Last Chance to Be…

My mate Hagan. He doesn’t know I am writing this page about him. I hope he doesn’t mind.

As you may know, I was supposed to train a teacher at my placement. Hagan was my trainee, unfortunately, nobody asked him if he wanted to be a teacher except me, when I got there. Guess what, he doesn’t.

Hagan had Polio as a kid and now has a resultant physical disability. He has not let that stop him becoming the well-rounded, good laugh, loyal and totally dedicated great friend of mine that he now is. If anyone is going to make a difference to the way Africa responds to people with disabilities, it will be more likely to be Hagan, than a VSO volunteer.

Here he is..

The bicycle is called Jerry.

Hagan has now left the school, where he was working as a teacher, to study in University. He will tell you he is there because of me, the truth is, however, he would have got there anyway.

Here are some words from the man himself.

My name is Hagan . I am 27 years old. I have a disability but that is not a limitation. I am the last child of my parents. I have five brothers. Three of them are farmers and two are working with private companies here in Accra the capital of Ghana and at the same time studying. My dad hails from the Volta Region of Ghana and my mom hails from the Eastern Region of Ghana.

My father and mother were both farmers until Eleven (11) years ago when I lost my father. My mother retired from her farming five (5) years ago due to old age and associated health problems. They were still married until my dad died.

For the past two (2) years I have been teaching in a vocational school for persons with disability where I met Jonathan Barrat. I taught English, Maths and Computing and I was an advocate for disability where I have been educating the local community about issues of disability. Currently, I am going to study Telecommunication Engineering, a four years course leading to the award of a Bachelor Degree at Ghana Telecom University College.

So why am I teling you all this? Well if you feel kind of helpless in Britain, working, busy, wanting to do the right thing but not sure what the right thing is, then I can assure you, helping Hagan is the right thing. I have committed to pay half of his university fees for the next four years. I would love your help.

Because Hagan never got the chance to get to Senior Secondary School, he is attending a private university at the cost of $2600 per year, for four years. He has already obtained sponsorship for $1000 per year and I am making up the rest. I have until February to get together $1600 dollars.

So your chance to help is to assist me raise the $1600 per year (apx £800). You can donate using paypal, just click on the link below. I will keep a running total on this site. I have also posted a digital camera to Hagan so he can keep us up to date on how he is getting on and I will try to get regular written updates from him.

If Thank You becomes a cliche, it will be my fault, as it is the most used phrase on this site. Cheers!

I don’t know why I have been so reluctant to finish this off. I guess, somewhere in the back of my mind I keep questioning whether I could have done more to tackle the problems I faced.

This post is going to be short. It’s going to be followed by some good news, something really positive.

When I joined the school I spoke with the director about common goals. Although I am an atheist and the school was run by the Catholic Church, our goal was the same, to help others. I didn’t anticipate so many conflicts.

When you are involved in a project which has two goals, saving lives and saving souls, which has priority? I know which one I would chose. Unfortunately my employers chose the other. My opinion of that place is that they didn’t care about the kids as much as they should.

I could give so many examples but I think I will save them for when I speak to VSO London. The truth needs to be told, but I never got into any of this to be a whistleblower. My priority is to get my life back. I gave up so much and got so little back I just want to move on.

One of the reasons I left was because in Britain, we tend to focus on ourselves. This worried me. I wanted to work with people who all had a common goal, so we could achieve much. The reality was, I found more selfishness among Europeans in Ghana, than I ever have done in Britain.

I now find myself working in a high pressure environment in London and yet my perspective of it is so different.

So what did VSO do for me? Most people wil say it was rewarding, fulfilling etc. For me, I just learnt to appreciate what it was I despised before I went away. I guess you could say it made me happy.

I leave you with just one example of why I found it impossible to work with my school.

I had one severely disabled student. He had absolutely no mobility apart from a withered hand and a head and a brain. When you got to know him he was such a laugh. He used to love taking the mickey out of people and we always sat, chatted and laughed when we weren’t in class.

Because the school had no real facilities for caring for people with disabilities, he was looked after by a boy with learning difficulties. Why? Because nobody else wanted to do it and this was the easy way. The cop out.

Anyway, he was often ill, with aches and pains and would often complain that he wasn’t getting any medical attention. I would always encourage him to report any ailments and let me know if he wasn’t taken seriously. I tried and tried to get him help but nobody listened to me. The brother who dealt with medical issues would often run away from him when he tried to report a problem.

One afternoon I was just around the corner when he reported a problem so heard the conversation.

‘Brother I need to speak to you I am ill.’

‘Well take a look at yourself, what do you expect.’

I had to draw on all my strength not to punch that brother. I blame VSO for putting me in that position. I blame the school for not listening to me, or taking me seriously.

I spoke to the director about the brother a little later and his response? ‘What do you want me to do? Kill him?’

I once gave that same student a fun keyring which said ‘Don’t stop the party on it.’

When I left he cried saying ‘Sir, Sir, you lied, you stopped the party.’

I think about that and many other moments often and it makes me feel so sad, sad for him, for me and for Ghana.