By: Ing. Yayah A. B. Conteh
This piece is more or less addressed to those individuals who embark upon the arduous task of seeking knowledge of one kind or another, particularly in the field of education, beginning from the primary right through secondary schools to vocational and tertiary levels.
It is also not unrelated to those species of citizenry who toil day and night to eke out a living for themselves in several other non-intellectual fields of passion, like in business ventures, hunting or blacksmithing activities, or even in some agricultural production enterprises geared towards the improvement and advancement of one’s material lot.
Depending on the range and intensity of the tremendous efforts applied by some people in various fields of endeavour, men and women can be ignited with a vision and ambition that ends up revolutionizing their entire lives in no small measure.
Whilst I attended school, there were students who were phenomenal in the pursuit of education. Most of them had hailed from non-intellectual backgrounds. They walked several miles every day to and fro from their towns and villages to their various educational establishments in search of knowledge. Lamentably, in fact, the majority of them, if not all, did not even know the values and advantages of education then.
Their priority in those days was to always work very hard in school, apply themselves wholesale to the multifarious academic disciplines to which they were subjected by their tutors, and always ensure that they top their classes at every given examination. If you had ever asked them as to why they were striking it out very hard at every given moment to excel themselves in class, they would simply respond by saying, rather confidently, that “I don’t want to be beaten in class by anyone else. I want to top my class”. And with that at the back of their minds, they would keep applying every little effort in all their academic undertakings until they emerged victorious in topping their classes.
Indirectly, as it may appear or sound to me today, little did it even dawn upon them that they were not only striving for survival but for excellence as well in shaping out a future for themselves that would go to make all the difference tomorrow between starvation and plenty.
And notwithstanding these rather torturous journeys to attain the pinnacle of their dreams and aspirations, a significant proportion of them succeeded in hitting the finished lines of their academic races by transforming themselves into people of substance in various walks of life. Hitting the finished line in itself alone is a striking example of what a man can achieve when he is obsessed with an original idea and afire with enthusiasm to accomplish it. Ironically, it is the hard work and successes of these people that have stood them taller today amongst the many others in their various places of attachment and in the country as a whole.
Imagine how it would have been like if these industrious students of old had hailed from intellectual backgrounds where their parents or guardians had constantly enlightened them about the values and advantages of education, could the sky not have been their limit?
Yes, of course, we are not blindfolded to the fact that the material lot of many others in those days, in spite of all their boundless energies and enthusiasms in the realization of their goals and aspirations, and who fell in similar categories, did not improve the least as was commonly expected. But that is where the uncertainty of the future lies, for it is only the Supreme Being that governs the destiny of mortals from the womb to the tomb.
Nevertheless, the fact of the matter remains that some effort has to be exercised by someone somewhere in anticipation of a positive turn around in the life trajectory of that individual. Afterwards a man seeking the world’s favour rather than its odium must have to demonstrate a tremendous strength of character in confronting the challenges of his day-to-day existence.
As I look back across the years I am terribly appalled at the lack of energy and enthusiasm on the part of the present day crop of students particularly from the secondary to the tertiary levels who, although armed with all manner of learning tools including easy accessibility to internet facilities, yet continue to demonstrate very little strength of character in the day-to-day pursuit of their educational goals. This is not only disturbing but unfortunate as well. It spells doom for our youth in the years that lie ahead if they fail to change this scenario altogether and take advantage of the numerous opportunities at their disposal-including, of course, the Free Quality Education introduced under the New Direction government headed by His Excellency President Dr. J. M. Bio.
Untold stories abound of some people who were opportune to darken the corridors of World class universities in Europe and the Americas and from which they eventually graduated to the admiration of many. It is sometimes argued that the overall performance and output of these people in the discharge of their functions in comparison with their ‘local’ counterparts once they return home and get engage in some form of employment are most often times rated below average. Sadly enough, most of them have never been able to perform nor deliver at all to the astonishment of many. The so-called ‘local’ graduates have instead excelled far above expectations in both methods of delivery and applications in several programmes and engagements in which they have been involved.
The lesson to be learnt here is that it does not really matter where an individual acquires knowledge – be it at home or abroad. What matters is the ability of that individual to adequately apply those skills and knowledge acquired for his benefit and the rest of mankind, including the positive transformation of the society and the world at large in which he happens to find himself.
This means that whether at home or abroad, the act of striving not only for survival but for excellence as well need not be over emphasized.
Even a ‘local’ graduate who happens to ‘ lay his hands on the plough’ and who works with untiring devotion can excel much more than his ‘perceived‘ eminently successful graduate from abroad who, for one reason or another, might prove rather incapable of demonstrating such skills and abilities to attain the excellence required of him.
This act of striving not only for survival but for excellence as well is not only confined to events as they unfold in the intellectual landscape. Its effect can be greatly felt too in other fields of passion as earlier highlighted above.
A man, for example, who sets off with very little capital might end up expanding his business empire to the admiration of all in comparison with another in possession of much greater capital who dismally fails to progress an inch undertaking such a similar venture; instead, he retrogresses the more and possibly singlehandedly becomes responsible for the eventual phasing out of the business itself.
The former has striven not only for survival of his business from difficult and humble beginnings for that matter until achieving success, whereas the latter has striven after such similar strides but in vain, probably for poor management of same or the like.
A prominent African politician, now deceased, must have proven himself quite correct in one of his books, judging from the trend of discussions in this article, that “It does not really matter to whose heights a man might climb but the depths from whence he came”.
Ing. Yayah A. B. Conteh is the Director of the Mechanical Services Department (MSD) of the Sierra Leone Roads Authority (SLRA).
Tel. nos : 076640364 / 077718805.
E-mail : contehyayahab2020@gmail.com.