This is the story of a head porter, popularly reffered to in Ghanaian language as “Kayayoo”, now a Member of Parliament (MP) in Ghana, her name is Gifty Klenam Kekeli Agbemava. Her father hails from Anlo in the Volta Region and her mother from the Eastern Region of Ghana. She was born and spent part of her early life in the Eastern Region. Now a Honorable member of the Ghanaian Parliament, she represents the Lower West Akim Constituency on the New Patriotic Party Ticket. Honorable Gifty Klenam, as she is called by all and sundry is one very beautiful woman on the surface and a one with a super strong will within.
The Honorable Minister is the fourth child of her parents until her Engineer father decided to marry another woman from his home Region. He left this nucleus family of five children alone with their head teacher mother and didn’t look back for a very long time. In those times, teachers were not exactly renumerated well in Ghana so her mother travelled to Nigeria to seek a better life to enable her support the children better. She left the children in the care of their bed ridden grandmother in Kyebi Amankrom. Gifty was eight years by then and from that moment, the transition from a well catered for child, to one who had to cater for herself set in. School seized to be an option. Survival was her main worry. She started going to the forest with a friend, Akua Ataa, to look for mushrooms, snails and anything she could sell while her other siblings also struggled for their survival. At age ten, she had started carting heavy logs of wood from the forest to the roadside in order to earn some money for food.
One day, she went to the school she had been enrolled in but was not attending. She just happened to pass through the school in her tattered clothing, just to check what was going on. Fate may have smiled on her that day because her father showed up at the school and ordered her and her younger brother to get into his car. She protested but her father succeeded in getting them into the car. Seated in the car was one of their half brothers, well dressed and obviously being chauffeured to boarding school by their father. He drove them to Ho, where the half brother was attending school and took Gifty and her brother to Tema, where they were to be catered for by their aunt, their father’s sister. Ironically, this was the same sister who got an Ewe wife for their father. Once in Tema, the children’s dream of a better life was never lived. Instead of school, this aunt made ten year old Gifty work in her local restaurant, popularly called “Chop Bar” which was at the Tema Main Harbor. She also worked as a “Kayayoo” (Female Porter) during this period. Every day for three years, young Gifty walked to her new place of work from their Tema Community One Residence. She was not taken care of, even food to eat, despite where she worked was a struggle. She always had to steal food for her younger brother and herself.
After two years of living with her aunt and three more years of working as a “kayayoo” in order to support herself and her brother, the aunt’s fiancée confronted her aunt concerning the status of the children and their schools. This man took it upon himself and enrolled the children at Datus Complex Schools. At age fifteen, Gifty was admitted to stage five. She later used savings from her “kayayoo” business to pay for extra tuition. In a year’s time, one of her other brothers came to visit from the Village and she used her “kayayoo” money to register for the common entrance exam through her brother in another town. When it was time for the exam, she left to Asamankese with one “olonka” (Measuring Cup) of gari, palm oil and enough money for her transport to the village. She sat for the exam and came out as the second best in the whole school. She gained a government scholarship and enrolled at Assoum Secondary School where she wrote her O’Levels. She found her way to Accra and sat for her A Level exam. Just around the same time she conceived her first son.
Gifty however promised herself while in Secondary School Form three that she will never work for anyone in her life. She started her now successful fruit juice company, Sun Harvest Ltd with her small kitchen blender. Eventually, she got a loan facility which helped her to expand the business. With hard work, diligence and a desire to be successful, Klenam is now a happy woman whose happiness is consolidated when she sees salvation being preached to people. She joined the Scripture Union while at Assoum Secondary School and though life was extremely challenging, she found hope in the word of God.
The Member of Parliament decided to go into politics when she was disrespected by a Minister sometime ago. She felt Ministers of State are supposed to be serving people and as such the disrespect was totally uncalled for. She then decided to eventually get into politics so she can serve people. Gifty lost her first primaries but remained resolute in her quest. During the struggles and difficulties of going into politics with an unsupportive husband and still striving to be as good a mother as she could possibly be to her two children, she held on, prayed feverishly and pressed on because she believed she could do more to help the wider community of her Constituency. Eventually, her husband who was not supportive of her political career divorced her in this very trying times. In the 2000 General Elections in Ghana, Gifty Klenam was the voice of all the Commercials in the Ewe language for her party.
She currently worships with the International Central Gospel Church. Everyone has a burning desire and at times this desire can make people cause a positive turnaround to a situation in life. Her innermost desire now is to create jobs and take as many “kayayei” off the street as possible. She also has a campaign for boy child education in the pipeline. Her advice to the youth is that life is not straightforward as we expect and therefore they should accept and go through all struggles as a stage with hope in the Lord. They should not enjoy sympathies for too long. Wherever they find themselves, they should strive to be better.
