When my mother at the age of 16 told me that we went from the United Kingdom to Ghana to spend the summer vacation, I had no reason to doubt it.

It was just a quick journey, a temporary break – nothing to worry. Or so I thought.

One month later, I dropped the bomb – I didn’t go back to London until I fixed and got enough GCSE to continue my education.

I was anxious in a similar way to the Ghanaian teenager Who recently took his parents to the London Supreme Court to send to school in Ghana.

In their defense, they told the judge that they did not want to see their 14 -year -old son, “another black teenager stabbed to death in the streets of London.”

In the mid -1990s, my mother, a primary school teacher, was driven by similar concerns.

I was excluded from two secondary schools in the Brent region of London, while holding on to the wrong crowd (the wrong crowd) – and headed to a dangerous road.

My closest friends at the time ended up prison for armed theft. If I stayed in London, I would have been convicted with them.

But sending to Ghana also felt a prison sentence.

I can sympathize with the teenager, who said in the court statement that he feels as if he was “living in hell.”

However, I talked about myself, by the time when I reached 21 years, I realized that what my mother did was a blessing.

Unlike the boy in the middle of the London Court case – which he lost – I did not go to the inner school in Ghana.

My mother put me in the care of her close brother, they wanted to watch me and felt that being around the border could prove a lot of distraction.

She stayed for the first time with my uncle Vivi, a former United Nations environmental expert, in a town called Dansuman, near the capital, Accra.

Hitting lifestyle is severely hit. In London, I had a private Numi room, access to washing machines and a feeling of independence – even if I was using them recklessly.

In Ghana, I was waking up at 05:00 to sweep the yard and wash the muddy pick -up truck often in my aunt.

It was her car that I was stealing later – something from the moment of water gatherings.

I didn’t even know how to drive properly, treatment of evidence like an automatic, and destroyed it in Mercedes a high -level soldier.

I tried to escape from the scene. But this soldier caught me and threatened to transfer me to Burma camp, the famous military base where people disappeared in the past.

This was the last thing really reckless.

It was not just the discipline that I learned in Ghana – it was perspective.

Life in Ghana made it clear to me how much I took it.

Wash clothes by hand and prepare meals with my aunt, make me appreciate the necessary effort.

Food, like everything in Ghana, requires patience. There were no microwaves, there is no quick leap.

Making the traditional dish that resembles the dough, for example, is arduous and includes bombing cooked potatoes or kissafa in a paste with a mortar.

At that time, I felt like punishment. If we looked back, it was the construction of flexibility.

Initially, my uncles thought about my position in high-end schools such as Ghana International School or Sos-Hermann GMeiner International College.

But they were smart. They knew that I had been a new crew to cause chaos and harm.

Instead, I received special lessons at the Accra Academy, a government high school school attended by my late father. This meant that I often promised me alone or in small groups.

Lessons were in English, but from school they were often talking to local languages ​​and found that it was easy to capture, perhaps because it was an overwhelming experience.

Returning home in London, I used to love to learn words that I swear in the language of Vani my mother – but I was out of length.

When I later moved to the city of Tema to stay with my favorite uncle, uncle Jojo – an agricultural expert, I continued the special tuition fees at the Tema Secondary School.

Unlike the boy who issues headlines in the UK, who claimed that the education system in Ghana was not satisfied, I found it accurate.

I was considered an academic talented in the United Kingdom, despite my troublesome ways, but I found it difficult in Ghana. Students at my age were advanced in subjects such as mathematics and science.

The Ghanaian regime’s accuracy pushed me more than ever in London.

The result? I won five GCSES with rows C and above – something that seemed impossible one day.

In addition to academic achievements, the Ghanaian society instilled the values ​​that remained for life.

Respect for the elderly was not negotiable. In all the neighborhoods I lived in, I received those older than you, regardless of whether or not you know them.

Ghana did not make me more disciplined and respectful – he made me without fear.

Football played a big role in this shift. I played in the gardens, which were often a difficult red clay with loose gravel and stones, with two square targets made of wood and chain.

It was far from the stadiums that were accurately preserved in England, but it attracted me in ways that I did not imagine – and it is no wonder that some of the greatest football players who saw in the Premier League came from West Africa.

The aggressive method that played in Ghana was not just a skill – it was about flexibility and endurance. Dealing with coarse land means capturing yourself, dust for yourself and continuing.

Every Sunday, I played football on the beach – although I was often late because there were no uncles that would allow me to stay at home instead of attending the church.

These services felt as if they continued forever. But it was also a testimony to Ghana as a country that is afraid of God, where faith is deeply guaranteed in daily life.

The first 18 months were the most difficult. Reduce restrictions, household business, discipline.

I even tried to steal my passport to return to London, but my mother was in front of me and hide it well. There was no escape.

My only choice was to adapt. Somewhere along the way, I stopped seeing Ghana Kassa and I started seeing her in a happy house.

I know a few others like me who were sent to Ghana by their parents who live in London.

Michael Adif was seventeen years old when he arrived in Accra for school in the nineties, describing his experience as “sweet and passed.” He remained until he was 23 years old and now lives in London as a surveillance officer.

His main complaint was unity – his family and friends missed. There were times of anger about his situation and complications of feeling misunderstood.

This greatly stems from the fact that his parents did not teach him or his brothers, any of the local languages ​​when he originated in London.

“I didn’t understand GA. I didn’t understand Twi. I didn’t understand Pidgin,” the 49 -year -old told me.

This made him feel weak for the first two and a half years-as he says, for example, by increasing prices because he looked foreigner.

He says, “wherever I went to, I had to make sure that I went with someone else.”

But it ended fluently in Twi, and in general, the positives believe the negatives: “He made me a man.

“My experience in Ghana has matured and postponed me for the better, by helping me identify with whom I am, as Ghanaian, and strengthened my understanding of my culture, background and family history.”

I can agree with this. By my third year, I fell in love with culture and even stayed for two years after my year has passed.

She has developed a deep appreciation for local food. Again in London, I never thought twice what I was eating. But in Ghana, the food was not just a power – each dish had his own story.

It has become obsessed with “wakye”-a plate made of rice and peas with black eyes, often cooked with millet leaves, giving it a distinctive purple color. It is usually served with fried bananas, hot black pepper sauce, boiled eggs, sometimes even spaghetti or fried fish. The final rest food was.

I enjoyed music, warmth, and a sense of society. I wasn’t just “stuck” in Ghana anymore – I was prosperous.

My mother, patience, Wilberphors, recently died, and her loss, and I thought deeply in the decision I made for these past years.

You saved me. If you did not deceive me to stay in Ghana, the chances of getting a criminal record or even spending time in prison were very high.

I went to register in the 20 -year -old London College to study production and media communications, before joining the BBC Radio 1xtra via the guidance scheme.

The men in northwest London did not get the second opportunity that I did.

Ghana reinstated mental, valuable and future. A misleading threat turned into a responsible man.

Although such an experience may not work for everyone, it gave me education, discipline and respect that you needed to re -merge into society when I returned to England.

That is why, I owe my mother forever, my uncles and to the country that saved me.

Mark Wilberphs is an independent journalist based in London and Ukra.