But who exactly are the people of Darmang?
I don't think there is really any simple answer to that question, or any question of that sort. But it is nonetheless crucially important as it is the very foundation of Project:Darmang. It gets at the very heart of everything beautiful in this project- why these wonderful people are so deserving of a better reality, why we are so inspired by them.
It gets at why this project is profoundly impacting lives around the world- from the city of Seattle, to the beaches of Flordia, to the hills of Fullerton, the streets of Colorado Springs, to the mountains of Boulder, to Hillsdale and Decorah, to the snow of Sweden and the sun of New Mexico, to the chaos of Maryland, and to the very heart of the village of Darmang.
The people of Darmang are people like Nancy...
Nancy is a student, a scholar, and an inspiration to me. At the age of sixteen, Nancy is one of the only youth in Darmang that passed the exams out of the JSS, or middle school. She did not do this because of the great education she received or the quality of the school- in fact she did it in spite of that.
The schools of Darmang do not produce scholars, scholars, like Nancy, produce themselves. She did so by always feeding her hunger for knowledge in any way she could, conventional or not. Her family, all four of them, chose to live in one small bedroom so they could afford to pay school fees for Nancy and her sister.
Nancy is remarkable in that her brilliance comes from the ragged streets of Darmang, the hustle of the streets of Accra, and the markets of Tema. It comes from questioning everything in pursuit of knowledge and refusing to be limited by circumstance.
Nancy is now attending Secondary School, or high school, one of the very few who have made it out of Darmang to pursue education. I told her once she graduates and applies for the university, I'll be waiting at the airport in America to pick her up and take her to Harvard because she deserves nothing less. And while she has no idea what an airplane feels like, or even what Harvard is, she understands her own potential and the potential I see in her and I know that she will one day realize it in remarkable ways.
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