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Dana’s Story - The Founding of Women's Trust, Inc.
Based on the adage that life is lived in thirds, the first third you learn, the second third you earn, and the final third you return, and with Olga as a role model, I decided to greet the youth of old age with my own way to give back. Having made a successful career in the financial world, and on the advice of a former beau, I began to research microfinance. I read Muhammad Yunus’ book Banker to the Poor and decided that the concept was right for me. I also knew that whatever I did it had to benefit women and girls. This was reinforced by the information I repeatedly uncovered that all social indicators are positively impacted when you help women to help themselves; their families and their communities are the beneficiaries. The next step was to decide where to begin a microfinance program.
At that point in my life, I was dividing my time between my apartment in New York, California, and an old fire station in Wilmot Flat, New Hampshire, that I was in the process of converting to a residence. In New York, I had a personal trainer Tetteh, a delightful young Ghanaian man, whose father still lived in Ghana. My senior thesis in college focused on Pan-Africanism as espoused by the first president of an independent Ghana - Kwame Nkruma. My reading and conversations indicated that Ghana was a relatively safe place to travel with English being the language of the government. These were very important criteria. Being a woman planning to travel alone and not being much of a linguist, I began to talk to people I knew about my idea of going to Ghana to find a village where I could start a microfinance program. I talked to people who had been to Africa and contacted my alma mater Scripps College to speak to a professor who had been featured
in an article in the alumni magazine about her research on Mami Waters, a West African goddess. All were helpful and moved me to another contact.Making the plane reservation was the hardest part. I agonized over the decision to book my flight for days and weeks, second-guessing myself and working myself into a major swivet. In the end, I left it to a travel agent to do the deed. The day before I left I made a hotel reservation in Accra.
Traveling to Ghana required the requisite shots, proper clothing, and preparation for travel in and to a place I had never been. I bought guidebooks, pored over maps of Ghana, continued to talk to any and everyone I knew about my adventure, and on March 2003, with my heart in my throat and my stomach in knots, boarded my flight for Accra.
The “plan” was that Tetteh’s father would meet me at the airport, but that plan did not materialize. So, after a twenty-four hour journey, and arriving alone at nine o’clock at night in a strange, hot, humid country, I was deeply grateful that I had booked a hotel room and had a place to go where I knew I was expected. The following day I explored Accra, got my feet under me somewhat, and wondered in my jetlagged state what I would do next. I shopped and finally made contact with Tetteh’s father as well as with a few others whose names I had been given.
My feeling all along was that the village I would adopt would be in the northern part of Ghana where the poverty, according to all that I had read, was particularly acute.
The following morning, I received a call from the front desk that there were two gentlemen to see me. Passing through the lobby I noticed two men – one elderly in a flowered shirt, pants, and sandals, and the other in a long white caftan, bearded and barefoot, and carrying a staff. “Well,” I thought, “that’s not them.” And, of course, it was “them”. The older man was Tetteh’s father, and his companion was a fetish priest from a village just north of Accra. They were to bring me to Pokuase village where they had located a room in an inn run by the only white person in the village. Checking out of the hotel, with suitcases in tow, I got into their car and away we went.
