“When Classrooms Are Empty but Weed Farms Are Full — What’s Really Going On in the Volta Region?”
A few years ago, I visited my grandma’s hometown deep in the Volta Region. Beautiful place. Quiet mornings, the kind of sky that makes you pause. One morning, I saw a group of boys — maybe 12 or 13 — with cutlasses on their shoulders, walking off into the bush like men going to war. I asked where they were off to.
“Farm,” someone said casually.
At the time, I thought nothing of it. Farming is part of village life, right?
But now I’m hearing that pupils are abandoning school to work on marijuana farms, and my stomach turns. Suddenly, those boys from a few years ago — machetes, muddy boots, and all — feel a lot more like a warning sign we all ignored.
According to local chiefs, this isn’t just a one-off. It’s becoming a thing. Some kids are trading textbooks for THC, uniforms for cocoa sacks, and classrooms for weed farms tucked behind the hills.
And honestly, I don’t even know where to begin.
I want to say, “How could they?” But then again, I want to ask, “Where are the adults in all this?”
Let’s be real — kids don’t wake up one day and decide that farming marijuana is more exciting than learning long division. Something’s broken. Maybe everything.
In my opinion — and I may be wrong — this is what happens when hope dries up. When the school building has no furniture. When the teachers barely show up. When students sit in class hungry, watching their parents struggle to survive.
And then, right outside the village, there’s this “business opportunity.” Quick money. No exams. No cane. Just cut, dry, sell.
I’ve noticed we like to blame children for everything these days. Lazy. Bad manners. No discipline. But we don’t talk enough about the systems failing them. The broken schools. The absent role models. The poverty so deep that a 14-year-old is already thinking about how to hustle, not how to pass BECE.
And honestly, who’s buying all this weed? Because kids aren’t just growing it for fun. Someone’s funding it. Someone’s buying in bulk. And that someone is definitely not wearing a school uniform.
This isn’t just a rural issue. It’s a national one. It’s about inequality. Neglect. And how we treat education like a background song instead of the loud, urgent beat it should be.
The chiefs are raising the alarm now, which is great. But will we listen? Will we act? Or will we scroll past the headline like it’s just another weird news story from “those areas”?
Because if children believe growing weed is more rewarding than going to school… then maybe we’ve already lost the plot.
So I’m just here thinking —
How do we bring kids back into the classroom when the world outside is promising faster money and fewer rules?
And more importantly… what are we really doing to make school worth it again?