What Should I Do with the Rest of My Life_ - Bruce Frankel [33]
Researching Africa anew forty years later, Dana was emboldened to go to Ghana when she learned that it was relatively safe for travel and that English remained the official language of the former British colony. No small thing for Dana, who is not adept in languages. Then, too, her friend Tetteh Tawiah had been raised in Accra, Ghana’s capital, and might be a good resource.
When she told Tetteh that she was planning to go to Ghana to establish a program, he was alarmed. He was worried for Dana’s safety and tried to dissuade her. “She was going to stick out like a sore thumb—an older white woman traveling alone. Even I would be cautious traveling alone in an unfamiliar African country,” he told me over coffee in a Starbucks in the Citicorp Building in Manhattan.
Dana was undeterred. She convinced Tetteh to call his father, Hope Tawiah, a semiretired construction project manager in Accra, and ask him if he would give her some guidance when she arrived in Ghana.
Contrary to plans, Tetteh’s father was not waiting for Dana when she arrived at Kotoka International Airport. Nor was anyone else there. Fortunately, Dana had foreseen the possibility of a mix-up and had made reservations at a hotel in Accra. She spent the day after her arrival shopping and pondering her next move. “The one thing I knew was that there was no turning back. I didn’t want to go home and say it didn’t work out. There was something inside me that insisted I do this,” she said. She finally reached Tetteh’s father by phone, and the following morning he appeared in her hotel lobby accompanied by a bearded man wearing a white caftan and carrying a wooden staff, a fetish priest from the village of Pokuase. They had arranged to take Dana there and for her to stay at Topido, an inn run by the only white person in the village.
After a twenty-mile ride north, they arrived on the outskirts of Pokuase, where Tetteh’s father had a good relationship with the village chief, Nii Otto Kwame III, with whom he had been in business. Dana’s bags were taken to her room and she was whisked off to meet Kwame. He was holding court on the screened veranda of his house when she arrived. He wore a West African dinkra fabric over his shoulders and, surrounded by a translator and several young assistants, he spoke with solemnity.
Dana explained her idea to start a micro-finance project in Ghana. The chief said Pokuase would welcome it. Though everyone was cordial, she left the meeting without making any promises except that she would return to inform the chief of any decision she made.
Back at Topido, the innkeeper, who was Dutch, quizzed Dana about the purpose of her visit. “How are you going to start this thing?”
“Good point. I guess I have got to meet some women,” she answered vaguely. “But how am I going to do that? I can’t just go walk down the street.”
“I know what you have to do,” he said and laid out his plan.
On Sunday, he marched Dana into the village’s Methodist church and up to its altar. He persuaded the minister to hand over the microphone to her and prompted Dana to explain her mission. Without nervousness and trusting her vision, she spoke through an interpreter. “I wanted them to understand me so much that I lost all self-consciousness. I just wanted to make it as clear as possible what I wanted to do and exactly how they could participate,” she said. When she concluded twenty minutes later, she encouraged any woman interested to come see her at the inn. To her relief, several showed up the next day. Excited that her dream was actually taking shape, Dana kept her word and returned to the village chief to inform him that she had decided to launch her program in Pokuase. He told her that he was delighted. He then informed her that she would have to work through him.
“Oh no, this is woman to woman, but I will keep you informed,” Dana said emphatically. Though slightly astonished by her brash response, he assented.
Her confidence stoked, Dana made appointments and met with high-level Ghanian government officials, members of Parliament,