“God is great,” says Kyereh-Yeboah Victor, a Division Two League referee and Social Studies teacher at Berekum Presbyterian Senior High School.
“At the back or inside of every book that I have bought is written ‘God is great’,” Victor hinted. He says that is his motto.
I have personally been on the same campus as him at the Berekum College of Education. We sat in the same classroom and slept in the same hall, Nicholas Hall.
I learnt of his struggles back on campus but never got to know him better until I recently engaged him in a WhatsApp chat. I didn’t press him on his chosen motto after reading and listening to him tell me how he hustled to where he is now.I couldn’t agree any more.
“I started my basic school at Abusuapԑadeԑ L/A Primary School at Abusuapԑadeԑ, a community in Dormaa Ahenkro West of the Brong Ahafo Region,” he narrated.
Victor says that was in 1988 and he completed junior high school in 1997 at Kojo Kumi Kurom L/A JHS, also in Dormaa Ahenkro West.
It was after his JHS education that life twisted his head for him to see his heels. Like Syria’s refugee children in Lebanon, he became an adult before his time; he had to fend for himself!
Victor tells me that he became disoriented in his quest to climb the social ladder.
“I realized my destiny was in my hands and that I must work magic. I looked for a job at Kojo Kumi Kurom as a druggist [at the Onyame Akwan Drug Store]. I worked there for over a year but had to quit the job due to poor working conditions,” he added.
Victor would now move to Mmirengyaa, about 10km away from Kojo Kumi Kurom, to till land for the cultivation of rice with his God-given strength.
“God watered my 15-acre rice farm. I came to settle in Berekum (Brong Ahafo Region) with the proceeds of the farm to learn a trade. This was in 1999.”
He says, he learnt carpentry specializing in roofing of buildings which took him to places including Baakoniaba in Sunyani and Akyem-Aprade, Eastern Region.
All this while, Victor had the intention of continuing his education but needed to plough and save cash just as the ant saves food for the future. Carpentry, according to Victor, was/is as difficult as pulling a string of hair from the nostrils. He had to, at a point in time, kiss his tools a goodbye for school.
“In 2002 or thereabouts, I made a return journey to Dormaa Ahenkro to a village called Santaso. Here, I worked as a labourer on people’s farms, earning GH₵100 per month.”
Victor’s parents, both cocoa farmers, had promised him their support should he be able to gather some amount of money for his schooling. Apparently, in the 2003/2004 academic year, he applied and got admission to the Methodist Secondary Technical School (MESTECH), Berekum. He needed to make a comeback.
However, he had to live with a foster parent.
“My comeback to Berekum was very hard.”
Having survived through turbulent times, he managed to complete his SHS education and gained admission into the Berekum College of Education in 2007.
After completing the teacher’s college in 2010 and realizing the need to climb the ladder of education, he enrolled at the Valley View University (VVU), Accra-Oyibi campus, to study Bachelor of Education, majoring in Social Studies.
Good luck shone on him after his VVU course. Guess what? He got the opportunity to teach at Berekum Presbyterian Senior High School. That is exactly how he ended up as a teacher there!
Away from education, he doubles as a [class two] football referee in Ghana’s Division Two League, a passion he said he started in 2009. On August 3, 2015, he officiated a match between the Reformers and Bectero at the Sunyani Coronation Park.
Currently, he is the Public Relations Officer of the Berekum Municipal Referees Association. He is inspired to do more in spite of the less he has.
Mr. Enoch Kyeremeh is a teacher in Dormaa Ahenkro and a close friend of Victor’s. When I contacted him about who Victor is to him, he said, “I always tell him to celebrate every blessed day as a special day for he has passed through hell to be where he is now.”
In the recent ranking of the richest people in Ghana, Kyereh-Yeboah Victor’s name was not on the list. It won’t even be on the list of the richest people in Berekum alone. But he is thankful to God for how far he has come in life.
In one of Akwasi Ampofo Agyei’s (Mr. AAA) songs titled “Time Changes”—which, however, should have been “Times Change”—the legendary highlife musician of blessed memory told a story of a teacher.
In the song, the teacher tells his students that they should not be surprised if they see him working as a truck driver, basket seller, or even a pastor in the near future because times change.
Indeed, times change, but what we will become at the end of the changes in time is determined by how we approach issues in our lives. Victor approached his with vim and vigour and counted on God to see him through. Hence his motto: God is great.
The jihadist political movement, the Taliban, has a favorite quote: “America has the watch, but we have the time.”
While you are motivated by Victor’s story to press on in life, be reminded not to force God to run you through life with the speed of a duiker.
Pray and do your best possible in your chosen field or towards achieving what you want to achieve. Most importantly, wait for him and relax. You have the ‘watch’ BUT… let God tell the ‘time.’
It takes just a day for the moon’s light to melt down the darkness of your sorrows.
Lest I forget, Victor says I should tell you he has not stopped dreaming. He wants to graduate to the status of a lecturer and an international referee of repute someday.
At this year’s Bono Excellence Awards, Victor swept the Best Blogger of the Year award. Among the stories Odeyeba and his team covered were the dilapidated Abansere Basic School in Berekum West District and Maame Abena Faakyewaa’s sad story at Botokrom, also in Berekum.
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