When my mother told me at the age of 16 to go from the UK to Gan to the summer holidays, I had no reason to doubt her.
It was just a fast trip, a temporary break – which should not be worried about. Or I thought so.
For a month, she dropped the bomb – I didn’t go back to London until I reformed and earned enough GCSES to continue my education.
I was a hood similarly as a British-Ganic teenager who recently took his parents to a high court in London because they sent him to school in Gana.
In their defense, they told the judge that they did not want to see their 14-year-old son become “another black teenager stabbed to death on the streets of London.”
In the mid-1990s, my mother, a elementary school teacher, is motivated by similar worries.
I was excluded from two high schools in London district of Brent, hanging out with the wrong crowd (becoming wrong crowds) – and set off down a dangerous path.
My closest friends ended up in prison at the time because of the armed robbery. If I had stayed in London, I would almost certainly be convicted with them.
But sent to Ghana, he also felt like a prison sentence.
I can sympathize with a teenager, who said in his statement that he felt like he was “living in hell.”
Still, speaking for myself, when I was 21, I realized what my mother did a blessing.
Unlike boys in the center of the London Court Case – which he lost – I did not go to boarding school in Gani.
My mother put me in the care of her two closest brothers, they wanted to watch me and it was thought that too much interference could be shown.
First I stayed with my uncle Fiifi, a former environmental UN ecological ecological, in a city called Dansoman, near the capital, Accra.
Changing lifestyle has a hard time hit. In London, I had my own bedroom, access to washing machines and a sense of independence – even if I recklessly used it.
In Gani I woke up at 05:00 to sweep the yard and wash my uncle often a muddy truck and a aunt’s car.
Later, I would steal her vehicle – something that is similar.
I didn’t even know how to drive properly, treating the manual as automatically and I demolished him in a high soldier Mercedes.
I tried to escape from the scene. But that soldier caught me and threatened to take me to the Burma camp, the infamous military base in which people disappeared in the past.
That was the last truly reckless thing I did.
Not only discipline learned in Gani – it was a perspective.
Life in Gani showed me how much I took for granted.
Washing clothes by hand and preparing a meal with my aunt made me appreciate the effort needed.
Food, like everything in Gani, required patience. There was no microlaser, there was no fast food.
For example, making a traditional dough -like dish is tiring and involves hitting cooked yama or cassava in a mortar paste.
At that time, it felt like punishment. Looking back, it was resistance.
Initially, my uncles were thinking of putting in top schools such as Gana International School or SOS-Hermann Gmeiner International College.
But they were smart. They knew I could only form a new crew that would cause chaos and misconceptions.
Instead, I received a private tuition at Accra Academy, a state high school attended by my late father. This meant that they often taught me alone or in small groups.
The lessons were English, but outside of school they often spoke local languages around me and it was easy for me to pick them up maybe because it was such a immersed experience.
Return home in London, I loved learning the sworn words in my mother’s language Fante – but I was far from fluent.
When I later moved to the city of the topic to stay with my favorite uncle, uncle Jojo – a farm expert, I continued my private education in the topic of high school.
Unlike the boys who made titles in the UK, who claimed that the Ghana’s education system was not in line with the standard, I found it demanding.
In the UK, they considered me academically talented, despite my problematic ways, but I actually thought it was difficult in Gani. The students of my age were far ahead of subjects such as mathematics and science.
The strictness of the gan system encouraged me to study stronger than I had ever had in London.
Result? I earned five GCSE classes C and more – something that used to seem impossible.
In addition to academic achievements, the Gansko society implanted the values that remained with me for life.
Respect for the old was not negotiating. Through the neighborhoods where I lived, you greeted those older than you, whether you knew them or not.
Ghana didn’t just make me more disciplined and more respected – that made me fearless.
Football played a big role in this transformation. I played in parks, which were often a hard red clay with loose gravel and stones, with two square goalkeepers made of wood and ribbon.
It was far from the duly held terrain in England, but it tightened me in ways I couldn’t imagine – and no wonder some of the biggest football players saw in the English Premier League came from Western Africa.
The aggressive style that is played in Ghana did not only refer to skill – but it was resistance and endurance. Including on a rough earth meant to pick up, dust and move on.
Every Sunday I played football on the beach – although I would often be late because it was absolutely no chance that I would not allow me to stay at home instead of attending the church.
These services felt like they lasted forever. But Gani was also a testament as a nation that struggled, where faith was deeply built into everyday life.
The first 18 months was the hardest. I resented restrictions, jobs, discipline.
I even tried to steal my passport to fly to London, but my mother was in front of me and hid her well. There was no escape.
My only choice was to adapt. Somewhere along the way, I stopped seeing Ghana as a prison and started seeing her as a happy house.
I know about a few others like me that my parents sent to the London gan.
Michael Ada was 17 when he arrived at ACCRA to school in the 1990s, describing his experience as “bitterly sweet”. He stayed until he was 23 years old and now lives in London, working as a probation officer.
His main objection was loneliness – his family and friends missed. There was a time of anger because of his situation and complications of feelings misunderstood.
This was mostly derived from the fact that his parents did not learn him or his brothers and sisters when they grow up in London.
“I didn’t understand it. I didn’t understand TWI. I didn’t understand Pidgin,” the 49-year-old tells me.
Because of this, he felt vulnerable for his first two and a half years, he says, he is subject to climbing him, for example, to those who increase prices because he seemed foreign.
“Wherever I went, I had to make sure I was going with someone else,” he says.
But in the end, he became fluent in the movie Two and, as a whole, believes that the positive surpassed the negative: “That made me a man.
“My experience in Gani matured me and changed me for the better, helping me to identify with who, as a gan, and conceived my understanding of my culture, background and family history.”
I can agree with that. By my third year, I fell in love with culture and even stayed almost two years after I went through my GCSE.
I developed a deep appreciation of local food. Return to London, I never thought twice about what I was eating. But in Gani, the food was not just maintenance – every dish had its own story.
I became obsessed with “Waakye”-made of rice and black eyes, often cooked with leaf millet, giving it a characteristic purple-brown color. It was usually served with fried plantana, spicy black pepper sauce “Shito”, cooked eggs, and sometimes even spaghetti or fried fish. It was top -notch comfortable food.
I enjoyed music, the warmth of people and the feeling of community. I was no longer just “stuck” in Gana – I succeeded.
My mother, Patience Wilberforce, passed away recently, and with my loss I deeply thought about the decision she had made all those years.
She saved me. If she hadn’t cheated on me to stay in Gani, the chances of having a criminal complaint or even serving time in prison would be extremely high.
I continued to enroll in the Faculty of Northwestern London at the age of 20 to study media production and communication, before joining the BBC Radio 1Xtra through the mentoring scheme.
The guys I hung out with in northwestern London did not get the second opportunity I did.
Ghana transformed my way of thinking, value and future. He turned the wrong threat to a responsible man.
Although such experience may not work for everyone, it gave me education, discipline and respect I needed to re -integrate into society when I returned to England.
And for that reason, I am forever in charge of my mother, uncles and land that saved me.
Mark Wilberforce is a free journalist based in London and Accra.
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