At age 14, I dropped out of school because my mother and sisters could no longer afford to pay my school fees so I began to sell oranges by carrying my orange basket on my head at the National Diamond Mining Company (NDMC) headquarters at Yengema.

One day while I was selling my oranges at the National Diamond Mining Company compound, I miraculously met Capt. Thomas Johnson, an American pilot from Minnesota, who was employed to fly boxes of gems and alluvial diamonds from Yengema to Freetown, where a British Airways jet would fly the gemstones to London. 

This American pilot met me, and he befriended me, and out of his own goodwill and generosity gave me support and opportunity to education at a Catholic boarding school, and upon graduation he paved the way for me to come to America, he brought me to America... ( thru the Sahara Desert ), and he paid my room, board, and tuition at Massachusetts thereby transformed my life from war and famine in Africa, to freedom and opportunity in America.