Middle class security guards

(Sorry for the typos and the general roughness, I wrote most of this post on my iphone, while stuck in traffic in Accra)
Roughly about 4 years ago I had a conversation that marked me and another one I had today brought it to mind. So I thought I'd share it with ya'll. My house in Ghana is 'protected' by a security guard. This is actually fairly standard practice in Africa. People who are doing ok have security guards who actually pretend to watch over the house and I guess it acts as a deterrent against people trying to come and rob the house.
Basically John our security guy was telling me that he was studying sociology at Legon university. Pretty mundane stuff... Or is it?

A security guard who has the great idea to go to university and study for his classes while he is pretending to work! As 'duh' as it seems, in all my years in Africa I had never come across this. Security guys doing a few businesses on the side, sure, but not actually going to one of Ghana's better universities and getting a bachelors in sociology of all topics.
This simple conversation speaks to Africa's progress in so many ways. Let me highlight the ones that stand out to me.
Affordable education: I don't know the details of johns salary but I have a rough idea of Legon's fees and they are not exorbitant (at least for Ghanaian nationals). And the government of Ghana has created an environment where John could afford to live and go to university off his security guard salary.

Aspiration: shout out to John to aspire to more and identify education as his way of moving up in the game

Africa has progressed: about 10 years ago I remember that a security guard friend of mine was begging me to sell him my Walkman for $40, which was incidentally his monthly salary... From a Walkman to a bachelors in sociology.

Middle class: and this is the most important point. To me, middle class is actually a state of mind. Provided u comfortably have food and shelter, u are middle class if u are comfortable that with hard work, you can improve your standing in life.

And no matter what your political affiliation. You have to admit that the middle class in Ghana has swelled dramatically over the last ten years...

I asked about John recently, and now he's not a security guard anymore. He works for the Criminal Investigation Department of the Ghana police force at Tema, Accra's main port. I joked that if he's not careful, he'll be making some serious money fast. And what do you know, I was told he now 'has his own car and a very big stomach'. (unfortunately in Africa, customs is a great way to make money, Paul Collier does a wonderful job explaining why in his book: The bottom billion. But that's another story...)

So today I saw another security guy studying some very difficult looking statistics. So I asked him why he was looking at these difficult looking mathematical equations. His answer: "he has to do statistics as part of his b.a. in poli-sci" me:'this looks hard' him:"actually this is the easy part"....

I wonder what he will become four years from now...