Education at any cost?

I still remember that family meeting. Our father gathered us in the living room to tell us he was leaving his job to work independently and that this would mean a drop in income. I immediately started thinking how I could help and I asked. My dad looked at me and smiled. “Your only job my dear is to go to school and do well” he said. My father has always been a big time education man. Not only did he send me and my other three siblings to school but he also sponsored the education of many of my cousins and other extended family members. He has always gone above the call of duty when it came to our education because he has always prized it—being an educated man himself. He was not alone in or community. He, like many other Sierra Leonean, Nigerian or Ghanaian fathers I knew, was very concerned with the education of his daughters—as he was with all his children.

The value of an education is not lost on members of most West African communities where families make great sacrifices to ensure that their children attain the highest levels. I went to school with a Nigerian girl whose family had invested greatly in insuring that she attend school and have all the resources she needed to succeed in life. I saw this scenario repeated many times from families with much as well as those who did not have much and made difficult sacrifices for their daughters. This is the type of African father who I know. One who knows that his daughter must have the best education in order to escape poverty and be a great contributing member of society.

While a drop in income from a job change did not mean any major affect to my education or that of my siblings, it is the leading barrier for many in Sierra Leone. Poverty and economic hardship of many kinds is often what leads families to ration how they will invest in their children’s education, sometimes choosing to short change their daughters. However this is not a given and many in Sierra Leonean communities do value the education of their daughters. In our extended family we have ensured that all the children were able to access education by pooling resources. No given family was left alone but uncles, aunts and cousins have participated in the sponsorship of the education of younger family members whose parents could not afford the full costs. In this way any economic barriers in one family have been overcome through assistance from the extended family.

Unfortunately with most in Sierra Leone even this pooling is not sufficient to provide the resources they need for education. I know many young ladies, and even a close friend, who have chosen to establish and remain in relationships with older men who were sponsors of their education. These “sugar” daddies are often married men with their own families who take them on as mistresses and promise them money and other modern trinkets like bags and phones. It is a very painful reality to face and know that many of these ladies are involved in these relationships at the prompting of their family members who see it as a way out of poverty for all of them including an education ticket for the daughter. It is a very strange turn of events for daughters to be encouraged to saddle up with rich men in order to gain access to an education. This is the twisted outcome of economic pressures on individuals and entire societies.

My example shows that in some societies the barrier to education for girls is purely external and not at all internal. In these societies girls as not viewed as not needing an education or destined purely for marriage and the kitchen. Rather education is a necessity for all and actively pursued for all the children. Despite this valuation however, I have seen girls put themselves in great relational danger because of economic barriers in order to gain this commodity that our entire community values.

How do you convince a young woman that she should leave a rich married man when she believes that if she does this she will return to poverty and have no hopes of obtaining an education to better her life? These are the complex issues that have arisen in my community as families and girls seek access to what they value above all—an education.