david abdulai, dr david, dr chogu, dr abdulai – you mention his name and people's faces light up. i've never met him, but my austrian study mate and friend doris did. it was when she first travelled to ghana in the early 2000s. the shekinah clinic was already established for more than a decade by then, and people in tamale, particularly in the suburb of chogu, knew him well.
the shekinah clinic for the poor and destitute has been looking after people living on the streets of tamale for more than 35 years. after david's death, the reins were taken over by his widow, mariama abdulai. not a single day has the clinic missed providing a hot meal to the poorest of the poor, delivered from the back of a pickup truck. every single day.
mariama i have met. for the first time in 2022, when i first visited tamale, and every time since then, whenever i've been back in the north of ghana. upon our very first meeting, she immediately invited me to her house. there i got to meet her exceptional children. four of them, three girls and a boy.
to commemorate her late husband and to realise their shared dream of also building something in the field of education, mariama founded the david abdulai memorial school – dams in short.
following our first visit to dams in 2024, we started supporting the school by providing scholarships for children from families who struggle to afford sending their children to this school, or any other school for that matter.
to this day, the learning-adjusted number of years of schooling for ghanaian children is far too low – less than six years. this means that even when children spend considerably more years in school, the actual learning they achieve corresponds to fewer than six years of quality education.
to counter this, it is essential not only to enable children to attend school for the full twelve years, but also to ensure that the teaching environment is of a good standard and that schools have the necessary resources and materials to support their students' learning.
this year, we have committed to another two years of scholarship support for four children.
if you – dear reader – would like to support a child, it comes to about €20 a month (or €240 per year). a relatively small amount for many of us, but one that can make a considerable difference to a child's education and future.
we also brought a few small gifts for the school and its students. a bit of material, from paper to pencils, a book series of inspirational historic figures (you know the one: little people, big dreams) and a collection of letters written by german school children to their age-cohort at dams. we are very happy to report that we are taking back the first letters in reply back to berlin with us.
we also visited another school at the outskirts of tamale: gifam school.
since we first visited this school two years ago, a mechanised bore hole ensures consistent water supply and a toilet block has been built for the 300 students currently attending this school.
we are intending to support a project to fence the school yard and plant a school garden / school forest. we will provide cost estimates per meter of fence, per tree, etc. so everyone who wishes to support this project can do so.
