THE WARRIOR KINGS "My Experience Working With Ghana's Underprivileged Youth"

I have been embarking on several mission trips to Ghana for about twenty-five years from my base in London, and my work has been on multiple fronts, being a Pastor, a qualified community development practitioner/worker, and a writer, and whereas I can look back with joy at the mere thought of those who have benefited from our missions in Ghana, I also have a lot of troubling reports, which is not meant to discourage the would-be project initiator but to strengthen you against all odds. My chosen area of work has always been among children and the youth, particularly underprivileged youth, and over the years we have gone from sending simple relief items like educational materials, initiating short term medical missions, giving out clothing, food and more, however, our main concern has been with offering long term solutions, like skill acquisitions and small business start-ups, and this is where the challenges are. Our problems have been with the very people who need help. We have an adage in the Akan language that says, "while I am attending to your fractured jaw, I say to you, hold tightly on the wound while I get a bandage to bind it up, but you say hurry or I will let go of my grip on the wound".

A few years ago I went to Ghana for one of my usual mission trips, and while there I spent time holding several teaching sessions and meeting one on one with members of our Church which was then at the West Hills, Weija Area, and before I departed the young men in the church decided to send me off with a friendly football match, playing against another Church in the community. Among the many activities, I conducted on this trip, that Sunday afternoon's match has always stayed with me, not because we won by four goals to one, which anyway still thrills me to bits. I was so impressed with their total performance. I remember saying if this was a permanent team I was managing, I will name them THE WARRIOR KINGS, which is actually the meaning of the name Ghana. I was so impressed with the planning and execution of the entire programme, especially how the whole game was planned in less than a day. I was shocked when I got the park, it had been cleared of all the overgrown bushes for spectators to have a good standing area, a few benches had been brought for people like us, and their jerseys which were hired was quite presentable, and above all, they were also on time.

As a Pastor/teacher/trainer what I saw gave me hope beyond that afternoon game, I saw diverse skills and potentials at work, which if harnessed right, can bring forth many great things for themselves and our entire community, so you wonder why many of them still struggle to find a way out of their powerless situations, not to talk about the community itself that literally is crawling in its development efforts. Without a doubt, these were warriors on the field and their collective life stories made them fighters indeed, but for kings, I don't know if many of them will be crowned in this lifetime except we work extra-time at developing them and their communities. Unfortunately, a huge part of their situations are like that because fellow Africans prevent them from becoming such kings and queens as they should become; they are turned into footstools by those whose duty it is to lift them up. So many of these men and women use them to work for mega cash and refuse to remunerate them well, sometimes denying them completely of their wages. #communitydevelopmentinafrica

Africa is the second most populous continent on earth with an estimated population of 1.3 billion people (as of 2019), and a large percentage of them are young people, many of whom lack opportunities for training and skill acquisition, and especially to the level of their counterparts in other parts of the world, where such opportunities are human rights and not human need. Now, my problem is that when these scarce 'provisions' become finally available, the same people you climb a mountain for and swim the length of the oceans to provide for, seem not to value what they have, and fail to use it wisely to enhance their lives. The problem we have at the moment is not just with the provisions of opportunities for these lot, but their unwillingness to make use of these scarce opportunities, and I will soon explain myself. #joejoapenteng

The problem we have is that so many of these young people hate to commit to long term plans and programmes - all they look for are temporal fixes for their problems. Most of the young people want something that will quench their present thirst and don't prepare enough for the future, because that takes time and effort, which may demand you giving up something today, to have more in the future. It is common knowledge that in very extreme cases some of these young people in certain West African countries have resorted to internet fraud or consulting spiritualists for juju money, all in the name of INSTANT WEALTH, something that easily ends the lives of many too quickly. On several occasions, I have heard people tell sad stories of relatives they tried to help, who couldn't commit to the process. And interestingly similar behaviours can easily be found in most deprived communities around the world, even in developed nations. While working as a Family Learning Coordinator in a deprived London Borough, I had my fair share of frustrations, as I daily chased unwilling people to come and train for free.

Sometimes some of these young people have a genuine reason for not committing to this process for change, because they mostly have to take care of themselves, doing other odd jobs to get by, thus not having enough time left to share between their temporal 'daily hustles' and these training programs. These kinds of challenges can be found sometimes among even younger children, who give up school entirely or sacrifice part of their school time for some kind of economic activity. The headmistress of one of the New Day Secondary Schools in Ghana (also located in a very deprived community), told me some students will leave class without permission and next, she sees them selling by the roadside, a challenge she says was remedied by governments intervention to provide free lunches for all of them.

The late American poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow said: “Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not, and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.” What are your secret sorrows? One thing that makes me sorrowful is to see one man take away the liberty of another. I even feel sadder when it is another black brother or sister, denying his brothers and sisters, what is rightfully theirs, or worse still cheating them of what they have earned with their own hands. Several poor folks fill the auditoriums of charlatans who prey on their ignorance of the word of God and scam them of several cedis. What kills me most is in trying to rescue these victims, they rather see this abuser as their hero and protector. In the midst of all my sorrows, I sorrow most for the plight of the black African who lacks the ability to see what makes his plight so severe, and who refuses to walk out of his prisons and traps even when you open the way of escape for him; he doesn't make a move because even though his feet are not bound his emotions, his will, and his intellect needs freeing. My many sorrows have not been about what I lack personally in life, but about what we have lacked together as a people.

Those who keep these young people down are many, with varied wicked schemes to deny the poor their daily bread, because the people themselves have become so shallow, locked many feet under by an invisible hand they must be willing to break free from; these same people who find it difficult to provide three squared meals will willingly buy some kind of "power handkerchief" from a prayer camp, or from juju men, all to break free from a situation that certainly doesn't go by smearing some anointing oil on yourself. WE MUST PREACH AND PREACH UNTIL OUR YOUNG ONES KNOW AND ACCEPT THAT SOME OF THESE CHALLENGES DO NOT GO, BUT WITH TIME AND EFFORT ONLY. (hard work in all three spheres of life, physically, spiritually and mentally).

Even though these young people face all kinds of challenges due to the lack of opportunities around them, they sometimes are their own enemies as they lack corporation with those who finally come to their rescue. Haven't you heard the story of the good driver whose master bought him a 'work and pay' taxi, only for the master to be presented with one concocted story after another? Sometimes God sends that 'angel' they have spent nights and nights praying to meet, but they still fail to recognize the angel. I am talking about the noncorporation of the people who sometimes need our help, but fail woefully at receiving it, even to notice that the help they prayed for has finally come.

Such are the people who quickly turn to all the wrong places for help, many times willing to part with the little money they have for receiving nothing. The young man who works as night security at our leadership center in Bentum, Kasoa (Ghana), turned up one evening fully dressed in all the paraphernalia of an Indian prophet who claims to be the returned Messiah, so I became curious and questioned the source of the t-shirt, medallion, and wristband, and his answer was, he got them from his family member who was a member of that sect. I asked if it was given away for free? and No! it was certainly sold, and I believe, it wasn't cheap either, "seeing it had some powers to protect the members who wore them", supposedly!

When older people live with such misconceptions, you can pardon them for lacking exposure but you would have wished younger people will be better informed, but no! not these lot, and that is certainly one of my sorrows because I am particularly interested in the development of young black men and women living on the continent of Africa because I have always said not until the learning of the black African living on the continent is brought closer to his counterparts in developed nations, he will continuously be denied his rightful place in global matters.

We have over the years invested in three major development projects in Ghana, that have lacked the level of patronage we wished for from the people themselves; first was the children's library and reading club. We were blessed in those days to receive some funding from CISP in Ghana, for a writing project we called "Abrewa Akasa", which means the old woman has spoken, and the whole idea was for the children to go to the older members of the community and ask for a story to be told, then develop it into a written piece. At first, we had a phenomenal result, and subsequently, we went ahead and published this collection of stories, but soon after the publication we were summoned to court to answer a case of historical misrepresentation, that had the ability to foment trouble in the area because one of the children had told a story that carried according to the elders an untrue matter that could even lead to tribal war, so we quickly apologized to the King and his elders and burnt all the printed material, promising never to reprint again. It is rather sad some elders could deliberately use a children's reading project to fuel their old disagreements. We still have a library project that is underused by the very deprived children we built it for - sadly some would rather go selling on the streets than to make time for extra studies.

We again went ahead to initiate an adult education project to help adults who couldn't read and write in the congregation; but soon the teacher was alone in the class, often chasing his students around the neighbourhood. The truth about this initiative is that we didn't design this for them, or you could say we were patronizing them, this time, we were responding to their cry for help, and therefore decided to fund the project with funds from our Church in London. After a while, most of them claimed to be too tired to attend the class after work, which was mostly menial jobs. The long and short of it is that we had to fold up the project after about eight months. This should have put us off from coming up with further interventions for the communities we are committed to helping because one would have concluded that sometimes the people you think need your help, DON'T, AFTER ALL!

Our hard-earned experiences haven't made us rest our oars at all, but in the last four years expanded our activities to our new site, which is in Kasoa, formerly known as Odupongkpehe, a peri-urban town in the Awutu Senya East Municipal District of the Central region of Ghana - in the Jei River area to be precise. And since being here we have actively been involved in the community, planting a great teaching Church in the community, aside from conducting short term medical missions and relief services; we have also begun a skills acquisition center, which is free for all participants. We evaluated the needs in the community and on the top of the list of felt-needs in this community was girl child education, and particularly, the teenage girls and younger women, who had already missed out on so much. But our challenges to date are similar to the experiences of the past, where the one YOU THINK NEEDS THE HELP doesn't see the extent of their own plight. We have a fully built commercial kitchen that can take twenty learners at a time, so with two shifts we can easily cater for forty learners, however, the twelve or so who showed interest have to be coerced, chased, or sometimes come in at their own leisure, absenting without any reason very often. #pccilondon

Proper development work is not a walk through the park, you have to keep going until the people can own the vision themselves. Our challenges have been with the very people who need help. Most people who need help to climb up the social ladder don't see the way forward as being through education or other personal development interventions like learning a new skill or trade. For some that may take too long to happen, and all they want is for you to give them short term interventions, i.e. cash for food, pay their rent, clothing for today, and any other intervention that can take away the present pain momentarily, howbeit, unable to uproot the problem at the root! The sad fact is that these same people in the name of 'quick fix', will give an arm and a leg to someone who promises them wealth through the application of oil.

Everything we have talked about so far boils down to 'education education education', but also unflinching dedication from us who go to serve. You should be ready to spend a lot of time working on the hearts and minds of those you have been sent to, making them accept that the utopia they look for will only come through much learning, be it formal or non-formal. As I travel around the world I meet a lot of individuals and groups who are passionate about helping underprivileged people in Africa, but my advice is, 'before you hurry too quickly, you should try and ask if you are going into it for a short or long haul?' If you cannot commit to the long haul, simply begin with some simple relief work, because it takes work and dedication to have enduring result among the poor. I also add that you must be ready to swallow your pride and learn from your mistakes because you are bound to make many of them.

Be ready for some heartbreaks too, just like mine broke upon hearing that some of the teenage mothers we are training have gotten pregnant again by different men, and even though we have decided to take them back on the program after delivery, they would have lost a lot of time and wasted resources too. I hope to share more in future about my experience so far, working with the underprivileged in Ghana, but let me live you with this: I have absolute confidence that one of these days the few or many God brings to us will indeed live up to our name as true sons and daughters of Ghana, THE WARRIOR KINGS, AND OF COURSE QUEENS.