Last Wednesday, my great alma mater, Winneba Secondary School (now senior high school) organized the 12th Dowuona Hammond Memorial Lecture in memory of its founder, during which they honoured past students who continue to serve the School with dedication. These included Yours Truly Kwesi Yankah. It was an opportunity to reunite with several school mates including, John Aheto, Kwame Ampofo, Nat Okine, Jessica Amankwa etc. The great Herbert Morrison was absent.
Happily the occasion presented a unique opportunity to read relevant excerpts from my book, The Pen at Risk: Spilling my Little Beans (My autobiography). As it turned out, I spilled bigger beans than expected about my student days at Winnesec, to the surprise of past and present students. And when did those things happen? More than half a century ago. Hear my introduction, as quoted from the book.
‘In the past several years that I have been in public life, whether in my public speeches, writings, personal encounters, or outside the country, I have upheld Winnesec, glorified Winnesec, lauded Winneba, and almost made the School a little object of worship, doing so with chest out, without apologies. My outbursts on Winneba have often attracted curiosity: ‘what at all is at Winnesec that Kwesi Yankah has so often extolled?
‘In 2016, when I was receiving a public award on Education Impact, at a time Prempeh College had been announced as champions of the national science quiz contest, I made bold to insert my alma mater in my acceptance speech: ‘Science quiz or no science quiz, by far the best school in Ghana today, often unnoticed, due to modesty is the unsung Winneba Secondary School my alma mater. And this is in spite of the Mfantsipims, the Achimotas, and Prempehs who make the most noise only because they are empty barrels,’ I boasted.
The entire auditorium for the awards exploded in jitters, and that included the Former President J. A Kufuor, who was virtually in stitches, expecting the climax of my speech to have been his Prempeh College.’
I then followed with my secrets at Winnesec. My alma mater indeed stands for all those soft spoken schools whose students get fed up with the overhype of the so-called big schools that only live on past glories.
Amen.
By Kwesi Yankah
kwyankah@yahoo.com