Richard Kweku and Georgia Agyare Mensah with children: Marcus Amoah Mensah
(14 years), Fidel Kuuku Mensah (20 months), Miguel Joojo Mensah (5 months )
Road
The
less
traveled
Ph.D. candidate follows unlikely path
I
t was a Tuesday and the ground was damp from
a rain the night before. A little boy and his
grandmother awoke early and began a journey
from their small village in West Africa.
He was on his way to kindergarten. The boy had
started at another school, closer to his village. But
it was shut down before he could begin his second
week of school – the money just wasn’t there.
And so began the educational journey of Richard
Mensah, who grew up as a subsistence farm boy in
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a small village of about 80 people in the Central
Region of Ghana, West Africa.
“Grandmother never stepped a foot in a classroom,
but she was the one who took me to kindergarten to
write my name. I was almost six years old,” recalls
Mensah.
Day to day and year to year, it was never certain
how long Mensah could continue to go to school.
Ghana parents pay for their wards’ education from
kindergarten to the end, he explained.