An unlikely education

It's amazing what you take for granted, even when living in a developing country and traveling to another.

Like money. Or rather, access to it.

I arrive in Ghana, having barely thought of the local money situation. After all, I have my ATM card, credit cards, and even some US dollars to be safe. Having spent the last of my dollars on a local sim card, phone minutes, and a Coldstone ice cream in Dubai, I try to withdraw money from the airport ATM. Denied. Hmm, that's weird. I try again at the hotel. Denied. Down the street. Denied. You get the point... It's only later when I start asking around that I realize that every Ghana bank and nearly every international bank only takes Visa ATM cards.

Lovely. I have a Visa credit card (which no one seems to take -- credit cards are still barely used in Ghana), but my ATM card is a Mastercard. I talk to the hotel staff, but they're hardly accommodating -- suggesting that a taxi can take me around to find an ATM (mind you, this is around 8pm, which does NOT seem like the smartest thing...) I think back to my first trip to Africa in 2005... where Rwanda still had yet to open its first ATM machine (they were planning on opening their first the next year), and where I completely ran out of cash in Ethiopia... not only were the ATMs not working, but their phone lines were "different" and completely incompatible with the international numbers provided by credit card companies!

The only saving grace was my hotel manager -- straight out of the scene from Pretty Woman where Julia Roberts shows him all her credit cards and cries that no one will take her money.

This time my saving grace was in an unlikely source: Nana, who I met today at the IHI workshop. Appalled that the hotel told me to take a taxi to run around from bank to bank at night, she offered to take me around herself. We stopped at three more ATMs before I was nearly ready to give up. We decided to try one more -- Stanbec -- a bank from South Africa. Hallejulah! -- success!

Little did I know, however, that our ride was just getting started. In an effort to avoid u-turns to get back to my hotel, we end up getting exceedingly lost.

But it was an incredible ride -- I ended up seeing much of Accra (albeit unintentionally!), and learning a great deal about the country itself. One of the areas we find ourselves in is the Fort -- right by the coast. I ask what the Fort was used for and am stunned by the answer due to the sheer size of the enormous structure: the Fort was used to hold slaves before they were taken to the New World. Many of the nearby houses are still the original structures from hundreds of years ago; it's now the slum area of Accra, and Nana talks about the trans-generational effects of poverty.

Ten minutes later and we're passing the University of Ghana, the country's most prestigious university. I ask what the most popular major is; business, economics, and engineering is the answer -- everyone who wants to be rich goes into banking, IT, or telecom. Straight from undergraduate, the top grads in these fields can make 1000-2000 cedi per month ($700 - $1400/month); those with Masters in these fields can make 2000-3000 per month.

I ask Nana about herself and her family. She's a doctor, having come from a family of physicians. Given Ghana's huge healthcare needs, I'm shocked to hear that the universities only have spots for 150-200 medical school seats per year. She instead chose to study in the US, in Boston... I should have asked earlier, since "Boston" always seems to be code for Harvard, and indeed it turns out that she did both her undergraduate and medical school studies at Harvard. I ask how she came to apply there. She laughs and says it was purely by chance. When I press more, she said that a friend of the family saw potential in her and her sister, and urged them to apply to Harvard. She had nothing to lose, so she did -- always intending to return to Ghana and focus on public health to improve the healthcare systems of the country. Indeed, she's now working on an IHI project to improve the quality of maternal health across the country.

Pretty inspiring. We soon find our way back to the hotel, and I return to my room a bit richer than before -- both literally and figuratively :)