When I was growing up during the 1960s and 70s, in Ghana, nobody graphically pronounced the scientific name of pudenda, or the female genitalia, in polite society. And being raised by a Presbyterian clergyman, my maternal grandfather, I learned soon enough, made me a part and parcel of polite Ghanaian society. On the government-owned radio and television stations, for example, the female private parts were called “the human vault.” And the first time that I heard the expression was on the bulletin of “Home News.” The newscaster, if memory serves yours truly right, was Mr. Daniel Adzei.
I am not quite certain exactly how Mr. Adzei spelled his last name; all that I remember as a high school student was that Daniel Adzei was one of my favorite “newsreaders,” as they were called in those days. My other favorites were Vida Koranteng-Asante, if also because of the sing-song manner in which she pronounced her name; Vincent Assiseh; Robert Owusu; John Hammond (the one with the Europeanized accent); Kwame Amamoo; Nii Mwange (or some such name); Edward Faakye and Emelia Cromwell-Adama; and much later, Lucy Banini.
The point that I am straining to make here is that issues regarding the non-clinical and patently neocolonialist exposure of the female genitalia, the veritable Cradle of Humanity, except, of course, if one were delivered a la Caesarian-Section, to shame and ridicule must, in no uncertain terms, be regarded as a national, cultural crisis. And this, of course, is exactly what occurred at the St. Louis Teacher-Training College in Kumasi where, according to credible media reports, the principal, presumably a woman herself, vacuously subjected the approximately 630 female teacher-trainees to an ignominious inspection of their private parts because, according to the aforementioned reports, a bag of blood-soaked tampons had been discovered in the backcourt of one of the on-campus dormitories.
Upon the unsavory discovery of the preceding, the unnamed college principal promptly herded all 630 female students into several of the college’s laboratories and instructed the dorm- or housemistresses to scrutinize the panties and private parts of these women for tell-tale signs of any one of them having freshly committed the crime of abortion.
Needless to say, yours truly has had a hard time digesting the preceding ever since the story broke (see Modernghana.com 7/9/07; also Ghanaweb.com). I have had a hard time digesting the preceding because in the year 2007 – or Century Twenty-One, to be precise – the last thing that any civilized Ghanaian expected to be associated with the prestigious profession of the principal of a major national, teacher-training college is the non-clinical and cavalier inspection of the private parts of 630 female teacher-trainees, full-fledged and legally certified adults entrusted into his/her care, upon the mere chance-discovery of a bag of blood-soaked tampons behind one of the on-campus dormitories!
Indeed, about the only quite understandable, albeit unreservedly unacceptable and even reprehensible, motive for such traumatic invasion of privacy would be that the principal suspected that the anonymous source, or owner, of the blood-soaked tampons had had an extramarital affair – or illicit congress – with her husband; in which case this would not even have been the most intelligent and morally upright manner to approach matters. Whatever, for instance, happened to the scientific technology of DNA (if, indeed, the principal cared so much about the fidelity of her husband and the considerable cost its application would involve), whereby saliva-swabbed DNA material or even blood samples could have been demanded of these teacher-trainees through the appropriate legal and clinical procedures and channels, such as inviting qualified medical practitioners, the courts and the police to come in and handle this incontrovertibly delicate situation?
Still, what equally flabbergasts this writer is the fact that all 630 female victims appear to have readily – albeit reluctantly – consented to such boorish and outright uncouth examination of their private parts by non-professional clinicians who may well have infected these young women with diseases that they may not have had prior to such unsanitary exposure.
At the time of this writing (7/9/07), angry calls, nationwide, had gone out for Ghana’s Minister of Education to either demand the immediate resignation or outright dismissal of the St. Louis Teacher-Training College principal. Indeed, such call should also involve the immediate psychiatric examination of the “principal” culprit and her accomplices. Yours truly would even go further to demand either the immediate dismissal or suspension of the subordinate tutorial staff members who voyeuristically consented to the principal’s request to “inspect” the private parts of the aggrieved teacher-trainees.
I also strongly support Attorney Hannah Tetteh Kpodar’s advocacy of a class-action suit, although I must also hasten to add that such legal instrument must be cautiously and selectively applied, or the country’s already severely damaged educational system stands further risk of being irreparably damaged.
Rather, yours truly would urge that civic education courses be made integral to the academic curricula of all Ghanaian teachers at all levels of education. Likewise, civic education courses ought to be promptly established for the “Lost Generation” of educators – those produced during the culturally chaotic and regressive tenure of the so-called Provisional National Democratic Congress (P/NDC) – to ensure that such gross act of barbarism as the one under discussion is not repeated in the future.
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