MANASSEH AZURE AWUNI: Six Lessons

Manasseh Azure Awuni is a fellow of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard

In 2001, I completed junior high school with the best result in the Krachi District (now Krachi West, Krachi East, and Krachi Nchumuru municipalities and districts). When the results were released, I looked forward to a miracle, but it did not happen.

I wanted to go to Tamale Senior High School (Tamasco), but my father had said I should choose a school in Kete-Krachi because there was no money to fund my secondary education outside Kete-Krachi. In Tamasco, just as in Krachi SHS, I qualified for the Northern Scholarship (feeding/boarding grants), but the cost of transportation, which was about a couple of cedis at the time, was the reason I could not live my dream.

“If you’re here and things get difficult, you can still eat leftover TZ and go to study,” my father, a night watchman at the Krachi District Hospital, had told me.

I had wept and selected a secondary school in Krachi, but when the results came and the teachers kept telling my father that I had a lot of promise and needed to go to a bigger and better senior high school, I thought something miraculous would happen and change my father’s mind so I could go to a “better secondary school”.

After SHS, pursuing a degree was out of the question for me even though I did very well. The reason, here again, was the lack of money for university education. My elder brother, who had obtained a distinction after senior high school, could only go to the polytechnic. In the case of my twin sister and I, the wise men and women in Kete-Krachi had advised my father to let us go to the teacher training college so that we could get students’ allowance to support ourselves.

University education, they said, was meant for children of the rich.

Fortunately, I worked as a caretaker of a guest house after SHS and saved some money with which I paid my admission and initial fees. Help arrived later when my elder brother got a job.

It is against these backgrounds that I don’t take for granted the modest successes that come my way. Neither do I ascribe them to my hard work and effort. I feel more blessed than others who may have gotten this far or higher than I have.

For someone who could not go to a secondary school with a scholarship because of transportation, getting two fully-funded admissions to two universities in the United States this year is, perhaps, the delayed miracle I expected years ago.

Yesterday, I started a one-year paid fellowship at Harvard University here in the United States. Apart from the main programmes of the Nieman Journalism Fellowship, I also have the freedom to take (audit) courses at Harvard and MIT. This means I can select and study courses at the Harvard Business School, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard Law School, or any course of my choice in the two top U.S. universities.

While I thank God for His grace and favour, I feel obliged to share a few lessons I have learned in this difficult journey. My story is similar to those of many exceptional young people who are giving up because their dreams and aspirations are shackled by the chains of poverty and deprivation.

Manasseh at the statue of John Harvard, the founder of Harvard

1. The Grace of God: I believe in hard work. But I also believe that hard work is, sometimes, not enough. There are more exceptional and hardworking people who don’t get half this far. Some call it luck, but I see it as God’s amazing grace.

2. The Blessing of Not Getting What You Want: I joined the drama club at Krachi SHS and started writing plays because there was no one to write plays for the club. My creative writing abilities and my general love for writing developed in that school. As a result of these writings, the PRO of the district GES office, Mr. Fredoline Empeh, suggested that I should study journalism instead of the accountant I wanted to become.

Again, when I applied to GIJ in 2006, I had failed to obtain admission to the UCC to study BCom, the most prestigious Business programme aside from Business Administration in Legon. If I had gone to the better-resourced Tamasco, I may not have got the opportunity to write plays for my drama club, and if I had gained admission to UCC, I may have ended up as an accountant somewhere. The UCC would have lost the opportunity to study and examine its students on the investigative journalism works of Manasseh Azure Awuni, as the Communications Department has done in recent years.

3. Paying Your Dues: When applying for the Nieman Fellowship at Harvard, I did not have to include my transcripts or academic records. It was based on the body of work I had done. I have heard many say Ghana is not worth dying for, but I believe if you pay your dues to your society or country, the reward may come from elsewhere even if those you are dying for don’t appreciate you. (In my case, I can say many “ordinary” Ghanaians appreciate what I do).

4. The Path to Your Destiny Is Not Always a Straight Line: Sometimes, we get frustrated when things do not go our way. But I have realised that the detours of life’s journey are sometimes meant to prepare us when we follow the process and give it our best. So, don’t always expect a straight journey to your dreams. It can sometimes move in the opposite direction.

When I gained two admissions to do my master’s degree in the UK in 2011, but could not get a scholarship, I thought it was a hindrance to my success. When I did my master’s in Ghana and sneaked out of class to do journalism alongside, I won Ghana’s best journalist for that year. What followed my career after that recognition is part of what got me to Harvard this year.

5. Setting Your Priorities Right: In 2012, I was 27 and had graduated from journalism school barely a year earlier. I was adjudged Ghana’s Journalist of the Year. As part of the prize package, I was supposed to undertake a working visit to the United States. I was that typical villager who should have jumped at the opportunity to travel to the U.S., which would have been my first trip out of Africa. I told Unilever Ghana Ltd, the sponsors of the award, that I was a freelancer who struggled to finance my operations so I needed equipment to work and excel in my career. Instead of sponsoring me to the US, as had been the norm, the company should use the prize package to get me equipment. I knew that if I excelled in journalism, many opportunities would come my way.

I told my friend Abubakar Ibrahim, with whom I went to Unilever, that if the company insisted that I should go to the U.S., I would tell them to keep their prize package. I was determined to do just that, but the company saw the wisdom in my suggestion and broke the tradition. Two years later, the US Department of State selected me for the International Visitor Leadership Programme (IVLP) on Investigative Journalism. That trip took me to five states in the U.S., and, today, I’m here again in the U.S.

6. Giving Up is Not an Option: When I read stories of young men and women who commit suicide because of difficulties, and I wish I had spoken with them. Growing up in Kete-Krachi, there were times I felt hopeless, but I didn’t give up. My siblings and I didn’t have much to be proud of. But one step at a time, one day at a time, we plodded wearily through the quagmire of hopelessness towards a progress that seemed elusive. We may not have peaked yet, but I believe all of us have seen some progress.

I don’t know your situation, but should you ever feel like giving up, remember my story and those of others with even more difficult backgrounds who have broken bounds and grounds.

Do not give up!

The writer, Manasseh Azure Awuni, is an award-winning Ghanaian journalist and writer. He is currently a fellow of the Nieman Journalism Fellowship at Harvard University. His email  address is [email protected]