Eccles Visiting Scholar
91ɬÂþ and A.P.E.X. Events is most grateful for the support from which made this event possible.
As a child of the 1980’s, Sonia Aboagye grew up in Wimbledon watching TV images of Band Aid creator, Bob Geldof, flying Concord between mega Live Aid concerts in London and Philadelphia. Images of a young Madonna singing ‘Holiday’ and The Cars singing ‘Drive’ to raise money for Ethiopian famine relief, became imprints on her mind, that shaped her journey in life. While at university, Sonia became a corporate and trust fundraiser, raising funds to send skilled volunteers overseas for 2-year programmes – a variation of the Peace Corps. Later, she moved to raising funds for a neurological hospital and then a UK-wide charity for children with speech and language difficulties. One day, she realized that she wanted to shift from being a facilitator of good projects, to being more hands-on. This led her to retrain as a Speech-Language Pathologist, with a view to one day also taking her skills to Africa to aid development.
Thirty years later, in 2018, Sonia and her partner relocated to Ghana, West Africa, a country famous for its gold, cocoa, and for being the birthplace of the late UN Head, Kofi Annan. It is also infamously known for its historic slave trade, and Michelle Obama was moved to tears when she stood in front of ‘the door of no return’ at the slave fortress of Cape-Coast Castle during her family’s visit in 2009. Ghana, despite a population of nearly 30 million people, had just 5 Speech-Language Pathologists in practice. Sonia’s mission was to change that. She is now Head of the Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences at the University of Health and Allied Health Sciences (UHAS), located in Ho, in the Volta region of Ghana. She and her faculty run Ghana’s first and only Bachelors’ degree programme for training Speech-Language Pathologists and Audiologists. Over the next decade, they aim to change the face of provision for people with communication disabilities across Ghana and sub-Saharan Africa.
Reflection
On Thursday, February 18, 2021, A.P.E.X. Events was pleased to host via Zoom speech-language pathologist and Eccles Visiting Scholar, Sonia Aboagye. As a child of the 1980’s, Aboagye grew up in Wimbledon watching TV images of Band-Aid creator, Bob Geldof, flying Concord between mega Live Aid concerts in London and Philadelphia. Images of a young Madonna singing ‘Holiday’ and The Cars singing ‘Drive’ to raise money for Ethiopian famine relief, became imprints on her mind, that shaped her journey in life. Thirty years later, in 2018, Aboagye and her partner relocated to Ghana, West Africa, and she is now head of the Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences at the University of Health and Allied Health Sciences (UHAS), located in Ho, in the Volta region of Ghana. She and her faculty run Ghana’s first and only bachelor's degree program for training speech-language pathologists and audiologists. Over the next decade, they aim to change the face of provision for people with communication disabilities across Ghana and sub-Saharan Africa. Aboagye, calling in via Zoom from Ghana, was introduced to the stage by the Interim Dean of 91ɬÂþ’s College of Health Sciences, Camille Thomas.
Sonia began her presentation with an introduction of herself and her background leading her to where she is now, describing her childhood being raised in both London and Ghana and how the unique cultural differences between the two areas shaped her growing up. She also discussed several experiences and conversations she had had that unbeknownst to her at the time, were life-changing for her and led to her opening up her first speech pathology clinic in Ghana. As she talked about her initial experience with her work in Ghana, Sonia commented on the impact of her work and how her clinic and work had a huge influence on the lives and health of the people of Ghana, as well some of the challenges she faced, both as a Black woman and a woman working in a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) field, along with the differing cultural identities she faced from the people of Ghana and London.
Nonetheless, Sonia persevered and continued (and still continues) to complete her mission to help the people of Ghana with communication and speech disabilities, and ended her presentation with a famous excerpt from the book Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres: "Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your root was so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being in love, which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Those that truly love have roots that grow towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossoms have fallen from their branches, they find that they are one tree and not two."
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