June 2004

Asana Mohamad • Big Plans

The University of Iowa is my stepping-stone to the future. After graduation, I want to get into the College of Dentistry, probably to study periodontics, but my long-term goal is to build a clinic in Ghana, my parents’ homeland.

Asana (far right) and her twin sister Fuseina enjoy catching up with their relatives in Ghana.

My parents moved to the United States to pursue higher education (UC-Berkeley, then the University of Washington in Seattle). Daddy got his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering and Mommy got her bachelor’s degree in accounting. I was born in Seattle in 1984, so I’m a U.S. citizen. A year later, my family moved to Saudi Arabia, where my parents still live and work. Saudi Arabia offered good career opportunities, and my parents live only about an hour from Makkah [Mecca], Islam’s holiest city.

Family is very important to us. Every year, our parents have saved so we could all go back home to Ghana to see our relatives. I would like to write about them all, but for now I will just tell you about one person, my grandfather, the late Kpeli-Naa Alhaji Mumuni Bawumia. When I was growing up, he was just “Grandpa” to me, as I didn’t understand that he was an important person. He was the Ghanaian ambassador to Saudi Arabia from 1988 to 1992, living near us in Jedda. When he
moved back to Ghana, we kept in touch via letters. Although Grandpa was so busy, he made time to see us whenever we went home. One year, he smiled and said, “Oh! You just missed Kofi Annan. If you’d come yesterday, you would have had a chance to meet him.”

Grandpa’s living room wall was full of pictures of himself with diplomats and world leaders. In this living room, Grandpa would ask us what we wanted to be when we grew up. The question was always the same, but the answers were different each year: Pilot. Astronaut. Doctor. Dentist.

Every time, he would talk about how Ghana needs more professionals and encourage us to study hard. I was in the 11th grade when Grandpa became chief of his home village, Kperiga. By then, I wanted to be a dentist, while my sisters Zee and Fuseina had both decided to be doctors. (Now, Zee wants to work in public health, and Fuseina is going into computer science.) When we went home in 2001, Grandpa said he would leave us a plot of land on which to build a clinic in Kperiga. The northern part of Ghana has only one good hospital, which can’t meet the needs of all the people. It doesn’t even have a permanent dentist or eye doctor.

Grandpa passed away suddenly on September 22, 2002, so he won’t see us fulfill his dream, but we’re still determined to do it.

Iowa is going to be part of my future, too. Once the clinic is established, I hope to open up my own private dentistry practice near Iowa City. And then, of course, I hope to be married someday, which could complicate things a little, especially if Mr. Right has future plans as elaborate as mine. But I’ll see. Only God knows what the future holds, and, as usual, God knows best.