Since the dawn of mankind, the most fundamental questions that continue to baffle all generations alike are about the nature of our existence on this earth. Are we pilots of our own lives? Do we decide what path we take? Do we really get a say in how we progress or when we come to our eventual end?
Is it all planned out and kept in store for us by fate itself, or is it merely a tapestry of choices and circumstances, meticulously interwoven by an invisible hand? My journey through life has traversed many philosophical questions like these, and the telling and exploration of the lessons I learned along the way is my primary reason and motivation for writing this book.
I was born on a cool and peaceful February night in the year 1984 to Monica Mettle-Nunoo, an ambitious young woman, and her husband, a Chemical Engineer, Emmanuel Ohene Opare Sr. My mother was twenty-four years old, and my father, thirty-four. I was their third child in three years and was delivered without incident at Ridge Hospital by one Dr. Beccles in Accra, the capital of my homeland, Ghana.
I was born during a period of political turmoil and uncertainty in Ghana. Three years before my birth, the government of Dr. Hilla Limann, the duly elected president of Ghana, was overthrown on New Year’s Eve, 1981 by Flt. Lt. Jerry John Rawlings, a dynamic and charismatic flight lieutenant in the Ghana Air Force. The overthrow came by way of a military coup d’état. Surprisingly, this was not the first military coup perpetrated by Rawlings. It was his third.
His first coup attempt occurred a few weeks prior to a scheduled civilian election, in May 1979. However, the coup was unsuccessful and led to his arrest, court martial and subsequent death sentence. While awaiting execution, J.J. Rawlings, as he was usually called, escaped from prison with the aid of co-conspirators in the military and commandeered a radio station at gunpoint to announce his successful takeover of the government.
His rhetoric against corruption and what he described as the collusion of the government with Ghana’s former colonial masters, won him the sympathy and support of the masses, many of whom saw him as a freedom fighter and revolutionary figure, who they believed could transform the country for the better.
In 1997 I started the ninth grade. During this time in Ghana, students in the ninth grade had to take a standardized exam known as the Basic Education Certificate Examination or B.E.C.E. in short. The exam, which covered twelve subjects, was a mandatory requirement for admission to High School. About a year before taking the exam, all students were required to select three high schools in order of preference as part of the registration.
We also had to select three areas of academic focus from a list of subjects, including General Science, Business, General Arts, Visual Arts, Home Economics, and Agriculture. Depending on how well a student did on the B.E.C.E., they would be admitted to one of the three high schools they selected to take courses from one of the three areas of focus they chose.
Although I was generally a good student, I was terrified of taking standardized tests. For some still unknown reason, I would blank out or forget the things I knew during standardized tests. I was also plagued by an inability to focus for long periods of time, which made studying for exams the more challenging.
My desire to come to America began long before I boarded the plane that brought me to Los Angeles in 2003. In fact, it started as a literal dream. As a young boy of about 6 years of age, I began to feel drawn to America after my father returned from his three-month business trip to California in 1989.
All I knew about America before this, were the stories and pictures my mother had shared about her stint as a foreign exchange student in New York in the late 1970s. I remembered her stories about living on a farm in a small town called Sherman. She spoke about her culture shock especially as she was introduced to food she could only describe as crazy.
We learned about foods like the sloppy Joe, shepherd’s pie, and many others, and we gagged any time she reminded us that Americans added milk, and sometimes, sugar to some of their soups. We thought that was gross. It was incomprehensible to us that meat could be slathered with sweet and sugary sauces. For us sugar was something only used in breakfast cereals and porridge or in pastries and candy, not in soups or on meat.