Life as a teenager in Ghana

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Life as a teenager in Ghana

Life as a teenager in Ghana: A photo essay

Young Plan supporter Jennifer Darko saw first-hand what it’s like to live as a teenager in Ghana when visiting the country last year and working on a photography project. We were so impressed by 15-year-old Jennifer’s beautiful photo story that we asked to publish it here. We hope you enjoy it as much as we do. Isn't she a great photographer? Here’s an introduction to the project from Jennifer:

The title of this photography project is ‘A glimpse at the flip-side’. I am the photographer, Jennifer Darko, and I am fifteen years old. When I was doing the project last year I was still fourteen.

Although I was born in New York and now live in the UK, I am originally Ghanaian and British. I was in Ghana for our annual family visit. I had been trying to find a photography mentor and get some lessons for a while. Photography has always been a hobby of mine, but I only got my first real DSLR when I was eleven after I took some pictures at my school sports day which attracted some attention. It was a Nikon D3100 which I am extremely proud of, and immediately named Louis.

Inspired by Because I am a Girl

It was on the 2014 trip that I finally met my mentor, Nii Obodia Provencal. During one of our lessons, I told him about the Because I am a Girl campaign and a talk we had recently received at school about the project. We were brainstorming about what my first photography project should be about, and I decided it should be about something close to all of our hearts – something to do with Accra in Ghana. He suggested that I should do a project on girls my age living in the poorer communities in Accra and compare their lives to mine. So he made some phone calls to his connections in a slum-like community called Nima.

I was then introduced to a man called Larry who runs the Nima library and some classes (including photography classes) for young people living in the slum. I got in touch with June Eric-Udorie (part of the Plan International UK Youth Advisory Panel whom I met at school) and a representative from Plan International UK who asked me to do an interview with the girls to find out about their lives and the everyday problems they are presented with. I spent the next week with Nii Obodia; his assistant, Alex; Larry; Sharon (an American journalist) and six girls living in Nima, talking to the girls, taking pictures and editing.

It was a very exhausting week because the only way to get around the very narrow, winding roads in Nima is on foot, but it was also very fulfilling, and we got everything I needed to make the project a success. It was a wonderful experience and I hope that my photographs and project can shed light on a very real problem in a positive way.

Cooking for the family

Esther is 11 years old. She desrcibed her typical day:

"We wake up at 5am to pray. After prayers I have my bath and go to school. School ends at 4pm. I cook for the family with my mother. Then I like to read story books from the library. I pray and I sleep at 8:30pm or 9pm."

Ayisha sits with her two grandmothers and her little sister Sweetie

This is Esther with her two grandmothers and her little sister, Precious. She told Jennifer that spending time with her grandmothers and cooking with her mother are her favourite things to do.

"We do not want to lose our family homes"

Pictured here doing her family's washing, Jane is 16 years old. She explained that there are a lot of problems in Nima: "The sanitation is very poor, and the buildings are very badly built and crowded. She added: "The toilets aren't clean at all, and there is garbage everywhere on the streets. The gutters are open and they smell very bad."

Jane said that the biggest changes she'd like to see in Nima are "better houses, less garbage dumping and improvements with sanitation". But she wouldn't like to live in a highrise building: "We don't want to lose our family homes and the community feeling."

Jane wants to be a teacher

Jane is starting secondary school this year.

She said: "We understand that education is very important and we're very lucky. We don't like the fact that even if we complete school we still might not get the jobs we want."

Jane wants to be a newscaster or a teacher, and Esther wants to manage a bank.

Nima selling burkina - porridge

This is 16-year-old Doris, another girl from Nima.

She is pictured preparing and selling burkina, a local porridge of millet, milk and sugar.

When she's not at school, she runs her mother's stall.

Teenage life

And fianlly here is Rose, 13, standing in front of her home.

The adults' view

When Jennifer talked to some of the adults in the area, they told her that the thing that worries them most is that many of the men in the community are neglecting the importance of women and girls, especially the younger generation. This crushes the girls' confidence. The adults were also worried about rising crime rates. They said that even the smallest children are taking coins from people's pockets. The older generation used to be able to leave their doors unlocked and valuables in the open, but times are changing.

The girls pictured in this story are not beneficiaries of Plan International UK, but we have been working in Ghana since 1992, helping children access their rights to health, education, food security and protection.