Eating the meal of the hungry: Our conscience on vacation

I could feel that tears had filled my eyes. I had to control my emotions as I got fastened to my chair by the awe in the teacher’s revelation. “Sir, it’s a common practice here. Whenever some of them are served the meal, especially this kind, they do not eat it here. Their parents have told them to send it home so that their other siblings can also enjoy it”.

I could not resist my sheepish gaze at the KG 2 Madam as she continued: “With this beans, gari or kenkey could be added to serve as lunch for the household”. One could see the one-ladle cooked beans whirling at the bottom of the bowls. I watched as each child passed by holding carefully their jackpots from the caterer who works for the Ghana School Feeding Programme (GSFP).

To those kids, getting gari and beans at that moment, no matter the quality or quantity, was the best thing that had happened to them since they reported to school that day. I could see sincere smiles on their innocent faces.

This was what I witnessed during my visit to one of the Basic Schools in the Mfantseman Municipality of the Central Region. The teacher made that chilling revelation when I asked why some of the kids did not stay on the compound to eat their meals like the others. Since that visit till today, what I observed and heard relating to the GSFP remains a hanging image on my mind. I know of poverty, but I really had a vivid picture of it, in its practical sense, on that day.

We live in a country where a ladle of cooked beans, capped with red oil on the surface, is what a mother expects her innocent child to bring home.

Lunch promises to be great when that supplement for gari or kenkey safely lands home from the kindergarten kid!

This same country also boasts of some great few that eat well served meals: garnished, a glass of juice standing by plus dessert. Even their dogs and cats have platefuls that those children in that Basic School in the Central Region, and thousands scattered around Ghana, get lucky to come across only during special occasions.

The Ghana School Feeding Programme, begun by the erstwhile Kufuor administration, aims, among other things, to provide school kids with nutritious meals, to serve as a way to maximise the population of school going children and to retain them in school. It is also to serve as a poverty reduction intervention.

It, therefore, stands to reason that making this programme work effectively and efficiently in our poverty stricken society is a sure way of making these kids wake up every morning to be excited at the thought of not missing a very good meal at school. The psychologists say it is called external motivation in learning! By extension, it is a way to positively trap children into education to eventually be part of Ghana’s enviable human resource.

There is also no denying the fact that the financial burden on most poor parents will be lessened. A concentration on the programme in its proper manner means money will be put in parents and guardians’ pockets, and they could channel that meagre income of theirs into other ventures for the full well-being of the Ghanaian child.

But what do we see? Just some few days ago, there were media reports that some caterers had been awarded school feeding contracts; had been paid, but had blatantly refused to cook for school children within the Afram Plains of the Eastern Region. After reading the report and connecting it with my experience, my spirit was totally down. I asked where the conscience of some people in Ghana has travelled to.

The Minister in charge has promised to investigate it, but Ghanaians can easily predict what will happen to that promise. The question is who monitors the caterers, and what also happens to the monitor who went to sleep. A committee will be formed to look into it, and their sitting allowances will be paid while the children still sit licking their dry lips.
That was just one report from one district.

Can we think that all others across the country that have been paid to cook for these innocent children have actually been doing what is expected of them? Ghanaians are also aware of the daily media reports on the massive indebtedness of the School Feeding Secretariat to countless caterers. In fact, the programme is evidently on the journey of demise.

I, like most Ghanaians, may not be far from correctitude to conclude that the children of most of the officials in charge of the programme are not found in the schools that benefit from it. They are in the international schools. Some are also outside Ghana. Would they display such insensitivity if their children were part?

Joseph Ackon-Mensah,
Student Journalist
Email: ackonmensahj@yahoo.com / ackonmensah@gmail.com