was all just thrown into a storeroom. It was shocking.It took me a while to process just how much stuff they had.Mohammed gave a wry laugh.“Do you see how we must struggle?” he sighed. “We are lacking. We are a poor school.”I felt the blood rising in me but I had to remain calm.“You know,” I looked at Mohammed. “You have more stuff here than I had in my school back in London.”Mohammed thought I was joking. He laughed. I felt my anger rise yet higher.“No really!” My voice was a little louder. I looked Mohammed in the eye and articulated clearly. “You have more science equipment at your school than I had in my school in London. Your school is not lacking anything. Your school is not poor.”Mohammed’s smile was starting to fade. He couldn’t tell if I was joking or not. The idea of an African school having more stuff than an English school was something that had never entered his head before. I was finding it difficult to hide my anger.“Why is all this stuff in boxes?” I demanded. “Look at this!” I picked up a box of magnesium ribbon and brought out a coil to hold up. “Why don’t you use any of this?”Mohammed looked sheepishly at the magnesium in my hand.“Do you really not have all this in your country?” he asked quietly.I pointed at an unopened box labelled‘centrifuge’. “We don’t have that.” I pointed at one of the unopened boxes labelled ‘binocular microscope’. “We don’t have that.” I pointed at an unopened box, labelled with something I didn’t even recognise but that sounded expensive. “We don’t have that.”I’d seen enough. We went to the office and met some of the other science teachers. They warmly welcomed me and asked if I’d come to help. They told me how poor the school was. I felt my anger grow.From a young age, it seems that people are trained to believe that they are poor. Everyone, the saying goes, is a manager in Ghana - everyone is just managing. People talk quite openly about living in poverty, even as they sit in comfortable houses, ride around on motorbikes and take three hour lunch breaks. As most people have never been to Europe, they believe that it is a utopian continent where money grows on trees. Any European thing must be better than the African thing. Any European school must be better and must be more richly endowed than an African school.I was having a conversation with Culture and some of his friends a few weeks ago. I described how life for my parents’ generation was more difficult than my own - that they didn’t have mobile phones, the internet and affordable air travel. I described how life was even more of a struggle for my grandparents’ generation - how they had to fight for their country and how they had to cope with rationing and theblitz. I described how I hoped that life will be easier for my children - how their opportunities will be better. Culture thought about this for some time before responding.“But I thought your country was a developed country.”It took me a while to comprehend what Culture meant. He believed that, having been labelled‘developed’, Britain had finished developing. He believed there was nothing left to improve - that life was perfect.Since that conversation, I avoid dividing the planet into the‘developing’ and ‘developed’ world. I no longer like those labels. I think they are misleading.This endemic belief in Africa’s inferiority was evident at Sandema Senior High School and, despite their school having an abundant wealth of expensive science equipment, was being used as an excuse for lazy mismanagement. The aspiration and innate motivation of the teachers and, more importantly, the management was cripplingly low - given the resources at their disposal, they should be getting far more students through their exams.I needed to go through my list of science materials with Mohammed. I needed to know how much of what equipment I could designate for redistribution to the surrounding satellite schools - schools that don’t even have a single thermometer or glass beaker. We sat down and talked but Mohammed had no idea what was in the store - he and the headmaster had never bothered to investigate. They had never even opened the boxes. I left Sandema under the agreement that I will return in October once the new laboratory is finished. I will help catalogue and organise the equipment - tasks they are capable of doing themselves but don’t have the inclination for. I’m going to have to manage the procedure if any of that equipment is to be utilised.All too often I get bombarded with heart-rending sob stories from school managers of poverty and lack of funds. It only takes a little investigation to realise that, all too often, Ghana is lacking in nothing but effective management.