Yussif Mustapha

Yussif Mustapha

Turkey

I was born is Kumasi, Ghana, in small town called Bompata, where I grew up in a so-called middle-class society. I believe that it was Bompata’s ethics and etiquettes, more than its social class, that aided in building up my personality as a child from a low-income earning family. Back in the days, we (the children) were taught to live in peace, harmony and solidarity no matter the difference in ranks and status of our individual parents and families. I remember after successfully graduating from high school (also in Kumasi, in a renowned school called Prempeh College), some of my childhood friends started preparing to travel abroad (mainly USA, Canada, and Europe) to study under self-fund in some of the biggest tertiary institutions. At that same time, I was struggling to secure a scholarship to pursue by bachelor’s degree program due to the financial status of my family (my father had passed away four months earlier and my mother was only a house wife), yet that did not alter my dreams and ambitions in life: I had a slogan that kept ringing in my mind as an alarm that wakes a desperate man to action, “your attitude, more than your aptitude, determines your altitude in life.”
Fortunately, I eventually won a scholarship to study in one of Turkey’s most prestigious universities, and another scholarship to further my education in a master’s program. I frequently refer to the societal ethics imbued in me from childhood because that contributed tremendously to my occupying leadership positions throughout my academic life: I was a sectional leader at middle school; the local branch president of Ghana Muslim students at the high school, and currently the deputy secretary of Ghana Development and Cooperation Organization, and NGO in Ankara, Turkey.