OUR STORIES - SELINA

In January 2026 our nurse Selina started her second year as a Bachelor of Nursing student, during a dinner celebrating her five year anniversary with the nonprofit we talked about her upcoming semester.  Her face beaming, she exclaims, “I never knew I would be here!”

Selina was raised in a small village in the northern part of Ghana.  Her father had so many wives I honestly can’t ever remember the number, and having 61 children he had no time or concern for daughters.  It wasn’t until an NGO came to her village and offered her father and grandmother (whom she was staying with as her mother had run away leaving her behind), food to send this girl to school. So at the age of 13 Selina started in Class 1.

With Max, Sarah, and I sitting around the table enjoying our dinner, Selina tells us gesturing animatedly to the moon above us about trying to do her learning by moonlight at midnight.  You see her village had no running water, no electricity, no technology and no grocery stores.  Although Selina was allowed to go to school that did not remove her from her daily duties. She had to wake before dawn to “go to farm”, a phrase that is used for all the work that is required to grow, gather, and harvest food, before returning to the home to cook for the family, fetch water, bath, and get ready for school.

Starting school at such an old age she was constantly taunted and teased by the predominantly male student body. Told by the school administration that if she caused any trouble she would be kicked out, she was forced to bear this constant threat, to the point that she had to have allies go and get lunch for her and bring it to her in the classroom for fear of what could happen in the schoolyard.

After suffering the school day she would return home, change, and return to farm until dark.  After cooking the family food, doing all the cleaning and washing, she would sleep for a few hours and then wake in the night to do her studies by moonlight.  If there was no moon there was no way to study.

With her diligence and the continued support of the NGO she was able to skip a few grades and get through primary school. At the end of junior high school her test scores were so high her father couldn’t ignore her intelligence and dedication, and with her acceptance into Senior High School (SHS) he sold a cow to pay her tuition.  Her father, grandmother, school, and she all had to keep his support secret for if any of her brothers or uncles were to know that the family money was being used to help a girl go to school, they would threaten not only her education, but her life.

Entering SHS was Selina’s first experience of electricity. She smiles and laughs while recalling to us what it was like, “Wow, I could study anytime and you can see everything!” she says through giggles. It seemed she had arrived, but she still had so much struggle ahead of her.

Working as a street hawker selling anything she could afford, she worked her way through high school. After completion she once again begged her family for support to send her to nursing school.  At the time there was no way she could afford to go for a degree, so she selected a certificate course and graduated from nursing school, ready to join the workforce.

But this was not to be.

The Ghana government had no money to pay civil servants and private hospitals didn’t want certificate nurses. Selina spent five years trying to get a job as a nurse. She got married, had a baby, and sold anything that would bring food to the table. She even worked as a post-op cleaner scrubbing biological remains from tables, instruments, and clothing for a whopping $50 per month in hopes that the hospital would eventually hire her as a nurse.  But when she got pregnant a second time, they fired her instead.

With the weight of a one-year-old on her back and a baby in her womb, she washed bowls at a busy food stall and hawked on the street to get by. She repeatedly went to the Health Minister’s office to beg for a government nursing posting, but every time was denied entry to even make her plea. Exhausted and despondent but ever hopeful and with a swollen belly of a child due to arrive, she made one more trip to the Minister’s Office.  When she was once again denied she decided “to make some noise.”  She decided that there was no way they could ignore a fat pregnant lady making so much noise, and sure enough that got her a short conversation with the person able to send her name into the government system.

Now she has arrived… or has she……

Her posting letter interview came and then so did her baby!  She was to report for an interview to a town she had never been to before a two-hour drive away just two days after a difficult delivery that ruptured her uterus and required a cesarean section.

Now this part of the story is going to seem totally fictional, but if you know Selina, her honesty and her audacity, you would know she speaks the truth.

Just 48 hours after this major surgery, with drain tubes and catheters and leaking wound dressings, and in her hospital gown, Selina used all her savings and got a taxi at 3 in the morning to take her the two hours to the new Dodowa Hospital to report for her interview. I can vividly imagine Selina shuffling in, her face a mask of pain, her posting letter clutched in her hand ready to work that day if told to.  Thank goodness the head nurse took pity on her, hired her, treated her, and sent her back to the hospital where she had left her sick bed and her baby.

However, the trip had cost her.  She spent several more days in the surgery recovery ward.

Then as soon as she was physically able, she packed her two-year-old and her three-month-old and moved to Dodowa to start her post as a certificate nurse at the CHPS compound. But because the government still didn’t have any money, she worked for nearly a year without pay.  She worked cooking and selling anything that would move while continuing nursing. Up before dawn, up at midnight, hustling to provide for her family.

Then one day, after suffering through months of COVID lockdown, she met with a white lady who invited her to help take care of the children at an orphanage.  As she worked in the community she was aware of this orphanage and how badly the children were in need of nursing care, and how reluctant the owners were to get help for them, she happily agreed, and I am ever grateful she did.

In the five years I have come to know Selina and her story, piece by piece, I still get new glimpses into her life and struggles and all she has overcome to be what she is today. And despite so much suffering she is one of the most amazing, caring, humble people I have ever met.

Today Selina owns her own house that she built on her own land, she is a solid and respected community nurse, and although still married she is the sole provider for herself and her three children.  And her story is still getting brighter as she is in university to get her Bachelor of Nursing.

I know this is not the end of Selina’s story. I am sure there will be more struggles, probably more suffering, but I also know there will be more stories of her overcoming.