Kofi Boahene

My colleagues at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have been badgering me to tell this story for years. Born and raised in Ghana, first of eight children, my father was a chemist (a form of pharmacist) and from the age of ten I dreamed of becoming a doctor one day and helping my fellow Ghanaians get access to better health care. I'd read an entry in an encyclopedia about the famed Mayo Clinic and got it in my head that I would one day work there. Dr. William Mayo and his two sons started the clinic and I imagined my family following their example. Nearly forty years later, it has come true—I am a plastic and facial reconstructive surgeon at John Hopkins and all but one of my siblings are employed as doctors and in other healthcare professionals.

Having completed the book, even I am astonished at how it all happened in spite of one major obstacle after another and, against all odds, I managed to realize my dreams. There was hard work, sacrifice, and commitment but also people, strangers even—modern-day Samaritans—who miraculously popped up at just the right moment to clear the way. As a person of faith, this has been evidence that, as my grandmother taught me, God has had a plan for me.

My title is the first line of an African proverb: However far the stream flows, it never forgets its source. For more than a decade I have remembered my source in participating in numerous surgical missions to rebuild the faces of mostly children in Ghana, Nigeria, Rwanda, Peru, and Bangladesh. I endeavor to be a good Samaritan, and I encourage it in everyone I meet.

Ultimately, my book is about love of family, love of God, and the modern immigrant experience.