Rising from the Ashes: A Destiny Helper Returning home fromAccra, my mother handed me the phone with a worried expression. She asked, “Have you been up to something bad?” Confused, I replied, “No, why?” She whispered, “There’s a gentleman on the line for you,” and passed me the phone. I wondered who would call me on my mother’s phone. “Hello Moses,” the voice on the other end said. “Hello, Sir.” “My name is Kofi Tsikata. I’m the one who gave you my business card at the conference. Can you come to my office tomorrow afternoon?” Surprised and excited, I replied, “But I just got home to Bawku.” “Can you come to Accra tomorrow?” he asked. My mother, pretending to sweep nearby, was eavesdropping on the conversation. After the call ended, she asked, “Who was that, and what does he want?” I explained everything to my parents. “I think you should go,” my father said. “You never know, something good could come out of this.” They gave me some money, and I headed back to Accra. It was very early in the morning, around 4:30 a.m., when I arrived in Accra, and since I was really tired, I looked for a bench at the station and slept there. Then at 8:00 a.m., I woke up and set off for theWorld Bank office. “You know how to read, right?” Mr. Tsikata asked me when I got to his office, to which I nodded. Then, giving me a document, he showed me the Public Information SystemOffice and asked me to go and bring him a print of it. That was how I began working with theWorld Bank, first as an office boy, doing menial tasks like photocopying and printing, etc. When we closed, Kofi would drop me off at Bawaleshie, where I lived with my elder brother in his one-bedroom rented place. Kofi took me to almost every event and many high-level events. Until one day, I was asked to sit in a Youth Conference, and I made some serious contributions on Youth and Agriculture. Here again, favour shone on me, for I was not the only contributor at the conference, yet it was me that the light shone on, for it seemed that I had impressed an important person in theWorld Bank. A Gem Is Discovered “Kofi, you know, we really must involve Moses in more of our activities, maybe make him a Youth Coordinator. He made some absolutely intelligent submissions at the conference today.” It was the Country Director of theWorld Bank, recommending me toMr. Tsikata. I had sat in one of the conferences for Youth and Agriculture earlier that day and had made some really good contributions. “That is what we are grooming him for,” Kofi Tsikata said. That day, it was decided that I should be the Assistant Youth Coordinator for aWorld Bank Youth in Action Project, which focused on turning youth into entrepreneurs, moving from a policy perspective to an action perspective. The project covered Ghana, Liberia, and Sierra Leone and had funding of USD 50,000. Such an elevation didn’t happen overnight; it felt as though God was pushing me closer to my success. Moses with Kofi Tsikata 25 The Birthday Journal
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