Growing up hasn’t been easy and I know that I’m not alone in this. People keep asking me, what is your passion in life? At different points in life, I have had to give different answers. Recently, I started thinking about the answer to this question. And why I get to answer differently at times.

 From a very young age, I was very passionate about becoming a medical doctor. Let give a bit of context to put things in perspective. Back in basic school, the only professions I remember my teachers mentioning to us was; Doctor, Nurse, Teacher and Farmers.

I certainly did not want to become a farmer. This was because I saw all these farmers in and around my neighbourhood and how little they made from their produce and hard work. For being a nurse, I only knew it to be a profession for females and hence I didn’t even consider it an option. Was I going to be a teacher? Didn’t occur to me at that young age. So, the dream was to become Dr. Obed Ehoneah.

By primary five, I left my hometown, Aiyinasi, to stay in a nearby village (name withheld, but those who know, know). The observation I made in that village was that, almost everyone was in a way a farmer. The others who either store keepers, susu collectors or had no fixed work.

Surprisingly, the most common job which involved the use of a pen was being a lotto agent. Meaning the most literates in the village were lotto agents. Being a child in such an area limited you in so many things. You didn’t see the importance of schooling because they best you could become was to become a lotto agent.

Subconsciously, this affected the young ones there. A lot of them didn’t want to go to school and even the fraction of them who attended school performed poorly. So, I thought to myself I have to do my best in studying because I didn’t ever want to end up as a lotto agent. Still dreaming of becoming a doctor.

I was understudying my father who was a Licensed chemical seller (now know as Over the counter Medicines Seller). Over my stay in the store, I got a shift in interest or should I say what I wanted to become was becoming more obvious to me. I was always stunned that a small molecule like that could easily relieve someone of whatever condition they brought to our facility. To me that was magic.

So instead of becoming a doctor, I started dreaming of becoming one of the magicians who make these medicines. I later on found out that, that was the work of a pharmacist. So, I wanted to become a pharmacist. This was by the time I was in Junior high school. I had a lot of individuals who were supplying our store encouraging me to become a pharmacist. At this point I had only one passion, to become a pharmacist.

In secondary school, I was following my parents’ advice keenly. Study hard, make good grades so you can get a job that you want in future. I was so much into my books, nothing more nothing less. Little games, little entertainment, and a few friends. The only other thing I had time for was worshiping God.

By final year, I was one of the very good students in the school and was selected to be part of a new club; the robotics club. In the robotics club, we were trained to build and programmed robots. This was the time that I was exposed to the magic of computers. Another magic? Was my passion going to change?

Even though, as a member of the robotics team, I didn’t have much to offer because I had little to no knowledge about the use of computers and programming. I came to admire my colleagues who were programming the robots and showing off other things they could with the computer.

I guess I am attracted to anything magical. This new magic kept tormenting me. I couldn’t wait to have my own computer. I went to the school library in search of search of a book to learn about computers. I found one on creating your own websites. I borrowed the book and learnt how to code from it.       

After school, my elder brother, Felix Ehoneah Naami, gave me his laptop to use even though he didn’t have a new one (I wonder if all elder brothers can do this? thank you so much bro). From this time onwards, I started learning a whole lot of things, from graphic designing to hardware.

Ever since then, my love for computers and the magic they can perform has never dwindled. I’m always finding new things on it and flaming my desire for information technology.

Now, I wasn’t certain whether to study computer science or pharmacy in the university. I consulted a number of people who I knew, not really mentioning my love for computers. I finally decided to go read pharmacy (i.e. the Doctor of Pharmacy Degree) and hold unto the computer skills as a hobby.

When choosing courses during the university applications, I chose Doctor of Pharmacy as first choice, followed by computer science and computer engineering as third choice. Eventually, I was accepted into the faculty of pharmacy, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology.

Looking forward to reading pharmacy but having programming and designing as a hobby, I started my tertiary education. Pharmacy school soon got me busy, I easily forgot about my hobby quite early in first year. I wanted to survive the stress of pharmacy school and that was all that mattered to me.

It was not until second year, second semester when I had a decrease in course load, that I started going back to my hobby. From that time to now, I have been diving more into the field of information technology. People who come to realise my obsession with computers usually argue why I didn’t go to read computer science and according to them, wasting my time in pharmacy.

Currently, I am going to my 6^th year in pharmacy school and I still love computers a lot. Sometimes, I find myself in a dilemma, thinking about what to actually do in future. Whether to practice pharmacy or obtain a career in information technology.

It’s only the future that can tell what I will become. Now I throw a question to you, what is my passion?