Aimee Alphonso
Many Ghanaians, both home and abroad have taken to the social media to express their anger, surprise and total disagreements of a report filed by Yale University Student, Aimee Alphonso and published on University’s website after her 4weeks medical internship at the Kole Bu Teaching Hospital in Accra.
[ads1]In the report, the final year student Yale School of Medicine (YSM) who chose to complete her four-week obstetrics-gynecology clinical rotation in Accra said
The first thing that I noticed when I stepped off of the plane was intense heat. We landed during a giant dust storm — part of the annual harmattan — with temperatures bordering 100°F. I learned very quickly that sweat would become an inescapable part of my daily life. But even more striking than the heat and dust was the poverty I saw as soon as I stepped out of the airport.
According to Aimee Alphonso in her report, she saw dozens of people walking barefoot and wearing tattered rags for clothing. For her, most houses she was in Accra dilapidated and abandoned small buildings.
Dozens of people were walking barefoot, wearing tattered rags for clothing. Women balanced heavy tubs of goods on their heads, gently avoiding the goats grazing on the sparse burned grass. Colorful billboards and signs decorated dilapidated and abandoned buildings. Small houses and shops were fashioned out of old shipping containers.
This is what Aimee Alphonso said about the taxi driver who to her to her from the airport:
As I looked more closely at my taxi driver, I realized that his shoes were mismatched. His watch had only the hour hand, and his shirt was that of a woman. He had clearly put together what he could find. I looked down at my own clothes and I realized that my shoes not only matched, but were also thick and sturdy. My clothes were my own and fit well, and my two bags of luggage were conveniently on wheels. These small details felt like embarrassingly massive luxuries.
This horrific image created by Aimee Alphonso about what she claimed to have experienced in Ghana made many Ghanaians questioning “Is Aimee a theatre arts student mastering fictitious comical write-ups?”
Prosper Yaw Tsikata also reacted to the report on his facebook wall:
Pitfalls of our trained incapacities: these things have become the norms than exceptions. We cannot see them as anomalies anymore because our trained eyes divert attention from them. We could have seen them for what they were if we weren’t trained the ways we we have been trained. Aimee Alphonso’s description of the Kotoka International Airport, the taxi driver, and the ride from the airport seems to me a gross misrepresentation and misleading. For the scenes at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, l believe the details speak for themselves from an apprentice physicians lens. The scenes at Korle-Bu speak of years of neglect followed by years of normalization of the strange–our new normal in a world where God saves the political decision makers and their families in London and New York. Please read to the end!
The report which was published on the University’s website (https://news.yale.edu/2018/02/19/medical-student-aimee-alphonso-what-i-learned-during-my-rotation-ghana) on February 19, 2018 has since been deleted from the website.
See the screenshot of the report:
[embeddoc url=”https://awakeafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Yale-Student-Report.pdf” download=”all” viewer=”google”]
Source: AwakeAfrica.com | Efo Korsi Senyo
