8 ms·

My Improbable Graduation: From a Tiny Village in Ghana to Johns Hopkins

177 points by happy-go-lucky 9y ago

GuiA 9y ago
I've always wondered why the large tech companies/universities who claim they care so much about diversity don't send their recruiters around the world to track bright, persevering teenagers such as the young man of the article, and bring them into their organization (providing proper mentorship/training in the case of companies). It seems like it would be a fairly cheap way to have a very diverse organization with brilliant people from all over the world.
- Kalium 9y ago
  What leads you to believe this would be a cheap process?
- posterboy 9y ago
  How do you know they don't and how do you think would this be achieved for cheap other than recruiting at the best (private) schools of the country?
  - throwthisawayt 9y ago
    My anecodatal experience is they don't because I had friends in South Africa, DRC, and Nigeria who came from more privileged middle class backgrounds and still struggled due to a lack of education. They were never recruited by tech firms due to the issues the author faced. One asked me to refer them into some of the firms here but I was unable to get them in. I don't know if it would have been cheaper to recruit them but I do know they had no chance here in America. They have hustled their way to a living but have worked 10x harder than me because I have an American citizenship and degree.
    - JPLeRouzic 9y ago
      Sometimes I wonder if it would be possible to graft a form of certification by huge companies on a MOOC curriculum for countries like CAR/CDR/etc. After all big companies do something close in IT (CISCO/Microsoft certifications). Indeed there are some eDx professional certificates but they that are really costly as they are aimed at a western audience. What about a similar certificate at $100 (one month revenue in Kivu) but in Kinyarwanda (for targeting the right students)?
- zitterbewegung 9y ago
  Why track them? I used to work in a Computation Population biology lab. Three of them have gone to work at Google and or Facebook and they had very diverse backgrounds. The ones that didn't choose the private sector went to Postdoc positions at MIT Lincoln Lab. If you are the place where the money is you can attract talent. This was at a public university and I'm sure you can find similar stories at private ones.
  - mcnamaratw 9y ago
    Hopkins is a private school, #1 in "Public health," which is a field of study.
- Banthum 9y ago
  The problem is there's really no way to see determine who has the capacity to do what this guy did, until after they do it.
  - projektir 9y ago
    What do you mean by "capacity" here?
mekicha 9y ago
Amazing story.Congratulations!
zeeshanm 9y ago
Gave me goosebumps throughout the entire time reading it. Much success to the author.
gerdesj 9y ago
Good skills mate. Your mum laid the groundwork (as most mums are wont to do - mine did as well but in a different way) and you delivered, through sheer hard work. "My uncles from my father's side took all his properties, per the custom in my village in Ghana" - that looks like a serious problem and needs some analysis but I think it is a real problem. I wish you all the best.
- thaumasiotes 9y ago
  No inheritance from the mother's husband sounds like a pretty normal setup for an area where paternity certainty is very low.
eBombzor 9y ago
Very inspiring and heartwarming. I wish the best to the lad and his new family. Stories like these really make you put things into perspective. Here I am complaining about how hard my professors are in a crap university while this guy comes from the depths of poverty and works his way up through one of the best public health programs in the world. My daily problems are nothing compared to the obstacles this guy had to overcome. Kudos to that man.
- akhilcacharya 9y ago
  How do you define "crap university"?
  - eBombzor 9y ago
    A university that puts most of its effort on improving its ranking and gaining more $$$ whilst the actual quality of education declines.
    - akhilcacharya 9y ago
      Interesting.
Banthum 9y ago
I've always got mixed feelings on stories like this. On one hand, it's a heartwarming story of a man breaking through barriers to achieve success from desperate beginnings. Kind of an American dream story, really. But if everyone with those qualities leaves the community, the rest of the people are helpless and will be mired in poverty forever. It's difficult, morally, to balance the benefit gained by the guy who took the action, compared to the loss his community suffered by his departure. In any case, I think this sort of thing is a significant reason why countries don't develop. Change always starts from a small group of changemakers - if those people all just emigrate, nothing will ever change. Migration since the 60's has become a giant IQ-sorting system and that's having huge consequences on all sides. And this never seems to get discussed, oddly.
- subterfudge44 9y ago
  > to balance the benefit gained by the guy who took the action, compared to the loss his community suffered by his departure. Not true. Any resource when used efficiently benefits whole of humanity. It is better if a boy from Ghana comes to USA and invents a vaccine to some disease than he stays back as just a doctor in this village. People when they travel it is not an isolated incident. They tell their friends about the reality of other nations and then they aspire to be like other nations. We see it in India and China a lot.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- whack 9y ago
  I understand what you're trying to get at, but consider that most under-developed countries fail not because of talent shortage, but because of systemic problems that prevent them from harnessing the talent that they do have. The author is an excellent example of this. If he had stayed in Ghana, he would have never received the education that he needs to fulfill his potential. He would have gone through his entire life, a shadow of the person that he's capable of being. Thankfully, because he was lucky enough to fall in love with an American citizen, he was able to come here and turn his life around. If he now uses even a fraction of talents and future income to help his home country, he would already make more of a difference than if he had stayed in Ghana his whole life.
subterfudge44 9y ago
Wish you the best. Also people who keep complaining about other people's privileges should read this several times. People rising from bottom to top is more common than we think.
noobermin 9y ago
Place this as another bullet point in the "luck plays a huge role" hypothesis with regards to success. Imagine how many other poor children in Ghana or elsewhere are just as capable of earning a degree from an elite institution but don't have the opportunity because of their lot in regards to where they were born.
- projektir 9y ago
  Even if you did give all those the opportunities, what about the rest? We always seem to be so worried about people with certain "capabilities", whatever those are, not being pulled from certain areas or not getting opportunities, but... what about everyone else? There's far more of them. Isn't this just luck also?
- xxSparkleSxx 9y ago
  And to extend this, think about all of the Americans in poverty that would flourish if we all had equality of opportunity in this country.
1024core 9y ago
While the guy's story is very heart-warming, the most important part, which they quickly glossed over, was his getting married to an American lady who helped him migrate. Without that marriage, he would most probably still be in Ghana. Also: he was performing an important role in Ghana delivering medicines, and by migrating, now that sector has lost an important person. I wish he would go back with his newfound knowledge and help make things better in Ghana, where he is needed much more than in the US.
- partycoder 9y ago
  Not sure about that. Ghana and other countries might have sovereignty in paper, but in practice they're victims of a new form of colonization: debt. A hardworking person like him could go waste his entire life trying to improve his country economy, but as soon as things get a bit better, a corrupt leader will go and contract debt from vulture funds like the IMF again, pass hundreds of millions of dollars to his personal account in Switzerland and ruin his country again for many decades in 5 minutes. If you want poverty to end, end vulture funds and end banking protections for corrupt leaders. But of course that will never happen, because those dictators are the very reason countries can contract high interest loans and neocolonial powers depend on that to succeed. Neocolonial powers also depend on disorganization. They cannot allow a strong government defending national interests to be formed. That would mean equal treaties, fair taxation, putting people to work for their own well being, expensive labor and expensive raw materials. This is why they will do all they can to get the corrupt guy elected by all means necessary, even if it involves killing. Your view of the world is very narrow.
  - phr4ts 9y ago
    Authority stealing depends hugely on opaqueness, the ability of elected individuals to have privacy in their supposedly PUBLIC dealings. Thieves in position of authority benefit from EXPERT status i.e. citizens do not feel qualified to monitor the activities the activities of the elected. Officials openly flout their ill gotten wealth and the citizens are in awe, praying to God for a chance to eat the 'National cake.' Just last month, I talked to at least 10 ordinary persons. And these 'educated' individuals couldn't suspend disbelieve and imagine how much better their world would be if they could keep their representatives in check. They all believed that their votes didn't matter. And it's quite true. In the last Nigerian election for instance, individuals from the Igbo tribe weren't given voters card because they wouldn't vote for the incumbent party. I've spent a ton of time thinking about the state of Africa. And I don't see a way out short of a bloody revolution. Even then, history says a revolution would only replace one set of tyrants with another.
mgh2 9y ago
Dreams are possible in America only and only if you have a green card...don't bother about the suffering rest who were born elsewhere
- rak00n 9y ago
  Not true. Plenty of people come to USA with H1B/F1 and make a good life here. Hell even Sundar Pichai is one of those people.
LyalinDotCom 9y ago
Is there some good organizations to donate to that helps underprivileged kids get through school?
uxhacker 9y ago
Having lived in Ghana in mid 2000's this story does not surprise me. The team that I worked with went on to work for Google, Microsoft and Yahoo. Another colleague built up the Internet in Africa, building 15 Internet Exchanges in different countries for under 200,000 dollars. In 1974 the literacy rate in Ghana was the same as in Portugal. Things diverged. Portugal became a democracy, Ghana went through many years of dictatorship and misguided help from the west. I remember once interviewing one person sent from the States to help the software company I was working with. His expertises was 'Network Streamlining', that turned out to be sorting out cables. If you take the expense of sending somebody from the states, versus sending from Ghana to the West for training versus the payback. We should be sending more people to the west for training rather than the other way round.

GuiA 9y ago

I've always wondered why the large tech companies/universities who claim they care so much about diversity don't send their recruiters around the world to track bright, persevering teenagers such as the young man of the article, and bring them into their organization (providing proper mentorship/training in the case of companies). It seems like it would be a fairly cheap way to have a very diverse organization with brilliant people from all over the world.

Kalium 9y ago
What leads you to believe this would be a cheap process?
posterboy 9y ago
How do you know they don't and how do you think would this be achieved for cheap other than recruiting at the best (private) schools of the country?
- throwthisawayt 9y ago
  My anecodatal experience is they don't because I had friends in South Africa, DRC, and Nigeria who came from more privileged middle class backgrounds and still struggled due to a lack of education. They were never recruited by tech firms due to the issues the author faced. One asked me to refer them into some of the firms here but I was unable to get them in. I don't know if it would have been cheaper to recruit them but I do know they had no chance here in America. They have hustled their way to a living but have worked 10x harder than me because I have an American citizenship and degree.
  - JPLeRouzic 9y ago
    Sometimes I wonder if it would be possible to graft a form of certification by huge companies on a MOOC curriculum for countries like CAR/CDR/etc. After all big companies do something close in IT (CISCO/Microsoft certifications). Indeed there are some eDx professional certificates but they that are really costly as they are aimed at a western audience. What about a similar certificate at $100 (one month revenue in Kivu) but in Kinyarwanda (for targeting the right students)?
zitterbewegung 9y ago
Why track them? I used to work in a Computation Population biology lab. Three of them have gone to work at Google and or Facebook and they had very diverse backgrounds. The ones that didn't choose the private sector went to Postdoc positions at MIT Lincoln Lab. If you are the place where the money is you can attract talent. This was at a public university and I'm sure you can find similar stories at private ones.
- mcnamaratw 9y ago
  Hopkins is a private school, #1 in "Public health," which is a field of study.
Banthum 9y ago
The problem is there's really no way to see determine who has the capacity to do what this guy did, until after they do it.
- projektir 9y ago
  What do you mean by "capacity" here?

mekicha 9y ago

Amazing story.Congratulations!

zeeshanm 9y ago

Gave me goosebumps throughout the entire time reading it. Much success to the author.

gerdesj 9y ago

Good skills mate. Your mum laid the groundwork (as most mums are wont to do - mine did as well but in a different way) and you delivered, through sheer hard work. "My uncles from my father's side took all his properties, per the custom in my village in Ghana" - that looks like a serious problem and needs some analysis but I think it is a real problem. I wish you all the best.

thaumasiotes 9y ago
No inheritance from the mother's husband sounds like a pretty normal setup for an area where paternity certainty is very low.

eBombzor 9y ago

Very inspiring and heartwarming. I wish the best to the lad and his new family. Stories like these really make you put things into perspective. Here I am complaining about how hard my professors are in a crap university while this guy comes from the depths of poverty and works his way up through one of the best public health programs in the world. My daily problems are nothing compared to the obstacles this guy had to overcome. Kudos to that man.

akhilcacharya 9y ago
How do you define "crap university"?
- eBombzor 9y ago
  A university that puts most of its effort on improving its ranking and gaining more $$$ whilst the actual quality of education declines.
  - akhilcacharya 9y ago
    Interesting.

Banthum 9y ago

I've always got mixed feelings on stories like this. On one hand, it's a heartwarming story of a man breaking through barriers to achieve success from desperate beginnings. Kind of an American dream story, really. But if everyone with those qualities leaves the community, the rest of the people are helpless and will be mired in poverty forever. It's difficult, morally, to balance the benefit gained by the guy who took the action, compared to the loss his community suffered by his departure. In any case, I think this sort of thing is a significant reason why countries don't develop. Change always starts from a small group of changemakers - if those people all just emigrate, nothing will ever change. Migration since the 60's has become a giant IQ-sorting system and that's having huge consequences on all sides. And this never seems to get discussed, oddly.

subterfudge44 9y ago
> to balance the benefit gained by the guy who took the action, compared to the loss his community suffered by his departure. Not true. Any resource when used efficiently benefits whole of humanity. It is better if a boy from Ghana comes to USA and invents a vaccine to some disease than he stays back as just a doctor in this village. People when they travel it is not an isolated incident. They tell their friends about the reality of other nations and then they aspire to be like other nations. We see it in India and China a lot.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
whack 9y ago
I understand what you're trying to get at, but consider that most under-developed countries fail not because of talent shortage, but because of systemic problems that prevent them from harnessing the talent that they do have. The author is an excellent example of this. If he had stayed in Ghana, he would have never received the education that he needs to fulfill his potential. He would have gone through his entire life, a shadow of the person that he's capable of being. Thankfully, because he was lucky enough to fall in love with an American citizen, he was able to come here and turn his life around. If he now uses even a fraction of talents and future income to help his home country, he would already make more of a difference than if he had stayed in Ghana his whole life.

subterfudge44 9y ago

Wish you the best. Also people who keep complaining about other people's privileges should read this several times. People rising from bottom to top is more common than we think.

noobermin 9y ago

Place this as another bullet point in the "luck plays a huge role" hypothesis with regards to success. Imagine how many other poor children in Ghana or elsewhere are just as capable of earning a degree from an elite institution but don't have the opportunity because of their lot in regards to where they were born.

projektir 9y ago
Even if you did give all those the opportunities, what about the rest? We always seem to be so worried about people with certain "capabilities", whatever those are, not being pulled from certain areas or not getting opportunities, but... what about everyone else? There's far more of them. Isn't this just luck also?
xxSparkleSxx 9y ago
And to extend this, think about all of the Americans in poverty that would flourish if we all had equality of opportunity in this country.

1024core 9y ago

While the guy's story is very heart-warming, the most important part, which they quickly glossed over, was his getting married to an American lady who helped him migrate. Without that marriage, he would most probably still be in Ghana. Also: he was performing an important role in Ghana delivering medicines, and by migrating, now that sector has lost an important person. I wish he would go back with his newfound knowledge and help make things better in Ghana, where he is needed much more than in the US.

partycoder 9y ago
Not sure about that. Ghana and other countries might have sovereignty in paper, but in practice they're victims of a new form of colonization: debt. A hardworking person like him could go waste his entire life trying to improve his country economy, but as soon as things get a bit better, a corrupt leader will go and contract debt from vulture funds like the IMF again, pass hundreds of millions of dollars to his personal account in Switzerland and ruin his country again for many decades in 5 minutes. If you want poverty to end, end vulture funds and end banking protections for corrupt leaders. But of course that will never happen, because those dictators are the very reason countries can contract high interest loans and neocolonial powers depend on that to succeed. Neocolonial powers also depend on disorganization. They cannot allow a strong government defending national interests to be formed. That would mean equal treaties, fair taxation, putting people to work for their own well being, expensive labor and expensive raw materials. This is why they will do all they can to get the corrupt guy elected by all means necessary, even if it involves killing. Your view of the world is very narrow.
- phr4ts 9y ago
  Authority stealing depends hugely on opaqueness, the ability of elected individuals to have privacy in their supposedly PUBLIC dealings. Thieves in position of authority benefit from EXPERT status i.e. citizens do not feel qualified to monitor the activities the activities of the elected. Officials openly flout their ill gotten wealth and the citizens are in awe, praying to God for a chance to eat the 'National cake.' Just last month, I talked to at least 10 ordinary persons. And these 'educated' individuals couldn't suspend disbelieve and imagine how much better their world would be if they could keep their representatives in check. They all believed that their votes didn't matter. And it's quite true. In the last Nigerian election for instance, individuals from the Igbo tribe weren't given voters card because they wouldn't vote for the incumbent party. I've spent a ton of time thinking about the state of Africa. And I don't see a way out short of a bloody revolution. Even then, history says a revolution would only replace one set of tyrants with another.

mgh2 9y ago

Dreams are possible in America only and only if you have a green card...don't bother about the suffering rest who were born elsewhere

rak00n 9y ago
Not true. Plenty of people come to USA with H1B/F1 and make a good life here. Hell even Sundar Pichai is one of those people.

LyalinDotCom 9y ago

Is there some good organizations to donate to that helps underprivileged kids get through school?

uxhacker 9y ago

Having lived in Ghana in mid 2000's this story does not surprise me. The team that I worked with went on to work for Google, Microsoft and Yahoo. Another colleague built up the Internet in Africa, building 15 Internet Exchanges in different countries for under 200,000 dollars. In 1974 the literacy rate in Ghana was the same as in Portugal. Things diverged. Portugal became a democracy, Ghana went through many years of dictatorship and misguided help from the west. I remember once interviewing one person sent from the States to help the software company I was working with. His expertises was 'Network Streamlining', that turned out to be sorting out cables. If you take the expense of sending somebody from the states, versus sending from Ghana to the West for training versus the payback. We should be sending more people to the west for training rather than the other way round.