Saturday mornings at Gowrie, a generally quiet community in the Bongo district of the Upper East region, usually begin, particularly in the rainy season, with many residents going to farms or fishing in the nearby Vea Irrigation Dam set in one of the region’s most beautiful natural landscapes.
The area is so calm even its well-patronised common market, situated in front of the Gowrie Senior High/Technical School, is hardly noisy.
But last Saturday— August 31, 2024— an unusual noise erupted within that spot at about 6:30 a.m.
Some members of the community were seen chasing a young man. They yelled out as they pursued him on motorbikes.
He had carried two bags of rice out of the Gowrie Senior High/Technical School and was moving at top speed on a black motorised tricycle with the items.
The action continued on a very bumpy road after the tricyclist changed direction at a single-pump fuel station operating near the school and accelerated towards the region’s capital, Bolgatanga.
Some men who were heading to farms joined in the chase.
Soon, the pursuers overtook the young man and blocked the three-wheeled motorised vehicle from moving further. But not before he had covered about two hundred metres outside the campus.
Consistent with the peaceful nature of the community which, like the next-door Vea, is home to some of Ghana’s most decent and highly knowledgeable figures, the residents did not take the law into their own hands.
They led the young man back to the school campus, where he disclosed that he was asked to take the food items to Bolgatanga by the school’s matron, Regina Atia.
The matron, popularly known to the school’s staff and students as Adukomah, was on campus at the time.
She admitted to inviting the young man to the campus to take the items away. But she quickly also explained that one of the bags of rice belonged to her and the rice in the other bag, which she said belonged to the school, was being taken to a grinding mill to prepare rice water for the boarding students.
Palace hearing and decision
Following her statement, the community members proceeded to the palace of the Gowrie chief, with the matron, the rider, the motorised tricycle and the food items.
A crowd of residents as well as teachers and students of the school gathered at the palace to listen to the outcome of the case. Although the chief was not around at the time, his officials presided over the case.
The wider the news spread through the community, the more the crowd at the palace swelled. Later, the school’s headmistress, Elizabeth Zinye Paaga, joined the gathering at the palace.
The headmistress herself had been under intense pressure from more than forty members of her teaching staff who staged a demonstration recently on the Upper East Regional Education Directorate’s premises, demanding her removal from the school for several strong reasons.
So, when the palace authorities gave the already-stressed headmistress the floor to speak on the food items retrieved from the matron, she strongly distanced herself from the matter with a body language that showed she did not want double trouble.
She said she had warned the matron several times not to take the school’s food items out of the campus on private vehicles but only on the school’s pickup truck and only when she officially had to do so.
The palace authorities looked very disappointed and very unhappy about the development. After holding some deliberations among themselves on the matter, they handed the matter to the school authorities for further referral to the police. The matron wept as a humming crowd dispersed from the palace.
“Some of us asked the watchmen and the watchmen confirmed that they had been witnessing food items being taken away from the school but were afraid to talk,” a teacher at the school told Media Without Borders on background.
“This is what they do. Sometimes, more than forty-five bags of food items are moved out of the school with oil and canned mackerel.
”The government is not providing the students with enough food and some people are still taking away the little that is provided,” the teacher added.
Matron, regional director ignore calls for comments
The matron did not answer the calls placed to her line when this media outlet telephoned her for comment.
She also did not respond to a message sent to her via WhatsApp, requesting her side of the story.
The Upper East regional director of education, Bright Lawoe, did not respond when the author of this report gave him a call on the matter on Monday, 2 September 2024.
Unauthorised movements of food items meant for students out of a school campus are not new in the region. It happens even in tertiary institutions.
In November, 2012, students of the Nurses’ Training College in Bolgatanga caught a taxi driver attempting to take two bags of maize, one bag of rice and a canister of oil away from the campus at night.
The driver told the angry students he was asked to take the items to a mill by the college’s matron. He was speechless and beads of cold sweat formed on his forehead rapidly when the students asked him what business rice and oil had got to do with a grinding mill.
He could not provide any further explanation as the students pressed him hard for answers. Suddenly, he broke into an unrehearsed race and escaped, leaving his taxi behind. The students deflated the vehicle’s tyres and carried the items back to their kitchen.
Subsequently, the matron claimed she had asked that the food items be sent to the school’s supervisor as her donations to him for the performance of his father’s funeral. Her comment drew a strong wave of condemnation from the public for donating foods meant for students towards a funeral.
What the matron of Gowrie Senior High School/Technical School actually intended to do with the two bags of rice retrieved from her last Saturday is still unknown— just like her fate.
Shortage and poor quality of food is one of the familiar causes of violent and non-violent protests in boarding schools in the region.
The most recent instance happened on Monday, 22 May 2023, at a girls-only school in Navrongo— Our Ladies of Lourdes Girls Senior High School— where thousands of girls, carrying empty bowls, repeatedly chorused in front of a camera: “We want food!”
Source: Edward Adeti/Media Without Borders/mwbonline.org/Ghana
