Member of Parliament for Bosomtwe Constituency and former Education Minister, Yaw Osei Adutwum, has recounted how unexpected help from a stranger shaped both his brother’s education in Germany and his own journey to the United States.
Speaking on The Career Trail programme aired on Joy Learning TV and Joy News, Dr Adutwum explained that the journey began when his younger brother expressed a desire to study abroad after hearing conversations about people travelling to Germany for school.
“One day my brother said to me, ‘I hear some people discussing travelling to Germany to go to school. Why don’t you help me go to school in Germany too?’” he recalled.
Dr Adutwum said he initially questioned how that would be possible for a middle school graduate, but later decided to explore the opportunity and applied for his brother to attend a German language school.
According to him, his brother gained admission, but a major challenge emerged during the visa process.
“The big issue when I went to the German embassy with him was that we needed somebody with a foreign bank statement to sponsor him. And in my family, even a local bank statement was difficult to come by,” he explained.
He narrated how a breakthrough came unexpectedly while walking with a friend at Republic Hall in KNUST.
“We were entering Republic Hall at the Porter’s Lodge when a guy passed us, turned back and asked, ‘What do you want?’ I said I needed a foreign bank statement,” he recounted.
According to him, the stranger immediately responded that his uncle had given him extra bank statements for travel to Germany and offered to help.
“He said, ‘Yeah, my uncle has brought me two to travel to Germany. I can give you one,” he narrated.
The stranger provided the bank statement, which enabled his brother’s visa process to succeed. Shortly after, his brother travelled to Germany and began his studies, marking the beginning of what would become a life-changing chain of events for the family.
Dr Adutwum explained that years later, after completing his national service and struggling to find a job, his brother who was already abroad made a surprising decision to support him.
“Some of my brother’s friends who had gone to America were doing very well, so he said he wanted to sponsor me,” he said.
That decision eventually led Dr Adutwum to go through the process and travel to the United States within six months.
He also shared a humorous early experience upon arriving in America while traveling by Greyhound bus from New York to California.
“At every bus stop, the food I saw there was mainly hotdog. I was starving. I didn’t know Americans eat dog meat. I had to be told it was beef before I could eat it,” he said, reflecting on the cultural shock of his early days abroad.
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