"Profiles" Home

More "Profiles":  
         

8. Bockerie Joe 
         
7. Mamatoma Momoh
           
6. Sowah K. Momoh  à
            
5. Nyawoh Kenneh
  
4. Nancy Lahai

3. Josephine Yegbu

2. Foday Ansu

1. Kadiatu Junisa

Profiles of Students

Sowah lives in Foindu, a village of about 2000 people.  Though it can be reached by a dirt road, most people get to Foindu from a large neighboring village by walking along a 2-mile footpath in the rainforest.  Sowah attends Holy Ghost Secondary School in Segbwema, 25 miles away, thanks to a scholarship from the Sierra Leone-Plymouth Partnership.  At the beginning and end of each term, he and his classmates from Foindu pile bags of rice from their family farms and all their possessions on their head and walk the distance in a single day. 

As an SSS III (Grade 12) student, Sowah will take the West African Senior Secondary Certificate Examination in May of 2009 in order to qualify to attend college.  He will be tested in eight subjects, four compulsory and four elective, and must pass five to continue his education.  Each year, thousands of students throughout the West African nations of Sierra Leone, Guinea, Liberia, Ghana, Ivory Coast, and Nigeria take the exam, but only a relatively small percentage pass.  In order to prepare, Sowah studies hard both during school and in the afternoon, but because electricity is limited and kerosene for gas lamps is expensive, he finds it difficult to study after dark.

If Sowah successfully passes the exam, he hopes to study medicine if he continues to receive a scholarship.  Currently, his favorite subject is biology because, he says, “It teaches you to know about plants and animals, and I am an animal - a higher animal - and I want to know more about myself.”  One of the greatest challenges science students like Sowah face is the lack of laboratory supplies.  Before the civil war in Sierra Leone, Holy Ghost had a laboratory in which students could further experiment with the concepts learned during lecture; but rebels destroyed the building and looted the supplies (see below), leaving students to conceptualize rather than experience the science.  As a college medical student, Sowah would have access to lab equipment and is studying hard to reach that goal.

Below: Former Science Laboratory at Holy Ghost Secondary School, Destroyed in 1990s War.
                             

Name:      Sowah K. Momoh
          

Age:         18 Years

Grade:     12^th

School:    Holy Ghost Secondary

                School, Segbwema

Village:   Jokibu