PART THREE: THE CENTURY-LONG THOUGHT
Confucius said, “If you think in terms of one hundred years, teach the people or educate children.” Geswani endorsed Confucius’ saying wholeheartedly and acted with a three-pronged approach.
He applied the informal, non-formal, and formal education methods to lay the foundation for his family, a hundred years on. He had frequent interactions with his children, which made the young share in his vision, values, and principles. Could you believe Geswani would troop along with his children, smaller ones on his shoulders, crossing a creek and muddy bush paths to attend a night’s public cinema show in the town? These, and other informal measures he took to get the children ‘civilized’ and stand out among their peers. This is what Gonyi told some grandchildren forty years after Geswani’s demise: “Ei, when we were at Adomfe in the Ashanti region, your grandfather and his children, with heads down, would be holding serious discussions. Whenever someone approached, they would keep silent or change the topic. That is what you’re enjoying today.”
School education came to Kave relatively late. However, the colonial administration rolled out mass education programs in the form of night schools from time to time. Indeed, the one who kept the records at Geswani’s father’s funeral was a graduate of that scheme, which impacted literacy and numeracy skills in the local languages. Having missed out on that adult literacy program, Geswani made sure some of his children got enrolled.
Meanwhile, the nearest formal educational institutions were five kilometers away in the traditional capital and commercial town of Dzodze. The two mission schools—Evangelical Presbyterian and Roman Catholic—were established after Geswani’s school age, though. Reaching the schools was like taking a steeple-chase race. Children had to attain a level of maturity in order to endure the hardship of commuting daily and staying on till the afternoon shift was over at four o’clock.
Yet, Geswani made plans for his children to acquire basic education and planned with them how their children could get secondary education and their children’s children could get tertiary education. At the time of his death, his two senior grandchildren were in second-cycle schools.
The most amazing aspect of his century-long thinking was the near-perfect calculation of time. He considered a generation to be between 30 and 35 years. He assigned 30 years to his children and 35 years each to the next two generations: 30 + 35 + 35 = 100. Applause! Applause! Applause!
