From Odumase, Ghana: Education is Medicine
Lorella Hess is a member of the UUA delegation that is currently visiting the "Every Child is Our Child" program partners of the UU-UNO in Ghana. In this blogpost she shares reflections following visits to schools near Odumase.
Conditions in these schools are primitive. The structures are basic and, in some cases, falling apart. Textbooks are battered and in painfully short supply. And still the teachers and headmasters know education is the best chance these children will have to improve their lives.
The Queen Mothers know it, too, which is why they have partnered with UU-UNO to get the children's school expenses paid.
It is easy to care about these children, and for all the poverty and loss in their young lives they have the look of people who know they are loved. Signs in the classroom read "Rest is Medicine." "Cleanliness is Medicine." "Vegetables are Medicine." Good advice for leading a healthy life.
But the subtext underlying everything we have seen here is that Education is one of the medicines these children need most of all.