Chapter 4 Failed, Dejected and Rejected

My first encounter with what looked like failure was in 2000 when I sat the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE), a compulsory transitioning examination administered by the West Africa Examination Council (WAEC). It was the examination that determined who was good enough to enter secondary school. A candidate's performance in that exam also determined whether one was good enough to be admitted into Ghana's "Ivy League" secondary schools. Those who did not excel with distinction were destined for the second class, third class and other unclassifiable secondary schools.

Until recently, when the government's policy on protocol admissions and corruption adulterated and still threaten to further undermine the excellence and prestige associated with the elite secondary schools, the dream of every BECE candidate was to make it to the very best secondary schools available. And one way of doing that was to pass extremely well in the BECE. Candidates were graded using their best six scores in the nine or ten examinable subjects in junior secondary school (Some schools studied and wrote French while others did not so the number of BECE subjects at the time varied from school to school). The scores in a subject were graded from 1 to 9, 1 being the best score or "Excellent", while 9 meant failure in that subject. A candidate's overall score or result was calculated by summing his or her best six scores obtained in the exam. If you were asked what you obtained in the BECE, you said you got an Aggregate 6 or 8, 9 or 10, depending on the total score from your best six subjects. Those who obtained Aggregate 6 were those who scored 1 in their best six subjects. The exceptional pupils who scored 1 in all the subjects often said, "I got an Aggregate 6 with ten 1's." The public school system at the basic level has, for a long time, been neglected, so those who go to the public basic schools hardly score Aggregate Six, whether they attend rural or urban public schools. In my days-and that is still the case today-the competition was among those who attended top private basic schools such as St. Martin de Porres School. In such schools, many candidates score "Aggregate Six" so the distinction or comparison is often focused on the number of ones a candidate scores. This was, perhaps, the reason I felt so distraught when I went for my results and it was a double figure. I obtained Aggregate 12, which meant that I was not among the best. In some public basic schools across the country, that could have been the best score for the exceptionally brilliant children. It could be the best result in some districts, but that was not a good result in St. Martin de Porres. It was the reason I considered myself a failure, especially when that had implications for the secondary school I had to attend. The outcome of the BECE didn't come to me as a surprise. I was more of an entertainment girl than an academic child. My claim to fame was in music and dance, and I struggled with Mathematics. Social Studies, Religious and Moral Education, and Vocational Skills were the subjects I was good at. English Language was my best. With Integrated Science, I loved only the biology aspect of it. Everything pointed to the fact that I hated figures and calculations. It was the reason I chose General Arts as a course of study in secondary school. However, it was not always about what I wanted to do. It was what others thought was good for me that prevailed. It is a situation many children face, and mine was no exception. Mine, however, proved costly. I was compelled to study a course I hated in a secondary school I hated even more. Before we sat our BECE, we were often made to choose the secondary schools we wanted to attend. I don't recall all the three schools I selected for my first, second and third choices, but I remember I wanted to go to Mfantsiman Girls' Secondary School in the Central Region. I don't remember how it was ranked at the time, but that school is currently ranked a Category "A" secondary school in Ghana. Despite my choice, however, I was compelled to attend Aggrey Memorial African Methodist Episcopal Zion Secondary School. I am yet to see a school with a longer name, but what made me hate the school had nothing to do with the length of its name. Central Region is a citadel of the best secondary schools in Ghana. Being the first capital of the Gold Coast (now Ghana), a number of European missionaries established their schools there and spread to other parts of the country. The Methodist Church established the allboys Mfantsipim School in 1876. It was the first secondary school in the Gold Coast. Mfantsipim School remains one of the best secondary schools in the country. In terms of the all-girls secondary schools, another educational footprint of the Methodist Church in Cape Coast is the Wesley Girls High School, arguably the most prestigious secondary school in Ghana. The Catholic Church did not want to be outdone so it established St. Agustine's College and Holy Child School, all-boys and all-girls schools respectively. The Anglican Church established the Adisadel College, an all-boys secondary school, and it has also become one of the secondary schools of choice in the country. All of these are category "A" schools in Cape Coast. The Presbyterian Church and other faiths also made strong marks elsewhere across the country with the establishment of world-class secondary schools, but Cape Coast still remains the town with the largest concentration of the best secondary schools in Ghana. To say you're going to secondary school in Cape Coast came with some prestige. That was, however, not the case with my school. Aggrey Memorial A.M.E. Zion Secondary School, as we attempted to shorten it, was founded in 1940 by the late Rev. Dr. A. W. E. Appiah. He named the school Aggrey Memorial College after his late uncle, Dr. James Emman Kwegyir Aggrey. Dr. Aggrey was a pan-African intellectual, missionary and educationist who was noted for his advocacy for girl-child education even at a time when the importance of a woman was confined to cooking and childbearing. It was Dr. Aggrey who said, "If you educate a man, you educate an individual, but if you educate a woman, you educate a whole nation." The secondary school established in his honour, however, started with only boys. According to the official history of the school, "In 1947, the African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Zion Church took over the realm of affairs of the school as a result of an agreement between the "Aggrey Society" and the A.M.E. Zion Mission. The name of the school was then changed from Aggrey Memorial College to Aggrey Memorial A.M.E. Zion Secondary School, and the first two boarders were also admitted." It is unclear why the A.M.E. Zion Mission expressed interest in the school, but it may have something to do with the man in whose memory the school was established. In 1898, it was the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church that gave Kwegyir Aggrey the opportunity to study at Livingstone College, North Carolina, U.S.A., and at the associated Hood Theological Seminary, where he later became a professor. With student numbers gravitating between 3000 and 4000, Aggrey Memorial-as we further shortened the long name-has been the biggest secondary school in Ghana in terms of population. A school with such numbers and without the corresponding infrastructure and teachers is bound to face challenges. Its victims are those who go there to determine their future. Things may have improved now, but when I enrolled there in 2000, Aggrey Memorial had no proper supervision and discipline. If you did not pay serious attention to your books, the numbers provided you some form of cover and you enjoyed anonymity from the eyes of the teachers and school authorities whose duty it was to counsel you and put you on the right track. When I realised I was straying too far away from academic excellence, I did not get the needed help and support. Part of the blame ought to be borne by my parents and the school authorities. In the first place, I did not choose Aggrey. My stepfather, Lt. Col. Davies, had a strong influence in the school. He had been a chairman of either the parent-teacher association or the school's board at some point, so his word carried weight in the school. My two half-siblings had both attended Aggrey Memorial, so when I completed junior secondary school and was made to go there, it was a continuation of a family tradition. Unlike my siblings, however, I was forced to study a programme against my will. I wanted to study General Arts, but the school said that course was fully subscribed. The only way I could keep my admission was to accept Business Accounting. I hated figures and calculations with passion but I was compelled to pursue that course. In class, all the noise about double entry principles of bookkeeping, balance sheet and the rest of it entered in one ear and went out through the other. I was there to make up the numbers. My best moments in Aggrey Memorial were on Saturday nights, when we had entertainment. During the week when academic work preoccupied the students, what kept me going was the expectation of Saturday night, when I would mount the stage and perform. I competed in the Miss Aggrey beauty pageant and won, a feat that attracted enmity among the senior girls. A junior girl who won a beauty pageant provided strong competition to the senior girls who aimed to catch the attention of the best boys on offer. There was the assumption that I would be disrespectful because of the crown and attention from senior boys. And it didn't help that I wasn't the quiet and submissive type. I was assertive, which, to the senior girls, was synonymous with arrogance. That was, however, not the main problem I had to contend with in that school. Aggrey was an experience I didn't prepare for, but it turned out to be a kind of endurance test that prepared me for the future. My mother made sure that my boarding school wooden box (chop box) was always filled with the provisions one needed in a boarding school. She didn't have to buy many of them because she stocked them in her shop and was generous when stocking my box for school. My chop box was what saved me when the dining hall failed me. And it failed me often. To say that the food was terrible is the mildest way to put the situation in Aggrey Memorial, which defies description. I remember the soup we nicknamed "moftoto". It was either groundnut or palm nut soup. It was so light that if you looked into it, you could see your image. When left untouched for a few minutes, it settled in layers so that the water was on top and the other particles beneath. It was a kind of scientific experiment whose results we didn't make use of. I still grimace at some memories in the dining hall. A friend once saw a toenail in the kenkey he was eating and another student saw the wing of a cockroach in her food. The stories of boarding school food aren't pleasant in many schools, but Aggrey was on a different level. When our digestive system distilled the nutrients which our teenage bodies needed and we had to discard the rest, it came with another adventure. The toilet and bath facilities were oversubscribed, making it almost impossible to have them in sane and sanitary conditions. Sometimes we bathed outside. And the only way to avoid smelling as if you had swum in the toilet was to resort to what we called "take away". The girls' dormitory was up the hill. Down beyond it were farms of indigenes of Brafo Yaw, the suburb of Cape Coast where the school is located. "Take away" was simply emptying your bowels in polythene, wrapping it and throwing it as hard as your hands could into the bush. Wherever it settled or how the content spilled was not your business. If your friend said to you, "I dey go do takeaway," you got the memo. Not many could stand the harsh conditions of the school. My best friend at the time, Fianko Bossman, told his parents he could not cope and needed a way out. They found a way and he left for Pope John Secondary and Minor Seminary in Koforidua before the second year. Another good friend, Laurina Mensah, left before we got to the third and final year. Her mother came for her to Italy, and that was the last I heard of her. Those of us without an option had to make two choices, either give up or make the best of the situation. I chose the former. I wasn't an "A" or "B" student. I was just hanging in there, knowing very well that my soul, mind and heart had left the school, but I had to be physically present to tick a box for those who sent me there. Music was what kept me going. It was what helped me to endure, and I couldn't wait to leave the school. When it was time to leave, the headmaster gave me my worst memory of Aggrey Memorial. The day before my departure from school, he slapped me in a way I would never forget. My offence was that my hair was bushy. We were not allowed to wear our natural hair beyond a certain length. However, the final year girls couldn't wait to have our hair permed or extended, so, in the final term, we preserved it. That was the offence which attracted my worst nightmare in the school. I left Aggrey resigned to fate. Before WAEC released the results of the 2003 Senior Secondary School Certificate Examination (SSSCE), I knew I could not proceed to the next step on the academic ladder. In that final exam, I did not write Accounting and Costing, two of my four elective subjects. It was a decision I took because it was better to be marked absent than to fail. I didn't know what I was going to write. I could not make meaning of whatever was taught in those subjects. The dashes I recorded on the SSSCE results sheet did not make any difference from the "Fail" that would have been there had I written the two papers. Either way, I could not go to the university or any tertiary institution without passing at least one of the two subjects I refused to write, especially Accounting. I needed at least three passes in my electives. I barely passed the other two, and my passes in the core subjects were weak. The future stared at me grimly, blank and bleak. I felt I had wasted my secondary school years. The burden of failure was too heavy to bear. At that point in my life, I had really not figured out what I wanted to do with my life. Education often provided a safe vehicle to escape indecision until much later in life when one decided whether to make a living off one's certificates or confront the world in a different arena of life's many options. If someone wanted to branch into business but did not have the capital, capacity or audacity to abandon school and pursue their dream, they stayed in school. They passed their BECE and SSSCE and went to the university or the polytechnic. They got a degree or diploma or certificate. That was their passport to the next phase of their lives, a licence to work and earn money of their own and live independently until they felt it was time to venture into their true passion. In my case, the way was not clear. I did not want to do my mother's business or venture into my own. If I had to progress in life, I had to go back to school. I had to face my fears and conquer the two mountains I had avoided at Aggrey. It was either I went back to secondary school and studied a totally different programme that didn't have Accounting and Costing as subjects or I had to resit the two subjects. Fortunately, WAEC had a private exam mainly for students like me. We called it Nov-Dec because, in those days, it was written in November and December. Here, one was not required to register all the subjects one studied in secondary school. It was an opportunity to resit the subjects one had failed. If a candidate felt the need to improve his or her passes in the other subjects, he or she was free to register for all the subjects. I didn't have the willpower to rewrite all the subjects. I decided to attend private classes and rewrite the two subjects I had avoided. That experience taught me one of the first most important lessons in life, that difficult situations are better confronted head-on. If you can't negotiate yourself out of it, it is better to fight the haunting giants than postpone the fight, for dodging an inevitable problem or challenge simply means postponing it. If I had averted my mind to this reality early enough, I could have made some modest grades in Aggrey. It would have saved my face. It would have saved me from the dejection and rejection that came with my failure. I felt rejection at home and from some friends. There was absolutely no respect for me at home. I was a constant irritant, and when I shut the door, it was almost always said to be too loud. I was seen as useless. The fact that my room was full of hip-hop stars was enough confirmation that I was not serious and wouldn't turn out well. I felt like my mother had given up on me at that point. Some friends also distanced themselves from me. Failure is not just an orphan. It can sometimes be an infectious disease, which is avoided by even one's closest associates. I had a friend called Lerease. She was my closest friend whenever we came back home on secondary school vacation. She was in Wesley Girls and I was in Aggrey, different grades of secondary schools in Cape Coast. But our schools didn't matter when we were back in Dansoman. We partied together and sneaked out to nightclubs together. High school parties, from Adisco to Achimota, did not escape our attention and attendance. After school, however, the difference in our performance was more distinct than day from night. She gained admission to the University of Ghana and I could not apply to any tertiary institution. I, however, still clung to our friendship. I remember I even went to buy some of her stuff for school from the market. The end of our friendship started with the beginning of her university education. She kept a distance while in school and when she came home on vacation, I noticed a more magnified distance. Lonely, rejected and almost depressed, I had no option but to give my second attempt at passing my SSSCE all the effort and seriousness I could muster. When the results came, I passed Costing and failed Accounting. If I had to go to school, I needed to pass Accounting. So, in 2005, I had to resit the Accounting paper. It was my "Third World War" and I had already endured enough to know that I could not give up regardless of the outcome of that resit. It was the only way to salvage my self-worth, prove my relevance to my family and prove to friends who shunned my company that I was not a lost cause. Before I could prove that to them through academic excellence, however, there came an opportunity to be in the limelight. And what I thought had been wasted years in Aggrey Memorial proved to be the most useful experience that would not only prove crucial to me at that point but also define who I would eventually become. It also earned me a place among the "notable alumni" of Aggrey Memorial on the school's Wikipedia page.