As I was putting on my coat, Keziah brought over a framed photo and pressed it into my hands, explaining that this was her Junior High School class: the photo had about a dozen young people, boys and girls in blue scholar caps and gowns. She pointed out herself and her best friend, standing next to her. She said this photo was taken months before the actual graduation, which is why she was in the photo. She told me that she went to a Montessori school in Ghana and that it was "really, really expensive" – she said this a few times, with big eyes, emphasising it.
[...]
We left the house and took a short-cut, cutting through the lawns around the apartment blocks, along foot-worn paths in the dirt and through a little metal gate, emerging at the U-Bahn [subway] entrance on the main road. As we walked, she was telling me that the discipline of schooling in Ghana had really trained her well and she really liked school in Ghana. "Why?" I asked. "You’ve been to Ghana, maybe you know this," she said, "School in Ghana is hard, we have to study very hard."
